Leather armor

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Chukchi leather armor , Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Saint Petersburg, Russia

A Leather Armor is a protective weapon that was used in different ages and countries.

description

Leather is probably one of the oldest materials used to make armor . The archaeological research can not make precise statements about the first uses because no artefacts are preserved.

Many types of this leather armor can be traced back to the present day through their continued use in different countries. There was not only armor for humans, but also armor that was designed to protect animals (example: horse armor ). Usually various pieces of armor such as greaves, breastplates , gloves , bracers, helmets , and boots , as well as complete armor for animals were made of leather. The term “ cuirass ” is derived from a protection for the hull made of boiled leather (French: cuir ), which was perhaps the closest known approach to pure leather armor in Europe. Leather armor was often used for lower troops because it was much cheaper and easier to manufacture than metal armor.

Pure leather armor can mainly be found outside of Europe. They were used, for example, by the Chukchi ( Chukchi armor ) in Siberia . The Scythians also used leather mail shirts, which were cut wide and loose, as protection against arrow fire. This type of armor was also in Korea ( Korean Leather Armor ), China ( Lolo Armor ), Tibet ( Tibetan Ross tanks ), England ( leather coat (Armor) , see also Koller (Uniform) ), Japan ( Kawagasa ), the Viceroyalty of New Spain ( Dragones de Cuera ) and other countries in use.

material

An argument against an exclusive armor with leather is that leather offers significantly less protection than metal. A chain mail, for example, is much more durable, more resistant and, on top of that, easier to adapt to changed body dimensions. In addition, leather softens when exposed to water and deforms when it dries.

The armor was often reinforced with other natural materials such as bones, teeth and fish scales, but also with plates, scales, chains or lamellas made of metal. In order to strengthen the leather itself, the leather was hardened by boiling. The leather was also impregnated with wax or oil , which extended the life of the armor and made it easier to care for. Often the cooked pieces of leather were drawn onto molds in order to get a structure (body shape). After cooling, the leather that had hardened from the boil retained this shape, but this treatment also made the leather very stiff and therefore just as uncomfortable to wear as metal armor.

literature

  • Evgeniĭ Vasilʹevich Chernenko, The Scythians' Protective Weapons , Prehistoric Bronze Finds , Verlag Franz Steiner Verlag, 2006, ISBN 978-3-515-08659-2
  • Aurel Bongers, Ferne Völker, early times: Africa, Oceania, America , Volume 1 of Ferne Völker, early times: Works of art from the Linden-Museum Stuttgart, State Museum for Ethnology, Verlag A. Bongers, 1982, ISBN 978-3-7647 -0341-7
  • Charles John ffoulkes : The Armourer and His Craft , Methuen & Co, 1912 [1]
  • Karl F. Friday, Samurai, warfare and the state in early medieval Japan , Routledge, 2004, ISBN 978-0-415-32962-0
  • Alexia Bloch, Laurel Kendall, The museum at the end of the world: encounters in the Russian Far East , University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004, page 22, ISBN 978-0-8122-1878-7
  • Jonathan Turk, In the wake of the Jomon: stone age mariners and a voyage across the Pacific , McGraw-Hill Professional, 2005, page 210, ISBN 978-0-07-144902-1
  • Intern. Society for Ethnography, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden te Leiden, International archives of ethnography, Volume 9, PWM Trap Publishing House, 1896
  • David Crockett Graham, Hartmut Walravens, Alexander Wetmore, David Crockett Graham (1884-1961) as zoological collector and anthropologist in China , Verlag Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006, page 121, ISBN 978-3-447-05042-5
  • William Weir, 50 Weapons That Changed Warfare , Career Press, 2005, page 28, ISBN 978-1-56414-756-1
  • Sun Joo Kim, Marginality and subversion in Korea: the Hong Kyŏngnae rebellion of 1812 , University of Washington Press, 2007, p. 130, ISBN 978-0-295-98684-5

Web links

Commons : Leather Armor  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ George Cameron Stone, Donald J. LaRocca, A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration and Use of Arms and Armor: in All Countries and in All Times, Courier Dover Publications, 1999, pp. 51, 52, 53, 54, 59, 60, 63, 98, 152, 172, 290, 312, 619, 655, 680, ISBN 978-0-486-40726-5