Roman soldiers had a clever solution for repairing their broken armor, study finds

For over 600 years, the chain mail worn by Roman soldiers was essential equipment throughout the empire, regardless of where a soldier was stationed. But the further the frontier extended from the sources of supply, the more valuable the metal became. In extreme circumstances, soldiers were required to save and begin recycling their chain mail.

The German border, which extended from the Danube to the mouth of the Rhine, was one of these extremities. There, limited local capacity to supply metal to Roman soldiers created a need to recycle and reuse mail armor, which likely supported a cottage industry. This is one of the conclusions of Czech and German researchers whose results were published in Antiquity on December 10.

The argument’s central piece of evidence is a treasure of heavily corroded 30-pound chain mail that was found in a shallow pit in 2012 outside Bonna, a Roman legionary fortress in what is today today Bonn, Germany. The hoard, which is housed at the LVR Museum des Landes in Bonn, has been considered one of the largest and most important discoveries of mail armor from the Roman world.

After performing X-rays and CT scans, the researchers wrote that “based on the observed differences in the size of the rings, we conclude that the hoard comprises four different chain mails.” The differences in the diameters of the solid rings are the most important indicator. Two suits of chain mail were almost complete and only sections of the other two remained.

It has been dated to between the 2nd century and 3rd century CE, based on a short-sleeved, “modern t-shirt-like” design that replaced the sleeveless shirt with two shoulder pads. Another factor was the size of the rings: very small rings were no longer used after the 2nd century CE.

The conclusion is that these soldiers on the northern Roman frontier placed armor that was no longer usable in piles that would be used to patch and repair other chain mail clothing. This process relied on labor from local workshops, the researchers wrote, with the treasure discovered in a settlement near a Roman military installation known as Vicus.

Such ingenuity was not always the case. At sites occupied at the time by Roman soldiers in the Lower Rhine, excavations have discovered dumps containing large quantities of the metal, suggesting an abundant supply. Upon arrival in a region, the demand for the metal was high, as it was also needed to make building materials, such as nails. Over time, this demand has gradually declined.

As for how the scrap metal ended up being buried in a Vicusresearchers believe the settlement was abandoned in the mid-3rd century and mail was considered too heavy to transport.