Mycenaen armour trials

[Imperial Dave]

https://greekreporter.com/2024/10/14/ancient-greece-armor-protection-battle-simulation/

11 hours....

[Erpingham]

The rations looked OK.  No Spartan black broth for them.

[Jim Webster]

Genuinely interesting 

[Erpingham]

The actual study can be found here.

Reading the supplementary material, Dave will be relieved to hear that each warrior got 1 hour six minutes of breaks during his 11 hours and spent over four hours riding a chariot.  He got three meals (Breakfast, Snack and Dinner) totalling approximately 4,500 kCal.  The supplementary details on this experiment are fascinating - worth downloading to read.

[Imperial Dave]

phew....

[Ian61]

Very interesting, I always thought that armour looked a little constricting, well I was wrong. However...

Researchers created the armor replicas using a blend of gilded metals that included copper and zinc, the closest alloy to the original bronze material.

is bugging me as to my my mind copper and zinc is brass, copper and tin is bronze but I suspect we are only being given partial information here and there are numerous variations on both themes. Not sure what they mean by gilded here, I doubt they gilded them for the experiment even if the original had been.
The food sounds healthy although if the onions were raw? enough said.

[Erpingham]

Gilded is actually a typo for gilding.  From wiki

"Gilding metal is a form of brass (an alloy of copper and zinc) with a much higher copper content than zinc content. Exact figures range from 95% copper and 5% zinc[1] to "8 parts copper to 1 of zinc" (11% zinc) in British Army Dress Regulations"

[Ian61]

Gilded is actually a typo for gilding.  From wiki

"Gilding metal is a form of brass (an alloy of copper and zinc) with a much higher copper content than zinc content. Exact figures range from 95% copper and 5% zinc[1] to "8 parts copper to 1 of zinc" (11% zinc) in British Army Dress Regulations"

Good thinking, that would make sense, although still a 'brass' rather than a 'bronze'.

[Erpingham]

It is worth reading the original paper, where the reason for the metal choice becomes clear.  The armour is a replica made by an art department some years ago, who would have had plentiful access to gilding metal, rather than ordering custom-made historical alloys.