3900 year old bone armour suit found in Siberia

[Dave Beatty]

Nice article on a suit of bone armour found in Siberia - http://theweek.com/article/index/267781/speedreads-3900-year-old-bone-armor-suit-discovered-in-siberia

[Duncan Head]

Very interesting. I'm not sure if the reconstruction drawing of the warrior is actually wearing the exact suit excavated - the length of the shoulder-straps suggests that perhaps the neckline on the excavated piece was lower. In fact the reconstruction is on Mugap's Korean armour blog in an entry from 2012; so either he is an older picture or this armour's been known for a couple of years..

[Sharur]

The re-use of the reconstruction images is typical media activity. They need a picture, so they find something that's a bit like what they're talking about. Accuracy doesn't enter into it.

In this case, the composite images were taken from the originating piece in the Siberian Times for September 6 (which is also linked-to from the linked story in Dave's initial posting), and there they appeared to have been credited to Polina Volf, Yuri Gerasimov and A.Solovyev.

The Siberian Times piece is worth checking, because there are photos in it of what the new excavation actually found, where it's clear the bone shapes and general relationship to each other fail to match particularly well with the supposed "reconstructions", as indeed does the text - for example:

"Gerasimov, who is engaged in the restoration, said: 'Each armour plate in the ground was divided into many small fragments, which are held only by this ground. The structure was removed from the excavation, in 'monolith' as archaeologists say - namely, intact with the piece of ground, not in separate plates, and taken to the museum.

"'Now we need to clean these small fragments of bone plates, make photographs and sketches of their location, and then glue them in a full plate.'".

So, no actual reconstruction has been made as yet.

Fascinating stuff, of course!