Persepolis Recreated
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or the role of re-enactments or reconstruction archæology in understanding the past:
M.C. Bishop and J.C.N. Coulston, Roman Military Equipment (1993), at 40-41:
Re-enactment and display societies, prime amongst whom have been the Ermine Street Guard (Pl. 6), followed by more recent groups such as Junkelmann's ala II Flavia, or the legio XlIII Gemina, seek to convey to the general public some impression of what life in the Roman army may really have been like. To date, however, only a few societies, such as cohors V Galliorum, have preferred the third century over the first. Through diligent study of the source material, such groups reconstruct the weaponry and kit of the Roman soldier of their chosen arm and period with an efficiency that is laudable. However, this is not reconstruction archaeology in its strictest sense, for (ironically enough) much of the equipment is too well-made and, understandably, not field-tested to destruction under observation. Thus there are limitations in using the experience of such groups as 'evidence' for the study of military equipment. Nevertheless, the reader will find refer¬ence to the work of these bodies within the pages of this book and that should speak for itself.
One of the most famous instances of the use of reconstruction archaeology was the struggle of scholars to understand the workings of the segmental cuirass…. Most early attempts were firmly based on the images on Trajan's Column and so doomed to failure, given the representational limitations of that monument. When von Groller published the collection of material excavated from the Waffenmagazin at Carnuntum, it was to the Column that he turned in order to make sense of the many lorica pieces recovered. The main elements of the cuirass - girth hoops, shoulder strips and hinged fittings - were known, but the manner of their use not understood. Even as late as 1960, it was still possible for scholars to misplace pieces of the cuirass in attempting such reconstructions. The discovery of the hoard of military equipment and other objects at Corbridge in 1964….
…provided the final clues to form of this type of armour, and the involvement of Robinson, a practising armourer, led to the now familiar and fully-functional reconstructions. Understanding that the armour was articulated on leather straps, rather than the less-flexible leather under-jerkin previously preferred by scholars, was an important step in the right direction, but even Robinson's first attempts to understand the Corbridge armour were misdirected…
… because he initially allowed himself to be influenced by those earlier writers. Ultimately, the archaeological evidence was the only viable means of understanding the segmental cuirass…
…and this was also true of the Newstead finds. With the benefit of hindsight, it may well be that involvement, at the time of the Carnuntum find, of an expert on medieval European or oriental armour (Robinson's particular speciality) could have provided a solution much earlier, since both these traditions produced articulated armour.
Some reconstruction archaeology is, however, more heavily dependent on sources other than the archaeological evidence. The study of ancient artillery requires detailed understanding of often obscure technical treatises, which provide formulae for producing weapons of varying calibres. These texts, together with their often corrupt manuscript illustrations (see Fig. 6), provide some means of identifying the components of artillery pieces, and some notable successes have been achieved. Schramm was an early pioneer of artil¬lery reconstruction in Germany during and after the First World War. Modern studies have to combine the interpretation of archaeological, literary and representational sources, a good example being the identification of kambestria belonging to bolt-shooting engines from Lyon…, Orgova, and Gornea…, and, moreover, distinguishing between a smaller, portable manuballista and its larger companions of a type similar to those depicted on Trajan's Column....