Skeletal evidence for the cavalry charge at Chaironeia

[Erpingham]

Grim reading.

Yes, an antidote to the rather bloodless violence we often see on screen.  Ancient combat could be very brutal.

I wonder what protection helmets gave, and whether the presence or absence of helmets can be deduced from the bones.

A question often raised when talking about medieval mass graves.  It seems unlikely that lots of people would take the field without head protection if they could help it.  Yet plenty of serious head wounds in the archaeological record (and plenty more healed ones that have left bone damage).

I've been thinking about the disposal of the dead in this battle.  The Macedonians are presumed  to have burned then buried their dead on the field.  A group of presumed Sacred band were buried in a neat mass grave with fine monument placed after.  Athenian practice seems to have been to cremate their dead, then take the "cremains" back to Athens.  I presume the allies may have cremated theirs and buried them in situ or taken them away.  Being on home soil, did the Thebans bury the rest of theirs (Athenian cremation seems to have been a practical convenience rather than a standard at home).

It might be interesting to compare the pathology of Himera skeletons to the Chaironeia ones, see if they show similar wound types.

[Duncan Head]

I wonder what protection helmets gave, and whether the presence or absence of helmets can be deduced from the bones.

John Ma, in the "Topographies of Commemoration" article linked to above, thinks that:

The pattern of wounds implies a lack of protection of the legs, and perhaps only light protection for the head. Late fourth-century Attic grave stelai show hoplites wearing muscle cuirasses but no greaves; at the risk of a hyper-positivist reading of the visual evidence, I wonder if the Theban hoplites also eschewed greaves, and furthermore if they fought in the 'light' style favoured in the late fifth and early fourth century, under Peloponnesian influence: pilos helmet, no greaves or body armour. If so, they were at a disadvantage against the heavily armoured, sarissa-equipped Macedonian phalanx.

Certainly this is the style of protection seen in late 5th-century Boiotian art (the stelai of Mnason, Rhynchon, etc) but that needn't mean it was still the style used in the later 4th.

[Erpingham]

We have to be a bit careful with that bit about leg protection, now we've picked our way through the reports.  We have only a couple of instances, some perhaps related to post-mortem "insulting" the dead, and a thigh injury, above the greave line.

The individual with face sliced off does suggest either no helmet or one without a brim or projecting nasal, which would fit a pilos helmet, I think.

[Erpingham]

Here's the wound distribution from Himera

                      n   Skull n (%)   Trunk n (%)   Upper limb n (%)   Lower limb n (%)
Mass burials   16   6 (37.5%)   8 (50.0%)   1 (6.25%)   1 (6.3%)

Of the 113 bodies in the mass graves, only 11 showed signs of trauma (the 16 above includes cases of multiple wounds).  This helps contextualise the Chaironeia burials.  Even with full modern excavation and detailed osteological study, the great majority of the dead showed no skeletally obvious trauma. 

Himera report is here

https://www.academia.edu/41974780/The_mass_burials_from_the_western_necropolis_of_the_Greek_colony_of_Himera_Sicily_related_to_the_battles_of_480_and_409_BCE

The supplementary tables refered to in the text are here
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1002%2Foa.2858&file=oa2858-sup-0001-Supplementary_Data.docx

[RichT]

Yes I think John Ma did veer a bit into the hyper-positivist, given that Liston's report suggests the leg injuries are not combat injuries. It seems to me that if a cut through a helmet showed up in the bones then we could conclude that the victim wore a helmet; but if such evidence of helmet isn't present, we can't conclude the victim didn't wear one.

These head wounds relate to the question of dead and wounded. On the winning side, the wounded would presumably be collected and carried away, if not able to walk, for treatment (such as it was). The walking wounded among the losers would try to get off the field and would hopefully make it home, if not killed in the pursuit. But the non-walking wounded of the losing side would still be lying on the field. Hopefully in a war with heralds between enemies playing by the same rules, the loser's request to collect the bodies of their dead could also include a request to gather up the wounded - though to my knowledge no source refers to this, it is always just collection of dead.

So the head wounds could be a coup de grace delivered after combat - the butt spike injury seems most likely to be that, rather than a combat injury. It seems likely that the non-walking wounded of the losing side might routinely have been finished off by the victors as part of the process of gathering and stripping the bodies of the dead ("I'm not dead yet!"). As such, taking off the armour then if necessary delivering a lethal blow might be the normal practice and we couldn't tell from the bones which were combat injuries and which coups de grace (both would be perimortem, as I understand it), nor whether or not helmets or armour were worn. This wouldn't explain the leg injuries of course.

[Jim Webster]

What did strike me when people were talking about armour was that care for the dead didn't stop people stripping them of everything worth having. It strikes me that is was a practice so accepted it wasn't even thought about

[RichT]

What did strike me when people were talking about armour was that care for the dead didn't stop people stripping them of everything worth having. It strikes me that is was a practice so accepted it wasn't even thought about

In the Athenian oligarchs v. democrats battle at Munychia, the oligarchs were defeated:

"And the victors took possession of their arms [hopla], but they did not strip off the tunic of any citizen. When this had been done and while they were giving back the bodies of the dead, many on either side mingled and talked with one another." (Xen. Hell. 2.4.19)

So it was presumably a mark of respect to leave the dead their clothes. I think of the border scenes in the Bayeux Tapestry in this context, the dead being stripped naked.