An LS question

lawagetas makes a good point but if you allow me to make a creative observation ...

that dendra armour seems perfect to fight in the labyrinth that where the micenian palaces such as knossos where a few warriors could stop an entire army in a street creating a botleneck effect, or then to chanel the enemie troops into specific killing zones from where less armoured men who would otherwise be butchered in a hand to hand combat could wipe them out with javelins

i mean it was what the greeks did in termophilae so why can´t we assume it was already a tactic used before that they adopted later again just as the phalanx had disapeared and later on the swiss brought it back

this would make them unvaluable in defensive manouring when the palace was attacked

note: i do not pretend that this was it´s true use or it´s true usefullness but just litle thinking outside the box and the original idea i got it from studying ants where some groups of ants develop special ants with enourmous heads who serve to block out the entrances and thus protect the entire colony

Cotterels arguments for me are on par with the once (?) common "cavalry without stirrups was crap and just for skirmishing". An armor is an armor. Medieval knights used theirs on horseback and on foot. When it is heavy you should train to sustain. It was the guys "job" and pleasure to wear such armor and kill people in it and they would have made many efforts to be good in it. However I think that the weight and the fact that the armor enables a warrior to fight without a shield without massive loss of protection points to a original use on the chariot. If the warriors wouldn't have had chariots on hand the armor would possibly have been constructed lighter from the beginning. When they constructed the armor they had of course also other common fighting situations (on foot in a siege for example) and the usual dangers in mind.

on topic: lamellar or large scale (with a backing) armor was indeed a very common form of protection in many different periods of time and many different regions of the earth. It combines some advantages of rigid and soft armor.

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Originally Posted by moonburn

lawagetas makes a good point but if you allow me to make a creative observation ...

that dendra armour seems perfect to fight in the labyrinth that where the micenian palaces such as knossos where a few warriors could stop an entire army in a street creating a botleneck effect, or then to chanel the enemie troops into specific killing zones from where less armoured men who would otherwise be butchered in a hand to hand combat could wipe them out with javelins

i mean it was what the greeks did in termophilae so why can´t we assume it was already a tactic used before that they adopted later again just as the phalanx had disapeared and later on the swiss brought it back

this would make them unvaluable in defensive manouring when the palace was attacked

note: i do not pretend that this was it´s true use or it´s true usefullness but just litle thinking outside the box and the original idea i got it from studying ants where some groups of ants develop special ants with enourmous heads who serve to block out the entrances and thus protect the entire colony

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Yest we can't exclude that similar defensive weaponry (like for instance the huge body shields in shape of tower or eight could have been also used in such situations .
Indeed there are no evidences that these armours were specifically developped for these specific scenario.
In the Iliad the bronze massive armours sometime richelly decorated were prerogative of the Warlords or the medium rank palatial society (as also attested from the linear B tablets) and they were fighting on the battlefields both fron chariots and on ground.
The proto falange tactics with the warriors walking very closed one to the others were used by the low rank mass warriors which were equipped with a lighter defences .