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Derek Estabrook
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 Posted: Thu 30 Mar, 2006 7:14 am Post subject: Iron Age Plate-why so late? |
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I'm interested in hearing your personal theories on why it took so long for plate armor to remerge in the Iron Age. The Bronze Age had breastplates, greaves, shields, etc. made of bronze, why did it take so long to emerge in the Iron Age? Wealth is a factor, but shouldn't be with the richest out there. At the very least you'd think the wealthy would have kept bronze shields since you'd think it would be better protection than reinforced wooden ones. Just putting out some bait and while I have my ideas I want to hear your opinions. I know its a complicated and involved topic, but it should be possible to sum it up briefly.
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Craig Johnson
Industry Professional
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| Posted: Thu 30 Mar, 2006 7:22 am Post subject: Big Topic |
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Wow Derek
This is a huge and excellent subject to discuss. I have a bunch of points that I am sure would be part of the answer but the one the comes to me first is the function of value and reusability. The earliest uses of iron point to it as an exotic and highly valued material. The use for armor would be extravagant to the point of crazy in the time period of the earliest iron objects. The other side of it is the reuseability of iron/steel. Things can be remade into other more pertinant objects to a culture a generation or two later and with the huge spanse of time involved an iron breastplate could be an attractive source of raw material to some later smith.
Best
Craig
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Sam Barris
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| Posted: Thu 30 Mar, 2006 9:07 am Post subject: |
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I'm just guessing, but I'd imagine that bronze is an easier metal to work with when it comes to hammering it out into plate armor. Iron might have presented a challenge to early iron age smiths in that regard. So we might see iron armor consisting of mail rings and small iron plates, but breastplate-sized pieces might have been prohibitively time consuming, difficult and/or costly to make in that time period. Good question, though. I'm interested to know what everyone else thinks.
Pax,
Sam Barris
"Any nation that draws too great a distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting done by fools." —Thucydides
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Matthew Amt
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| Posted: Thu 30 Mar, 2006 9:45 am Post subject: |
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It might be better to leave the Bronze Age out of the discussion entirely, just to reduce the topic to something smaller than a 24-volume set! Iron plate armor was known and used by Romans, Greeks, Persians, and other ancient cultures, along with bronze armor and helmets. (Some of the bronze items you are thinking of may be iron age rather than Bronze Age!) It does fade out of the European scene in Late Roman times, pretty much (except for helmets and a few other scattered bits), with mail becoming the dominant form of armor. So the "re-emergence" is really in the 13th century, not back in the ancient period.
But "why" is indeed a huge question! And don't expect modern ideas of "practicality" to be a large part of the answer. There are theories based on the size of a bloom that one can get from early medieval smelting furnaces--smaller blooms mean smaller pieces of iron, great for making mail but not so good for larger pieces of plate. Still doesn't seem to explain why some sort of segmented plate didn't hang around! Other factors include military conservatism, fashion, and the simple fact that mail seems to have been considered plenty effective by the guys who wore it for so many centuries. The development of plate in the 13th and 14th centuries may have been due more to the development of industry and artisan classes in growing towns than to some sort of arms race with new weapons. I'm not up on all the details, but there has been some excellent research on this topic in the last few years.
However, if you are really more interested in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, the differences are far fewer than you might think. Armor and shields simply continued to evolve as they had, with no real break in continuity. Bronze continued to be widely used for armor and helmets, while most shields were wood and/or hide/leather as they had been for a long time. Shields made just of bronze certainly existed, and some at least were obviously effective, but they don't seem to have been common even amongst the upper classes. Note that Classical Greece and Republican Rome are several hundred years into the Iron Age, and the classic Greek "hoplon" shield was actually wood with a very thin bronze facing.
Can you give me a better idea of the era you're thinking of, Derek? I'm big into the Bronze Age these days and have a lot of experience with Roman stuff, as well, so that's my strong area. Or have I already summed up what you wanted to know?
Khairete,
Matthew
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Blaz Berlec
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| Posted: Thu 30 Mar, 2006 9:48 am Post subject: |
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Are we sure that we have the complete picture of what was being used at that time? Perhaps there was also a change in burial customs - if armour stops being buried deliberately (but swords, spears and axes continue), there is little chance for accidental losses. Just look at how incomplete is our picture on Carolingian armour - and we have written documents that they had plenty of it. Also, thin plate and mail would corrode much quicker than swords, so if it's not deliberately buried deep in ground or dropped into the river or bog, there is very little chance anything recognisable would remain.
And maybe it’s just so much harder to make plate armour from iron or steel than from bronze that they gave up on the idea. Although iron was first “exotic” material, it soon prevailed over all others, because it could be relatively easily made locally, so the price of bronze (which was not easily available) sprang up, and armour made from it didn’t hold too well against iron spears and swords.
Extant 15th Century German Gothic Armour
Extant 15th century Milanese armour
Arming doublet of the 15th century
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Matthew Amt
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| Posted: Thu 30 Mar, 2006 12:12 pm Post subject: |
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| Sam Barris wrote: | | I'm just guessing, but I'd imagine that bronze is an easier metal to work with when it comes to hammering it out into plate armor. Iron might have presented a challenge to early iron age smiths in that regard. So we might see iron armor consisting of mail rings and small iron plates, but breastplate-sized pieces might have been prohibitively time consuming, difficult and/or costly to make in that time period. |
Good high-tin bronze is actually harder than plain wrought iron. And even lower-tin bronzes are hard enough to work into large pieces of sheet that we still don't know how they did it! It work-hardens rapidly and cannot be worked hot. Forging out iron sheet is practically easy by comparison. And iron is much more readily available than copper and tin (in most places). The whole question of why bronze gave way to iron is also a lot more complex than we used to think! Here's one corner of the many discussions about it:
http://s8.invisionfree.com/Bronze_Age_Center/...wtopic=391
Now, it is possible that at some level it was easier to make large sheets of bronze, since you could cast a billet of whatever size you needed and then hammer it out flat (not that hammering would be a snap, but your starting block could be any size). For iron you were limited by the size of the bloom that comes out of the smelting furnace. You might be able to forge-weld smaller pieces together before hammering out your sheet, but I don't know if there are any practical limitations to that. And again, mail comes in a lot later, so it's not really a factor.
Part of the whole issue is that iron working is just different from bronze-working in many ways. Even if iron was found to be easy to get, it's possible that the local bronzesmiths simply didn't deal with it much if at all, so that a whole new set of artisans had to evolve to utilize the new metal. As an example, I recently heard that a lot of modern knife-makers and swordsmiths are completely befuddled when they first try to work with real wrought iron, since its properties and working temperatures are so different from high-grade steels. But in ancient times, by the time iron armor shows up, ironworking is "old hat" with no more technical mysteries. But bronze stayed in heavy use for a lot of things, and bronze armor was still very effective against iron weapons.
| Quote: | | Are we sure that we have the complete picture of what was being used at that time? Perhaps there was also a change in burial customs - if armour stops being buried deliberately (but swords, spears and axes continue), there is little chance for accidental losses. Just look at how incomplete is our picture on Carolingian armour - and we have written documents that they had plenty of it. Also, thin plate and mail would corrode much quicker than swords, so if it's not deliberately buried deep in ground or dropped into the river or bog, there is very little chance anything recognisable would remain. |
I don't think that's too much of an issue. Finds may be relatively uncommon and scattered, but they are generally consistent. It is certainly possible that iron was being used for helmets and armor earlier or more widely than we know from archeology, but almost none remains even though other iron objects have survived. The question is a lot more significant when we get into the topic of organic items. I DO think there was more bronze armor in use in the Aegean area, for instance, than has been turned up (or at least properly published!), but I think we're seeing a reasonable cross-section overall.
Khairete,
Matthew
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Jeroen Zuiderwijk
Industry Professional
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| Posted: Fri 31 Mar, 2006 12:16 am Post subject: |
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| Matthew Amt wrote: | | Now, it is possible that at some level it was easier to make large sheets of bronze, since you could cast a billet of whatever size you needed and then hammer it out flat (not that hammering would be a snap, but your starting block could be any size). For iron you were limited by the size of the bloom that comes out of the smelting furnace. You might be able to forge-weld smaller pieces together before hammering out your sheet, but I don't know if there are any practical limitations to that. |
Non as far as I'm aware. First of all the iron they had was easy to weld, and second of all, while removing the slag from the bloom you have to fold and thus well the iron many times. The welling abilities make forging iron a lot easier, as any cracks can be repaired. The tricky bit I'd guess would be when it gets really thin. Due to the slag inclusions, you have to forge at very high temperatures, or you'll crack the metal as I understand. At that temperature, the metal will be very soft, and handeling a large thin sheet may be very difficult. Also, if cracks to occur at this stage, I don't know if it's can then still be repaired. In the case of bronze, one small crack ruins the piece, unless it's at the edge, and you can remove the material that's cracked. Otherwise, a crack will only grow, and you'll have to start over. As a cast isn't necessarily solid, it means that if imperfections are already present in the cast blank, you may hammer it with the greatest skill and it can still crack at some point. I still believe bronze is much more difficult to turn into sheet, though the iron they had may have had it's difficulties as well. They did make iron sheet for scabbards, so at least that shows they could at least make narrow strips of sheet iron.
On the subject of iron age armour, here are some interesting examples from the early iron age (Eastern Europe):
http://www.hallstattzeit.de/Rekonstruktion/Vo...ichte.html
The images show men carrying shields and wearing helmets. Only few of those helmets have been found, yet the pictures show every warrior wearing a helmet. So the grave finds may give the impression that only a few elites may have had such bronze helmets, the pictures show that they may actually have been quite common. So it appears the actual finds don't represent the amount of armour present at all.
The purpose of warfare also shouldn't be forgotten. An army for conquest is totally different from a group of guys going to a fight to prove who is the bravest. In the latter case, hiding inside metal armour would be cowardly! 
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Frank J.
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| Posted: Fri 31 Mar, 2006 4:17 am Post subject: |
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What about the fungible-metal idea? If we're only finding these metals in graves of nobility, perhaps they were the only ones who were wealthy enough to afford to be buried with the armor; regular folks keep getting things reused. As time goes on, and economies crunch, peace breaks out, places get conquered, things like the armor become workable sources of iron for things like nails, other swords, whatnot. It gets reused and reshaped into new things.
So that begs a question, how many iron spoons, bowls, religious icons, whatnot...how many of those do we find? Perhaps the swords-into-plowshares idea was taken literally, in times of peaceful prosperity? If we find few weapons and armor, but many tools and luxuries, perhaps they are getting converted. It's just a thought, I honestly don't know but would appreciate insight from someone who does!
Fascinating topic, honestly.
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Jared Smith
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| Posted: Fri 31 Mar, 2006 5:00 am Post subject: |
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I would lke to know when this gap in iron age for large pieces of iron is considered to have occured. (Not saying it didn't occur, I just was not aware of any belief of when or what this discontinuity was.)
The 8th century Beowulf text and some other fairly early works (period description of Charlemagne comes to mind) describe iron breast plates for heroic characters. I can't recall an actual surviving example from that early, but at least a "myth" of it seemed to be propogated by authors.
I do not know of a surviving iron battering ram, but pretty early ship battering rams were sometimes described as covered in iron, iron bands, etc. This would require some pretty large sheet or a lot of fairly massive iron bands to be consistent with the type of craftsmanship attributed to Romans, Greeks, others to whom this claim applies.
I live in a region about 1/3 of the way into the Continental U.S. (middle Tennessee.) There is a 2 ton iron ingot that was unearthed within 15 miles of my home (at a farm adjacent to Old Stone State Park in Manchester Tennessee.) This ingot has was dated to around 4th century A.D. based on corrosion and depth of soil deposit around the find area. It was cast in typical "Viking" peat bog style as an inverted shallow pyramid. It was pretty well accepted by researches who reported on it (articles are posted about it in the local Arrowhead Museum) that 2 tons was a fairly typical range of mass for the Viking style of peat bog casting. Obviously, this starts turning out to be a pretty tall tale (how the devil did they plan to transport it?), but concepts of limited availability, small ingot mass limitations, inability to work large shapes or bands...just don't seem consistent with capabilities that seem to have been accepted for applications other than armour.
Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence!
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Ken Rankin
Location: North Carolina Joined: 12 Mar 2006
Posts: 69
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| Posted: Fri 31 Mar, 2006 6:07 am Post subject: |
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| Jared Smith wrote: |
I live in a region about 1/3 of the way into the Continental U.S. (middle Tennessee.) There is a 2 ton iron ingot that was unearthed within 15 miles of my home (at a farm adjacent to Old Stone State Park in Manchester Tennessee.) This ingot has was dated to around 4th century A.D. based on corrosion and depth of soil deposit around the find area. It was cast in typical "Viking" peat bog style as an inverted shallow pyramid. It was pretty well accepted by researches who reported on it (articles are posted about it in the local Arrowhead Museum) that 2 tons was a fairly typical range of mass for the Viking style of peat bog casting. Obviously, this starts turning out to be a pretty tall tale (how the devil did they plan to transport it?), but concepts of limited availability, small ingot mass limitations, inability to work large shapes or bands...just don't seem consistent with capabilities that seem to have been accepted for applications other than armour. |
Now THAT is pretty darn interesting! Would you happen to have a link for that? I know the Spanish had moved that far (here in NC they had a trading post at present day Asheville) but to imagine that the Vikings could have been that far inland would be incredible. Thanks for posting that, the imagination is now fired!
Ken
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Matthew Amt
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| Posted: Fri 31 Mar, 2006 9:01 am Post subject: |
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| Frank J. wrote: | | What about the fungible-metal idea? If we're only finding these metals in graves of nobility, perhaps they were the only ones who were wealthy enough to afford to be buried with the armor; regular folks keep getting things reused. As time goes on, and economies crunch, peace breaks out, places get conquered, things like the armor become workable sources of iron for things like nails, other swords, whatnot. It gets reused and reshaped into new things. |
In some areas and eras, the vast majority of bronze items are not found in settlements or graves, but in hoads or ritual deposits. Dating is a real pain because many things get put into hoards that are not used in other settings, and of course organic bits rarely survive at all. Bronze and iron items certainly got recycled now and then, but trying to connect that to economic swings is dicey at best.
| Quote: | | So that begs a question, how many iron spoons, bowls, religious icons, whatnot...how many of those do we find? |
Not sure! You'd have to dig through a lot of obscure archeological reports to find out. But the impression I get is that items like that were usually made of other materials, even well into the Iron Age. Roman sites do produce iron spoons (and plenty of household knives), but also spoons or other small items made of horn, bone, wood, and bronze.
| Quote: | | Perhaps the swords-into-plowshares idea was taken literally, in times of peaceful prosperity? If we find few weapons and armor, but many tools and luxuries, perhaps they are getting converted. |
Except that these are often warrior societies, ruled by men who fight. Even the Classical Greeks--those "peaceful" democrats--considered peace to be an abberration, just a brief interlude between wars. And that concept comes to us from their famous philosophers and thinking men! War was what brought prosperity, so they weren't likely to disarm and make spoons out of helmets just because they won the most recent battle. It's entirely possible that old hoards of metal were discovered and used, but I don't know how much grave-robbing would have been done for the purpose. Actually, at some point the temple at Olympia was getting so stuffed with armor and shields dedicated by people who won battles that they cleaned house and dumped tons of stuff into pits and such. They actually used old shields to shore up the embankment of the stadium! So it really looks to me like they were not so desperate for metal, or they would simply have melted everything down for recycling.
| Quote: | | Fascinating topic, honestly. |
Definitely!!
| Quote: | I would lke to know when this gap in iron age for large pieces of iron is considered to have occured. (Not saying it didn't occur, I just was not aware of any belief of when or what this discontinuity was.)
The 8th century Beowulf text and some other fairly early works (period description of Charlemagne comes to mind) describe iron breast plates for heroic characters. |
Well, from late Roman times to the 13th century is generally thought of as the "Age of Mail". It was just the dominant form of armor by far. Helmets, cauldrons, and other items still were made of iron plate or sheet, though. It's very hard to determine just why this was so! On the Beowulf quotation, I wonder if the original text actually meant a solid breastplate, or is that simply a mistranslation of something that actually means "shirt of mail"? Old translations often have things like that, with "coat of mail" being used for armor that existed long before mail was invented, or "breastplate" used for completely different types of armor including mail! But if that text includes more of a description, that could be very revealing.
Khairete,
Matthew
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Dan Howard
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| Posted: Fri 31 Mar, 2006 1:05 pm Post subject: |
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Yes it is a mistranslation. The word "lorica" simply means armour. There is no way to know what sort of armour was being worn from the relevant texts. All we can know for certain is that armour in Charlemagne's time was made of iron. Mail is the most likely contender.
Regarding why plate supplanted mail, this FAQ covers the main points. Economics probably played the main role.
http://forums.swordforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=41041
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Alexander Hinman
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| Posted: Fri 31 Mar, 2006 2:09 pm Post subject: |
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I'm wondering how the armour transition relates to overall protection.
Did earlier plate-type armours give good limb protection? (against slashing weapons, anyway). The reason I ask this is that as the 'Age of Mail' began, it also became the age of the slashing sword, it seems. As the thrusting sword came back into widespread use, so did armour of iron plates, at least in Western Europe.
I'm just chucking this idea out there, so this hypothesis is rather baseless.
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Dan Howard
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| Posted: Sat 01 Apr, 2006 3:49 am Post subject: |
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It is virtually impossible to cut through mail and its associated padding with a single handed sword.
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Shawn Shaw
Location: Boston, MA USA Joined: 07 Jan 2006
Posts: 115
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| Posted: Sat 01 Apr, 2006 5:40 am Post subject: |
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No argument there....but I'd hate to be standing there while somebody walloped me with a 2'-4' iron bar nevertheless.
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Matthew Amt
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| Posted: Sat 01 Apr, 2006 6:47 am Post subject: |
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That's why you carry a shield, eh? Mail is also VERY resistant to thrusts. And the main weapon of the middle ages, before and after plate, was the spear. So the idea of changes in sword style doesn't really hold up. (Let's not even get into the "Just how good is mail?" thing here! It can go on for weeks and there are already many big discussions about it...)
| Quote: | | Did earlier plate-type armours give good limb protection? |
Well, most Bronze Age and early Iron Age plate armor was for the torso and shins. Armguards were used in some times and places, but do not seem to have been the rule most of the time. Thighguards are known from Archaic Greece (early Iron Age), but again were hardly universal. So if a guy was wearing limb armor, sure, he'd be very well protected, but it seems to have been more common to armor the torso and use a shield to cover the limbs (and maybe wear greaves).
Khairete,
Matthew
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Wolfgang Armbruster
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| Posted: Sat 01 Apr, 2006 7:41 am Post subject: |
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Last time I went to Greece they had a modern drawing of a Hoplite from the time of the Peloponnesian War in a museum in Athens. It showed a Hoplite wearing Sabatons and I was like WTF until I saw the following picture from the British Museum. I think someone posted it here at myArmoury some time ago and I saved it immediately to my HD. 
 Attachment: 23.2 KB
Hoplite Sabatons
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Michal Plezia
Industry Professional
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| Posted: Sat 01 Apr, 2006 8:13 am Post subject: |
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Hoplite with sabatons?!Incredible.I've never heard of it before-thanks for sharing the picture
www.elchon.com
Polish Guild of Knifemakers
The sword is a weapon for killing, the art of the sword is the art of killing. No matter what fancy words you use or what titles you put to
it that is the only truth.
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Alexander Hinman
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| Posted: Sat 01 Apr, 2006 3:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Dan Howard wrote: | | It is virtually impossible to cut through mail and its associated padding with a single handed sword. |
That's my point.. If there was no good arm/leg protection in the form of plate at that point and time (though now I see there was, though shields are not a passive form of defence as armour is), you would switch to save those areas once left unprotected. Of course, this theory doesn't hold very much water, I was just throwing it out there to see how much water it actually does hold.
The 'shield to protect the arm' idea works somewhat, but with any fighter there is often a concern for the protection of the weapon-holding arm itself. And given my (quite possibly wrong) impression that Roman and Greek shields were less mobile in their use than Medieval shields, it seems more likely that the main arm would be more open to attack...
Just my 2d
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Matthew Amt
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| Posted: Sun 02 Apr, 2006 7:29 pm Post subject: |
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Ha, Wolfgang, *I* took that photo at the British Museum, many years ago! It's on my Hoplite website. Glad to see someone's looking at it! Sorry it's blurry, too. And if I'd had any idea of what I was seeing at the time, I'd'a gotten a lot more photos...
I believe those footguards are Archaic period, 6th century BC, not Classical or later. And they'd be rare. But yes, very cool!
| Quote: | | And given my (quite possibly wrong) impression that Roman and Greek shields were less mobile in their use than Medieval shields, it seems more likely that the main arm would be more open to attack... |
Maybe, though I'm not sure we know enough about the dynamics. In any case, they were generally large enough that they didn't need to be very mobile. Six or eight inches up or down with a Roman scutum, and you're covering everything just fine. I do agree that the Greek hoplon wasn't made to move as easily as, say, a Saxon or Norse shield of equivalent size, but helmets and greaves were vastly more common among hoplites than among Vikings and such, so that would have helped make up for it. Couldn't tell you what they thought about protection for the right arm, though, except that an awful lot of people seem to have gone to war over the centuries without worrying about that very much. Maybe they just felt it was too small of a target and too mobile to try to hit, especially if they were concentrating on hitting a more vital spot while also trying to protect themselves.
Khairete,
Matthew
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