An LS question

[lawagetas]

I notice that my web site related to the Greek bronze Age weaponry has been linked but it seems that the informations about the Dendra Armour and in general about the Achaean armours have not been carefully read.

Some high fidelity reconstructions have demonstrate how the Dendra panoply, despite the huge aspect, was enough flexible and comfortable to be used also during fights on foot and not, as sometimes argued, exclusively by warriors fighting from the chariots.
This experimental reconstruction led also to the conclusion that it allowed fighting with a sword and spear but not necessarily (because its large shoulder guard wings) with bow.
Fighting test conducted with a replica of this armour have in fact evidenced that the shoulder guards and their ancillary plates were designed to protect against circuitous attacks, that is, they were geared more towards defence against swords or daggers than spears.
The high neck guard on this armour is an especially interesting feature in light of the fact that the "favorite" killing stroke with the longer Type C and D swords used in that period
Indeed the only potentially lethal stroke, depicted in the iconographic record is precisely to this area of the body. Of course this not imply that armours were designed specifically to this end, but it certainly functioned to limit the range of attacks to which the long Achaean swords were suited in a battlefield context.
Evidence of this utilization is a metal ring, measuring 12 mm in diameter, attached to the middle of the right shoulder guard at its highest point probably meant to hold the strap for either a sword or a shield. Furthermore in the tomb near the armour pieces of wood with the remains of leather on reverse side had also been found, these elements could support the presence of a shield.
An interesting features of this armour is the difference in the width of the armhole: the larger right armhole ensured freedom of movement for the warrior, who surely preferred his right arm in battle. This is another evidence that the Dendra armour was actually designed for operative use and not only for parade or for chariot drivers .
The findings in Thebes, some pottery images and the linear B description attested as these kind of armours had a wide and uninterrupted use in Bronze Age Aegean world starting from the 15th century BC till the fall of the Achaean civilization. Furthermore since the first Dendra speciment, pratical improvements were applied to the Achaean armour towards simpler and smaller forms in order to increase their confortability, flexibility, and possibility to be accomodate in different variants depending from warriors' personal necessity.
On the "Chariots tablets" from Knossos the individual warrior's equipment given by the palace administration is indicated. The entity of this "palace supplied equipments" (two horses and two cuirasses) is much more evident considering the entire corpus of these tablets , indeed to each warriors only the elements necessary to complete his equipments were given. For instance only one cuirass or one horse if the warrior already had one in his personal equipment. This was probably valid also for what concern the armour components, we can thus suppose that in some cases only some o-pa-wo-ta (things hung or attached around), qe-ro2 (breast plate) or e-po-mi-jo (shoulder protections) were given in order to complete the two warrior defences.

From these elements is undubfull that the Achaean armour is connected to the hierarchically organized state with the palace at its center. The palatial authority, as the linear B tablets inform us, provided seleced persons with defences and equipments, presumably the members of a military elite, who paid back through their obedience and support to this centripetal system .
So this kind of armours were very common in the Mycenaean society (even if of course prerogative of the high or medium rank warriors) .
These warriors as well attested also from the Iliad used the chariot but they also fight on foot using the same kind of panoply.
There are no evidence and there is no valid reason to assert that the Dendra Armour was exclusively designed for chariot utilization. It simply was the typical armour of the “Elite” rank warriors and they used it both on chariot and for ground fighting .