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Made in se
Stubborn Hammerer




Sweden

Dan Howard on Scale Armour

Spoiler:
As seen here, historian Dan Howard (author of Bronze Age Military Equipment; much recommended) touches on some aspects of scale armour:

Dan Howard wrote:Scale armour tends to use plates that are a lot thinner than solid plate armour (c. 0.5mm was typical while plate armour was usually over 1mm), otherwise it becomes too heavy to bear. Plus there are a lot of weaknesses introduced because the scales have to be attached to the backing (every lacing hole is a weak point). Lamellar is a lot more efficient but the lacing is still a huge problem. The mail-and-plates construction was developed as a replacement for lamellar and did away with a lot of problems associated with lamellar lacing. If you want flexibility then use mail. It is lighter and just as protective as scale and lamellar. The problem with mail is that it is the most expensive and labour-intensive type of armour ever developed. The ideal armour is solid plate as the primary defence with mail protecting the areas that can't be covered with plate. But solid plate has to be carefullly tailored to fit properly and requires a lot of skill.

Sakakibara Kozan's Chukokatchu Seisakuben presents a good summary of some of the problems with scale and lamellar - problems that re-enactors usually never get to experience.

"When soaked with water the armour becomes very heavy and cannot be quickly dried; so that in summer it is oppressive and in winter liable to freeze. Moreover, no amount of washing will completely free the lacing from any mud or blood which may have penetrated it, and on long and distant campaigns it becomes evil-smelling and overrun by ants and lice, with consequent ill effects on the health of the wearer."

The following passage from the Arabic Nihayat al-Su'l wa'l Umniyaya fi Ta'lim A'mal al-Furusiyya supports this.

"Every day he must train himself to dismount elegantly so that he does not break or damage it [the armour], and he must keep practising and improving this skill. If, during the winter, the cuirass gets wet or damp from rain, he must examine its leather straps and its connections carefully and wipe off any dampness or mud from its individual pieces and any wetness from its lacing. If he fails to do this, the inside of it will rot and it will become out of shape. Such rotting shows negligence and carelessness."

All metal armours are highly protective. The problems with scale have already been outlined but have nothing to do with protective capacity.


Bones Stained Green by Copper Jewelry
Spoiler:
Karak Norn Clansman wrote:
Something sometimes encountered by archaeologists, are bones stained green or blue-to-black by metals worn by the dead reacting with acids in the soils. Example the Green Lady of Pompeii:

The Green Lady
 bones of a wealthy woman were stained green from the reaction of the metal jewelry she brought
with the bone (there was a green man with her too – above – was the owner of the cellar)
 Primary Source: bones show she was pregnant


While people with less means were found without green bones, i.e. without metal wealth about them.

Now, this opens up for some oddball paintjobs on Undead skeletons and skeletal remains such as on the Road of Skulls.
 
To the left a chicken femur stained by copper salts, to the right one stained by iron compounds (starts to look like Diablo II):


 
A piece of cattle bone stained by copper sulfate:
 

 
A piece of skull from Wessex with a green spot where the cranium has been in contact with brass fittings inside the coffin: 


 
A green-spotted bone:
 


Bones from a wealthy man who died in Pompeii's suburb Oplontis. One of the bones is green on the left side. The humans which died around him had all at least one or two green bones and lots of coins and jewelry about themselves, while another group of people in the other end of the same cellar had no green bones and no precious metal to speak of:
 

 


Building Trajan's Column

Spoiler:


Learn Cuneiform With Irving Finkel

Spoiler:
Karak Norn Clansman wrote:
23 minute video on the basics, neat enough to watch. Should also give ideas for people attempting their own cuneiformish writing in clay, particularly as a family or school activity with children also taking part.

(As to the origins of cuneiform script, see this lecture by Tony Sagona)


How to Bake Roman Bread

Spoiler:
Karak Norn Clansman wrote:
Giorgo Locatelli has done a video for the British Museum on how to bake a loaf of bread akin to the carbonized one found in Herculaneum. Notice the carry string around its waist and the bakery stamp. That's some marketing!



The Course of Empire

Spoiler:
Karak Norn Clansman wrote:
The Course of Empire was a series of five paintings which artist Thomas Cole created during the years 1833-36. More here:











Lectures on Viking Age Scandinavia

Spoiler:
Karak Norn Clansman wrote:
Could be fun to listen to while painting & modelling. Please share your own finds! There's a larger documentary/lecture/audiobook link list which I'll update in due time with a slew of more videos incl. space race ones, but in the meanwhile, here's something on a narrower topic:
 
History of Scandinavia, lectures by Kenneth Harl at Tulane University (Youtube channel receives new videos daily and is worth following):

Ancient Times

Gods, Kings and Heroes I

Viking Invasions

Ireland
 

Professor Neil Price's lectures, which attempts to get into the mindset of Scandinavians during this time:

The Children of Ash - Cosmology and the Viking Universe
 
Life and Afterlife - Dealing with the Dead in the Viking Age
 
The Shape of the Soul - The Viking Mind and the Individual

Partially relevant since it goes into Rus:

Medieval Times - The Steppe Kingdoms, by Kenneth Harl.


Video: The Palace Complex of Galerius in Thessaloniki 4th century AD



The Varangian Guard

Spoiler:
Karak Norn Clansman wrote:
Realm of History have a good article on the famous Varangian Guard of the mediaeval Roman Emperor in Constantinople, in list format. British people take note of the epilogue to the Norman conquest of England being played out on the battlefield at Dyrrhachium in 1081 by Anglo-Saxon exiles in Varangian Guard service.

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It should be remembered that despite the devastations and fragmentation from late antiquity onward, the Mediterranean remained as the dominant cultural and economical part of Europe through most of the Middle Ages.

Also, note that the Varangian Guard's dependability, in comparison to other Imperial Guard units, hinged both on excellent pay, being foreigners with no stake in internal issues of the empire and on their cultural honour code of a warrior's loyalty to a leader, adherence to oaths and virtual immunity to bribes (the latter described by Anna Komnena), aspects which likewise were crucial in ancient Roman use of Germanic bodyguard units (the original such corps was disbanded by Galba since the Germanic guard unit had remained loyal to Nero to the end, unlike the Praetorians). Writers in both the ancient and mediaeval Roman empire noted these barbaric northerner's fondness for getting drunk.


The Early Mediaeval Eastern Roman Army

Spoiler:
Karak Norn Clansman wrote:
Realm of History sports a rather good article, in list format, on the early mediaeval Eastern Roman (also known as Byzantine) army. Recommended little read.

Note that the ancient Roman legacy of organized military professionalism (including siege engineering) was carried on in the realm of Constantinople, albeit much reformed over the centuries as the state and army was forced to adapt to new realities. While not on par with the legions in their golden heyday of conquest, the Byzantine army for much of the mediaeval Roman empire's history was nevertheless a formidable force which, along with heavily fortified cities and a strong navy, managed to stave off annihilation of the empire despite the wave upon wave of enemies that attacked her lands from all sides through many centuries of devastating warfare, and even managed to push back and reconquer lost lands every now and then.



Slave Hunting on the Pontic Steppe

Spoiler:
Karak Norn Clansman wrote:
Background: Slavery was an ancient institution which was originally universal to all settled human cultures across the world with high enough population levels. One could be made a slave through debts, or trickery, or kidnapping, or one's family's desperate need for food (or worse yet, intoxication...), or by being the victim of highwaymen, or by becoming a prisoner of war. But one of the most common ways to become a slave through most of history was through the feared slave raid. Mounted on horseback, or running on foot, or in chariots, or on camels, or in swift ships did parties of men bear down upon isolated farmsteads and villages or stray people out in the fields. This was a scourge since time immemorial to the common man and woman who did not enjoy a fortified home or who happened to be working outside the palisade when the raiders struck.

Especially mines required a huge number of new slaves to keep operations going in the face of grueling attrition rates in their hellish work environment, and there are signs in archaeology that the Bronze Age Central European copper mines were served by slave hunters who scoured the lands far and wide, or simply by warring tribes who sold on their captured enemies.

Those areas most vulnerable to slavers were always those hardest to defend. For a time, the coasts and rivers of much of Europe became such an exposed underbelly where Viking raiders could strike like lightning and carry off booty and victims at will across the vast tracts facing the sea or the rivers of Europe. And river raiding aside, pirate raids against the coasts have been common from distant antiquity (e.g. Achaeans, Illyrians, the pirates subdued by Pompey, the Veneti) all the way up to the 19th century French conquest of the Barbary states, and the British dismantling of the slaver economy centered on Zanzibar off East Africa's coast.

However, just like water has always been a highway, so were the vast steppes stretching from Ukraine to Manchuria a violent place for many thousands of years that allowed riders to travel long distances quickly and strike with few natural obstacles in their way (the Songhai and like raiders in West Africa is a parallell). The steppes of Eurasia were a breeding ground for warlike riders who excelled at raiding, and the westernmost quarter of this steppe band, the Pontic Steppe in today's Ukraine and southern Russia, was famous for its nomads who supplied the urbanized societies further south with a constant stream of slaves for millennia. A succession of Scythians, Sarmatians, Goths, Avars, Pechenegs, Khazars, Kievan Rus, Tatars and still other tribes were the ferocious rulers of the steppe and the terror of all surrounding peoples and all subject populations for untold centuries.

And since the days of Greek colonization on the Crimean peninsula and around the sea of Azov, there existed a number of walled cities who lived in eternal fear of the steppe warriors with whom they had to reach some form of agreement (heavy archers were a novelty for the Greeks here who desperately sought to counter the mounted archery of their foes). The settlers here cultivated the nutritious soil for grain, traded with the inland tribes for such wares as fur, but above all these port cities profited from the Black Sea slave trade, for which they formed the thriving hub.

To get a sense of how perilous life was like for those living on the Pontic Steppe or in surrounding lands, do check out this article by Mike Dash. It deals with the slaver period of the Crimean Khanate and how Finns were an exotic luxury slave goods, yet also resounds deeply with earlier, forgotten centuries. By all means read, and gain a glimpse of how life could be like for those who were not lordly horse archers or coastal city traders in Eastern Europe.

Of particular interest to fantasy readers given Tolkien's use of this theme in both the First Age (Tuor) and the Third Age (Wainsriders and so on). And of course, don't forget the Hobgoblins...




This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2018/01/15 10:39:33


   
Made in gb
[DCM]
Et In Arcadia Ego





Canterbury

...I think perhaps you might be better off perhaps having a single thread with regards to things like this.

Comes across as a wee bit spammy currently.

The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
 
   
Made in us
[DCM]
Savage Minotaur




Baltimore, Maryland

I read the part about the Crimea slave trade this morning.

Horrifiying.

"Sometimes the only victory possible is to keep your opponent from winning." - The Emperor, from The Outcast Dead.
"Tell your gods we are coming for them, and that their realms will burn as ours did." -Thostos Bladestorm
 
   
Made in nl
Pragmatic Primus Commanding Cult Forces






 nels1031 wrote:
I read the part about the Crimea slave trade this morning.

Horrifiying.

Yeah, and it is way too often forgotten. And that is a shame since it is essential to properly understanding the history of the region. Unfortunately, almost no one in the West does, and therefore 90% of what is written in the media about Crimea and Tatars is utter nonsense.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/01/15 23:36:18


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Made in us
5th God of Chaos! (Yea'rly!)




The Great State of Texas

Cool

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