![]() Only the wealthiest lords would have been able to equip their retainers with suits of maille. Since every miner, metalworker, smith, and apprentice represented another pair of hands who could not be put to work in the fields, a suit of fine maille was an enormous statement: look ye upon my wealth and despair. In these fragmented post-Roman polities, metal armor represented an enormous investment of time, effort, and material wealth in societies that revolved around the payment of food rent. However, the Roman style, characterized by alternating round and flat rings remained dominant surviving early post-Roman chainmail was likely made outside of Roman influence, but it still bore clear Roman stylistic influences. ![]() With the fragmentation of the Roman Empire, the enormously interconnected networks of trade that permitted Roman plate armor to be made were replaced by the much more localized production of chainmail for early feudal elites. Maille and Status The Repton Stone, discovered in Derbyshire, the 9th century CE, via the East Midlands Virtual Viking Museum As the Roman Empire grew to its most overstretched extent, Roman military governors began employing “barbarian” foederati more and more as primary troops to police border regions, and thus chainmail more or less wholly eclipsed plate armor in the Late Roman Empire. Unlike Roman plate armor, which required the large-scale division of labor in slave-manned Imperial workshops, chainmail could be made on a relatively small scale by an armorer and a handful of apprentices. It was used mainly as armor for auxiliary troops, non-Roman levies called foederati, as well as for cavalry. ![]() The “Roman” (or, really, Celtic) pattern of chainmail became widespread across Europe: it consisted of alternating rows of round wire rings and stamped flat rings to save on labor. Early chainmail was likely made from bronze, and later iron –- and when the Republican Romans encountered chainmail-wearing Celts in the 3rd century BCE, like every good empire, they shamelessly stole the idea. Medieval Armor: The Age of Chainmail Roman reenactor wearing mail, via Wikimedia CommonsĬhainmail emerged in Iron Age Central Europe in the first millennium BCE, the invention of cunning Celtic metalsmiths. ![]()
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