Roman Segmentata armour found in Kalkriese

[Imperial Dave]

Leaving aside the interesting apparent typology of the armour, the other point that strikes me is that it apparently remained unlooted on the battlefield to be found today.  Especially if, as the blog implies, there is some suggestion that the owner might still have been in it (although equally all the stuff about the slave collar being turned on him may be stretching the evidence a tad speculatively).  Now, the stereotypical view is that your resource poor barbarian is going to loot anything portable, especially metalwork.  Even if the armour is no longer serviceable, it is still good quality iron.  After all, the Romans buried their nails at Inchtuthil, and there is the hoard of assorted domestic metal items from the Rhine, which it is assumed was the lost loot from a riverine raid.  So, unless this armour was irretrievably lost out of reach of Herman the German, it seems counter intuitive for it to be left lying around.  To my mind (and here also guilty of speculation) suggests:

- the catastrophic success for the Germans enjoyed over Varus was such that they simply could not carry off everything - I will have that chap's sword and helmet but I am not lugging all that armour home; or

- there are so many suits of armour on corpses I will have that one over there with fewer dents in it (a variation on the catastrophic success argument); or

- the Germans at that date, with the early stages of Roman colonisation underway east of the Rhine, are not as resource poor as we assume; or

- for whatever reason, that suit of armour was not as attractive to the supposedly half naked German warrior as we assume it might be.

As I say, hypocritically committing all the sins of speculation and over extrapolation against which I was cautioning!

very good questions. maybe buried by a looter to be picked up later?

[Jim Webster]

very good questions. maybe buried by a looter to be picked up later?

That strikes me as more reasonable

[Duncan Head]

Leaving aside the interesting apparent typology of the armour, the other point that strikes me is that it apparently remained unlooted on the battlefield to be found today.  Especially if, as the blog implies, there is some suggestion that the owner might still have been in it (although equally all the stuff about the slave collar being turned on him may be stretching the evidence a tad speculatively).  Now, the stereotypical view is that your resource poor barbarian is going to loot anything portable, especially metalwork.  Even if the armour is no longer serviceable, it is still good quality iron.  After all, the Romans buried their nails at Inchtuthil, and there is the hoard of assorted domestic metal items from the Rhine, which it is assumed was the lost loot from a riverine raid.  So, unless this armour was irretrievably lost out of reach of Herman the German, it seems counter intuitive for it to be left lying around.

15-20,000 Roman dead at the Teutoburg battle, according to one estimate. One abandoned armour out of that lot is hardly surprising.

[Erpingham]

Given the known tendency of weapons offerings among the Germans, I'm surprised no one has raise a ritual deposit explanation.  This may suggest there is more known about the context than is obvious in the reports.

One of the interesting things about battles is what we find in the ground centuries later.  Most battlefields close to settlements have been effectively "gleaned" of all the useful stuff and the larger scrap.  A site with thousands of weapons, helmets and sets of armour may have taken some time to strip.  Indeed, people may have been exploiting it as a metals source for years.  Dave's idea that some less portable items were stashed for a future trip to keep them from rivals, and some of these future trips didn't happen, would certainly be a possible explanation.

[DBS]

15-20,000 Roman dead at the Teutoburg battle, according to one estimate. One abandoned armour out of that lot is hardly surprising.

Oh indeed, that is effectively what I meant by catastrophic success.  A victory over a smaller force might have resulted in much more thorough salvage.