Well, the question is as the title says. Did any suits of armor made for women, like Joan of Arc, survive to the modern day? Granted, there weren’t many female knights, but considering the numbers of people in the middle ages, there had to have been at LEAST a couple of others.
Well, thaks for your time,
Ranchoth
I’m kind of imagining that Joan of Arc probably had a suit of armor that didn’t look much different from that of any other kind in that era, sans the custom measurements for arm lengths and so forth.
I believe I have read that Celtic warriors had women (leading them?) in battle; of course this is several millenia ago and armor back then was made of materials that don’t survive well over the ages (leather, hides, maybe copper that would survive)
I wonder if they had breastplates that were adjusted for the womans, er anatomy like fantasy illustrations would like us to think. Hmmm
What, no Red Sonja-style chainmail bikinis? What a gyp!
More research is needed but this could fit the bill:
http://www.archaeology.org/9701/abstracts/sarmatians.html
More info here:
http://www.csen.org/WomenWarriors/Statuses_Women_Warriors.html
And then I found, maybe, the earliest example of female armor:
http://www.csen.org/WomenWarriors/ww.issyk.pr.html
Arguably, a more ceremonial armor than the one to be used in battle, but I think the battle one’s were close.
And do not forget the armed Greek goddess Athena. Although mythological, I think that was the way female armor looked.
And I could not find it now, but I think I read some recent reports about female gladiators in ancient Rome. But I figure their armor did not survive either.
The Celts were an iron age people and they certainly had iron weapons and armour. They may well have been the inventors of chain mail. The Romans admired the Celtic metalworking skills and copied them - e.g. chain mail, the gladius, helmets. In this area of technology the Celts were way ahead of the Romans. Roman helmets were exculsively bronze until they encountered the Celts.
Anyway, Bronze (“copper”) survives well in the archaelogical record and there are countless examples of bronze helmets, fittings etc found in europe. In fact, it is iron that does not survive well (it rusts) and consequently, although the romans must have produced hundreds of thousands of iron helmets, they are rarely found.
Romans used a lot of chainmail as would a Celtic warrior if he could afford it (not many could). There have been a few finds of Roman chainmail, but I have never seen an example of Celtic chain mail.
As far as I know, leather armour is pretty much a hollywood myth, the kind of leather that could be produced in ancient times would not make effective armour.
Um, actually, leather armor has been found, as have scraps of celtic chain maile. Leather was boiled in linseed oil, producing a hard, almost wooden, armor. Unfortunately, only a few scraps have been found, so how widely used it was is open to much debate.