2021/07/01 by Sean Manning · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Metallurgy and Cultural Artifacts #Paleopathology and ancient diseases #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Armour #Scholarship #Sculpture #Reading (process) #Art #Visual arts #History #Philosophy #Law
paper · doi:10.3138/mous.17.3.003
openalex publication_date 2021/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Many people have heard that ancient warriors wore armour of many layers of linen cloth glued together. Critics emphasize the lack of archaeological or written evidence for this construction; supporters emphasize that their reconstructions resemble armour in ancient art and pass practical tests. Both present the theory as one that first appeared in the 1970s. This article make two contributions to the debate. It shows how sixteenth-century scholars used a peculiar medieval chronicle to understand the linen armour in ancient texts, and how paraphrases and mistranslations of their theory ultimately lie behind the glued linen of today’s experiments, and it places this debate in the world history of fabric armour and the history of armour scholarship. It proposes that theories about the armour in vase paintings and sculptures should be based on archaeological evidence, types of armour documented in other cultures, or a close study of ancient textile technology, not on simply examining artwork and reading ancient texts.