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[Roma_Victrix]

There's a good reason why weapons are being found in graves, and armor less so. One wants to honor a dead person as a warrior, yes? Burying the warrior with his weapons suffices, as a warrior is primarily marked by bearing arms (or arming bears), not by wearing armor. Anything other than weapons screams overkill.

The smart thing to do would be to continue to use the armor, instead of burying the deceased with it, unless you're rich enough to part with it.

Also, are there many graves where heavy body armor was found, but a helmet was not? If there are lots of burials where mail or other types of expensive body armor was found, but a helmet was not, I am in the wrong. If there aren't many (or any) - as I currently suspect, your argument doesn't say anything other than that metal armor in general isnt commonly found in burials, but helmets sometimes do. In fact, their prevalence reinforces my claim that a helmet would be the first piece of metal armor that a warrior would try to acquire.

I wasn't saying there's anything wrong about the leather/linen armor + bear headed combo. I accept it as a possibility.The economic difference between a linen/leather armor and a helmet isn't as drastic as the difference between scale/mail/cuirass and a helmet, it's not worth arguing.
Furthermore, linen can be quilted into armor at home by just about anyone, while shaping metal takes skill, tools and a forge. So, there's reasonable chance we'd see a warrior wearing a form of linothorax, but not wearing a helmet. I've little idea of how leather is processed into armor, so I will restrain myself from commenting on that.

Of course linen and leather are perishable items... that's where my troubles begin. The gambeson was the most common form of body armor in the Middle Ages, and there's like 3-4 surving examples of it now. Luckily, there are thousands of depictions and written accounts of it. Less so the further we go back in time, but the EB team did a good job.

Just chiming in to say that I have to agree with Rad here. Aside from the shield, the helmet was one of the most essential tools of defense in ancient battles. It's absence in many burials is not sufficient enough evidence to say that they were not worn by common soldiers and warriors. Passages by Roman historians make it clear that the Celts wore helmets, if not the archaeological finds of actual Celtic helmets. Common sense also dictates that helmets were cheaper to produce than a heavy suit of mail or a muscled cuirass, meaning that helmets would at the very least be worn by someone who bothered to don a heavy piece of armor over their torso as well.

[gustave]

I fail to see why you're complaining about this unit, 5/6 heads have a metal helmet. If your only issue with it is that sometimes an armored torso will be matched with the unarmored head, well that's how med2's variation system works, we could prevent that by attaching heads to specific torsos but that would reduce the amount of possible combinations a lot so we're not gonna do that.

[Rad]

I am not complaining about a certain unit, I am arguing against a recent trend affecting a number of units. It's not 5/6. It depends on the specific unit, but some of the newer made unit types have heavy armor and roughly half unarmored heads, so the frequency of an illogical combination appearing is rather high.

You're telling me that you could attach specific heads to specific torsos, making sure that heavily armored soldiers have helmets?

Reduce the amount of possible combinations... in order to improve realism and historical accuracy... in a mod that aspires to be as real and as historically accurate as possible?

How is that a bad thing?

[charlieh]

Just wanted to pitch in and say those new

Galathraikioi look excellent. I really like the different face and hair combinations for this unit. Thanks everyone involved in the production of the units in general.

[Rad]

Damn, they do!
A few more expected units arrive, and I'll be having a nice Balkans campaign.

[QuintusSertorius]

Balkans are undergoing a recruitment revamp at the moment, no more generic rosters across multiple provinces. Illyria, Thrace and Mikra Skythia are already re-done, Getia is next.

[Commios]

As the team member responsible for the majority of the Celtic unit concepts, I would like to offer my thoughts, in the hope of resolving the concerns which Rad has raised (and thank you by the way for stimulating discussion on this topic). From a strictly utilitarian point of view, your argument makes a lot of sense. As you have mentioned, a chainmail shirt, or even a leather cuirass, requires a greater investment of labour and material than most helmets, excluding of course the more elaborate examples like the Amfreville an Agris helmets. I fear however that, as QuintusSertorius has mentioned, that there is a risk of projecting our present-day views of armour onto the past. As you know, helmets re-emerged in modern armies in response to the horrors of the First World War, where artillery shrapnel accounted for the greatest number of casualties. As such, we have come to view the helmet as the most basic form of armour to be equipped. Many aspects of the Iron Age, however, do not make sense by modern standards. Part of the problem in answering these questions rests with the archaeological record. The archaeological record is not a window to look through to view the past. Instead, it is a prism which gives a view of sorts, but a view distorted by taphonomic processes, geological conditions and, above all, cultural choices of the people who constructed it. Large, multi-generational cemeteries occur in only a few parts of La Tène Europe (Champagne-Ardenne, the Paris Basin, the western Swiss Plateau, Bohemia, the Middle Rhine, Baden-Württemberg, northern Italy). Elsewhere, however, the burial record is much patchier. In those areas with large, multi-generational cemeteries, it is possible to observe a development over time by where earlier graves which contain weapons typically contain only spears. Later graves, by contrast, tend to contain a trio of weapons: spear, sword and shield. Throughout all of these groups, however, helmets and body armour represent a minority. Only in the northern Italian graves do helmets occur in sizeable quantities, and even then it is less than 10% of graves. This is not to say that these communities did not use helmets or body armour, as the numismatic and iconographic evidence clearly indicates they did (consider for example the reliefs from Pergamon showing Galatian weapons and armour, Galatia itself has an almost non-existent burial record). Likewise, among communities who committed only a small number of their deceased to the ground, we also find helmets and body armour although usually from non-grave contexts. Again, however, helmets and body armour represent a minority of finds. For example, in northern France, only three helmets and a single example of chain mail have been discovered. By contrast, at the sanctuary of Gournay-sur-Aronde alone, 80-90 swords and 50-60 spears were recovered. Turning to Britain, which has a much more restricted mortuary record compared to the continent, around 60-70 burials with weapons have thus far been recovered. Of these, only one (North Bersted, Sussex) contained a helmet. Three of these burials contained chainmail, but no grave contained both chainmail and a helmet. Despite this, the number of helmets from Iron Age Britain (n=4), outnumbers the number of recorded instances of chainmail. However, three of these helmets came from non-mortuary contexts. Chainmail finds in temperate Europe. Bochnak and Harisim 2012. Occasionally burials are discovered which contain a helmeted warrior but no body armour (e.g. grave 120 from Monte Bibele, Italy) or the “classic” set of weapons, chainmail and helmet (e.g. Ciumesti, Romania). However, as noted, there are also burials in which only body armour, specifically chainmail, has been recovered. For example, in Britain there are the examples from Wetwang Slack, Yorkshire and St. Albans, Hertfordshire. Neither of these burials contained helmets. Outside of the La Tène zone is the hoard from Hjortspring, Denmark, which contained a vast number of weapons, including at least five chainmail shirts. Despite this, however, no helmets were recovered from the site. That the site was waterlogged also argues against organic armour, such as leather, having originally been deposited. There are also several depictions of warriors wearing body armour, but not helmets, for example from 5th century BC Glauberg and 1st century BC Saint-Maur. The St. Albans chain mail. Bronze figure from Glauberg. Saint-Maur figure. 1st century BC. Archaeologically then, the data are too slight to permit a firm conclusion. In light of the difficulties associated with the archaeological record, we have taken the view that body armour and helmets were more prevalent than the mortuary record suggests. This is something which finds basis in the aforementioned numismatic and iconographic data, for example the Roman triumphal arch at Orange. I mentioned at the start of this explanation that the Iron Age was socially a very different place to our own. One area this is very true, and relates to this topic, is the role of the head in La Tène Europe. Although standardised burials have an uneven distribution across La Tène Europe, there is one mortuary practice which is found across almost all of this area: disarticulated bones. These are isolated bones often found intermixed with other material. They occur from Scotland to Romania and, as far as studies have shown, the most common anatomical element represented are skulls. These bones are most common between the 5th-2nd centuries BC, the period where helmets are at their rarest (excluding northern Italy). In the 1st century BC the amount of armour being worn by Gallic warriors increases, including the adoption of robust iron helmets, such as the Port and Agen types. It may be, therefore, that there existed a social preference to be bareheaded in battle, although I offer this merely as an afterthought. Arc d'Orange triumphal art, depicting Gallic arms and armour. EDIT: Damn formatting.

[Rad]

Thank you for taking the time to respond in such detail. I am not satisfied with the answer provided, but it does give a lot to cover. Bear with me in the coming time, while I try to gather more data and give a decent reply.
First of all, I highly disagree that the whole "helmet is most important" is a post world war one way of thinking that stuck to this day. It's a way of thinking since the beginning of the use of armor. In the middle ages, the helmet would be the very first, and often the only mandatory piece of metal armor a militia was supposed to own. Will be continued...

[Roma_Victrix]

@Commios: fantastic post and historically-grounded explanation of why the units in EB II look the way they do! A couple things, though, to add on to what Rad has already mentioned: this University of North Carolina website says that the 2nd-1st century BC Saint-Maur Celtic bronze statuette of a bare-headed soldier you show above depicts a common Gaulish foot soldier wearing a tunic, not exactly a heavy suit of chain mail armor like the one worn by the Romanized Vacheres warrior of the 1st century BC. Curiously enough he also does not wear a helmet, but Greeks and Romans often did not depict Gauls wearing them at all (e.g. Dying Celt). Then again, the majority of Greco-Roman depictions of Celtic warriors show them as being heroically naked, which is tempered by Hellenistic and Roman authors such as Diodorus Siculus who wrote that some of them were nude and others were clothed and armored in battle. Further complicating matters is the idea presented by J.N.G. and W.F. Ritchie in their "The Army, Weapons, and Fighting" in Miranda Green's Celtic World (1995, Routledge, p. 51), which states the following:

The use of mail clearly ran counter to traditions of disregard for body armour and the pride in nakedness noted by Diodorus Siculus: 'Some of them have iron breast plates wrought in chain, while others are satisfied with the arms nature has given them and fight naked' (History, V.30.3). The sculpture from Entremont has been interpreted as showing either mail shirts with shoulder and pectoral decoration or leather body armour with bronze rosettes and figural decoration (Benoit 1955). A delightful small bronze figure from Gutenberg (Liechtenstein) wears what is more certainly a leather cuirasse with well-marked shoulder pieces and a fringed hem. Such model figures as that from Saint-Maur-en-Chaussee (Oise) and Gutenberg were clearly figures of warrior gods, but there is no reason to think that the representation of the tunics is not accurate.

So then, despite saying that the tunics were accurately depicted, these are quite possibly depictions of the gods; not exactly reliable depictions of how your average Celtic warrior would enter battle. The majority of them could very well have worn helmets; we just don't know. As you've highlighted, the archaeological record is way too spotty and sparse to form solid conclusions. I'd say the best indicators we have for making judgments about the La Tene period are the far more well-known Roman, late Antique and even early medieval traditions of wearing helmets into battle. It's precisely as Rad suggests, that it was just common sense to wear a helmet, the head being the most vital part of the body that could be protected relatively cheaply as opposed to the torso and limbs. If you could afford armor for the torso and limbs, this meant you were significantly more wealthy than a soldier who could only afford a helmet. This was as true in ancient Celtic society as just about anywhere else.

[Commios]

Thanks for the kind words Roma_Victrix. Apologies for the slow reply, I'm not ignoring your comments and will respond in the next couple of days.

[Rad]

I too, am quite slow in posting a reply. I'll get around to it, eventually. Life... gets in the way -.-

[Commios]

I too, am quite slow in posting a reply. I'll get around to it, eventually. Life... gets in the way -.-

Have you spent the last two days looking up information on the Mountsorrel Iron Age bucket too?

[Rad]

I was researching the types of material used to weatherproof wood in the Late Middle Ages. Otherwise, waiting for some info.

[tomySVK]

Amazing work on new barbarian units

I´m looking again on the new hoplitai and Baktrion Agema and I wish the Camillan Triarii also gets new textures.

[Kull]

I am not complaining about a certain unit, I am arguing against a recent trend affecting a number of units. It's not 5/6. It depends on the specific unit, but some of the newer made unit types have heavy armor and roughly half unarmored heads, so the frequency of an illogical combination appearing is rather high.

You're telling me that you could attach specific heads to specific torsos, making sure that heavily armored soldiers have helmets?

Reduce the amount of possible combinations... in order to improve realism and historical accuracy... in a mod that aspires to be as real and as historically accurate as possible?

How is that a bad thing?

If you have 6 heads and 6 bodies, using the engine to mix and match means you'll get up to 36 different "individual types" (swap shields and it's even more). If we force the match, you'll have 6. As a mod team, we made a decision long ago to maximize the variation within units, because while you'll get some odd looking combinations from time to time, the overall effect is to demonstrate that individuals on the ancient battlefield all looked different, and so we use the mechanism which best contributes to that variety. Your solution imposes a degree of robotic similarity that is historically inaccurate - far worse than having a few guys here and there with an odd looking armor/head combo.

[Commios]

@Roma_Victrix Once again, sorry for taking so long to respond. The University of North Carolina might be correct, the Saint-Maur may indeed have been wearing a tunic, rather than chainmail. To my knowledge chainmail has yet to be recovered from a pre-Roman context in that part of France, although that does not rule out its use in this region. In terms of heroic nudity, it is difficult to determine how widespread it was, and how many accounts are, as you correctly note, Graeco-Roman stereotypes. Helmeted individuals regularly appear on 2^nd-1^st century BC and 1^st century AD coinage in regions where the archaeological record is lacking in examples of armour, for example:
Coin of Verica, Catuvellauni king (Britain):

Coin of Cunebelinos, king of the Catuvellauni (Britain)

Arverni coinage, 1^st century BC (France).

And whilst Graeco-Roman depictions of Celtic peoples often show them as nude, Republican Roman coinage also frequently depicts them adorned with horned helmets, of the type we find in the Balkans and elsewhere (Zawadzka 2011: “Gallic Horned Helmets on Republican Coinage”). With the above in mind, the decision was taken to depict Celtic and British units with more helmets than the archaeological record has produced. I would strongly disagree with your argument that images of deities are poor indicators of Iron Age peoples looked like. Almost every human society who has produced images of their gods has done so in their own image. Thus, Mesopotamian deities are dressed in the same way as Assyrian and Babylonian kings. Depictions of Ra and Osiris use the same clothing and adornment as contemporary pharaohs and court officials. Zeus is adorned like a Greek citizen and Ares with the weaponry of contemporary Classical and Hellenistic period soldiers. The only exception is Jesus, for who our modern depiction is based on Graeco-Roman gods rather than what a 1^st century AD Jewish man looked like (for the ease of converting people to the new religion during Late Antiquity). Gallic and British depictions of human forms show them adorned with the same objects and clothing that we occasionally find in the archaeological record. For an excellent example of this, look up the “leaf crowns” depicted on the statues from Glauberg, Holzgerlingen and on bucket from Aylesford. One such “crown” was also recovered from the burial at Glauberg itself, whilst the same motif regularly appears on helmets, especially those of northern Italy. I think we also need to be careful about applying common sense to the past. The Iron Age north of the Alps was in many ways similar to our own, but in others it was very foreign. Gold and silver coinage was being produced temperate Europe as early as the 3^rd century BC, but a monetary system of exchange did not exist until the 1^st century BC, when high tin content small coins were minted. It seems that pior to this, coinage was employed to create social ties, not structure an economy. Another example are the various attitudes to death which existed. Although we have many areas which buried their dead like we do (supine, extended positions in family clusters), there are large regions of Europe where we cannot find the dead. In some areas where we can detect the dead, they are very few and show signs of horrific treatment (the bog bodies for example). Also, for many of the graves which contain weapons, the occupants seem to belong to specific age classes. For example, in Champagne-Ardenne in the 2^nd-1^st centuries BC, the men buried with weapons tend to be between 18-30, whereas the oldest and richest occupants of graves contained no weapons, but instead large amounts of feasting equipment. Thus, we cannot assume a one to one relationship between wealth and ownership of weapons. It might also be worth mentioning that in the 16^th and 18^th centuries in Europe, it was not uncommon for groups like Dragoons to wear armoured doublets and cuirasses, yet also fabric hats.

[QuintusSertorius]

One other point that's worth raising about mail (and other metal armour) is that it has heirloom value. By which I mean it can be passed down from father to son/uncle to nephew/whomever for many generations as long as it's maintained properly. That's inevitably how the Romans maintained so many suits of it for hundreds of thousands of men, that retiring veterans and dead men would pass theirs on to new recruits. So unless that dead person is very significant and their armour particularly signature/customised, it may not appear in their grave because it's been given away.

With organic armour that's less of a consideration, even if it isn't ruined by wear and battle damage, I doubt it's going to last more than a couple of generations at most.

[Rad]

@Quitus
"One other point that's worth raising about mail (and other metal armour) is that it has heirloom value. By which I mean it can be passed down from father to son/uncle to nephew/whomever for many generations as long as it's maintained properly. "

That applies to helmets much more than mail. The majority of the helmets from "our" time period are made of bronze, yes? Mail is made of iron, which can and will rust. Bronze on the other hand, to my knowledge, can be melted down and reused much more readily, for various objects, making it more "survivable"... in the form of a spoon, if needs be.

[Roma_Victrix]

@Commios: +1 rep for a great reply. I'm not sure if dragoons from 16th to 18th-century Europe make fitting comparisons considering how this was the height of the Gunpowder Age. I was already well aware that helmets became largely irrelevant by the 18th century and were really only reintroduced into warfare in WWI due to concerns about shrapnel injuries. You do make good points about the gods (while Late Antique Jesus was often depicted as a Roman pontifex, dressed in either the toga praetexta or toga laena).

In either case, I might have to rethink how the Romans armed themselves, at least in regards to the late Roman Empire. In the 5th century AD, Vegetius wrote about the new attitude some Roman soldiers had in regards to both body armor and helmets (Arther Ferrill, The Fall of the Roman Empire: the Military Explanation [London: Thames and Hudson, 1986], pp 128-129):

...but when, because of negligence and laziness, parade ground drills were abandoned, the customary armor began to seem heavy since the soldiers rarely ever wore it. Therefore, they first asked the emperor to set aside the breastplates and mail and then the helmets. So our soldiers fought the Goths without any protection for chest and head and were often beaten by their archers. Although there were many disasters, which led to the loss of great cities, no one tried to restore breastplates and helmets to the infantry. Thus it happened that troops in battle, exposed to wounds because they have no armor, think about running and not about fighting.

Notice, though, how he says that soldiers only removed their helmets after they had abandoned their body armor covering the torso.

[Rad]

Helmets as mandatory armor - A WW1 way of thinking?
Nope. Way earlier.

I will start with the Statute of the medieval city of Dubrovnik - Now known as King's Landing. First written in 1272, with later editions. I believe I used a late 14th century edition, but I will check and double check that later.

Latin text (the official language of the Republic at the time):

De armis portandis in quolibet navigio

Item statuimus et ordinamus, quod quelibet condura, barcusius et quelibet (sic) aliud lignum, quod vel que fuerit de portata de viginti miliariis, et inde supra, de ceteris in quolibet viagio quod fecerit extra Ragusium ad aliquas partes, debeat habere patronus dicte condure, barcusii seu ligni coraças V-e fornitas balistra seu arcus IIII fornitis (sic) sagittis seu quadellis

Et quilibet marinarius scutum, spatam et arma de testa, sub pena unius yperperi pro qualibet coraça,et de grossis VI pro qualibet balista, et pro quolibet dictorum armorum. Et quod super predictis debeant eligi duo boni et legales homines, qui per sacramentum teneantur ire et scruptare, antequam dicta ligna seccedant de porto Ragusii, si dicta arma sunt in dictis lignis. Et similiter in earum reversione. Et quod nulla condura, barcusius seu aliud lignum possit secedere de portu Ragusii nisi primo fuerit cercatus per dictos officiales, sub pena yperperis decem, pro quolibet patrono dictorum lignorum qui contrafecerit et qualibet vice. Et quilibet dictorum duorum officialium habere debeat de avere Comuni omni mense hanc(sic) ad festum S. Michaelis grossum et medietatem banni.

English translation by your truly - I did my best to make it understandable in English

Of Arms which must be carried aboard every ship

Likewise, we determine and order that the patron of each kondura (type of ship), barcusium (type of ship) or any other ship which weighs or will weigh 20 miliariis (unit of weight) or more, from now on, on each voyage undetaken outside of Dubrovnik, will have to have five full suits of armor (edit: it may be just five coats of plates instead of five full armors, the word used "coraças" sounds awfully like corazzina - a form of coat of plates), four bows or crossbows supplied with arrows and bolts,

and that every sailor will have to have shield, sword and helmet, under penalty of one perpera (currency) for every missing armor and the penalty of six grossis for every missing crossbow and all the other mentioned arms. Two well informed (know their swords and stuff) and honest (unbribable) men must be elected to, under oath, go and inspect every ship for the required arms, before the ships sail out of Dubrovnik. The same will be repeated on the ship's return. No kondura , barcusium or any other ship may sail out of the port of Dubrovnik before the said officials inspect it, under the penalty of 10 perpera for the patron of the ship, for each breach. Both of the officials must be given a grossis every month from now until the feast of S. Michaelis out of the communal money (budget, treasury) and half the fine.

Commentary:
Piracy, both land and naval, was an issue back in the day. This article was meant to save lives, goods, money and prestige. Lives especially, since the city and the Republic in general had a small population.

You will notice that I split the article in two. I did that to point out the following:

The ship has weapons and armor kept on it, provided by the patron/owner - five suits of armor (apparently, it's not completely crazy to wear heavy armor while at sea), four bows/crossbows with the following ammo. Naturally, the ship isn't going to use those itself to fend of pirates, the crew will.

Every sailor has personal arms - shield, sword, helmet - which he is required to own. Without it, he cannot sail. Given that the sailors belonged to the working class of the day, the ruling body of the city did not demand that they buy fully panoply, and only required the bare minimum. The only metal piece of armor a sailor had to own was a helmet.


LIBER STATUTORUM
CIVITATIS RAGUSII
LIBER OCTAVUS - LXXVIII - De armis portandis in quolibet navigio

Edit: There is an article stating the arms that must be kept on smaller ships. It's quite similar, just a bit less financially taxing on the patron. If anyone is interested, I will translate and post it. If no one is interested, I might just do it anyways.