# Any historical Suits of Armor made for women still in existance? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 24, 2002, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-historical-suits-of-armor-made-for-women-still-in-existance/115638 "2002-06-24T02:20:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2002, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-historical-suits-of-armor-made-for-women-still-in-existance/115638/1 "2002-06-24T02:20:25Z")
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 ---
**Author:** ![Incubus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c68b51/32.png) [@Incubus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Incubus)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2002, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-historical-suits-of-armor-made-for-women-still-in-existance/115638/2 "2002-06-24T08:01:40Z")
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 ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2002, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-historical-suits-of-armor-made-for-women-still-in-existance/115638/3 "2002-06-24T08:22:31Z")
What, no Red Sonja-style chainmail bikinis? What a gyp! ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2002, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-historical-suits-of-armor-made-for-women-still-in-existance/115638/4 "2002-06-24T10:41:28Z")
More research is needed but this could fit the bill: [http://www.archaeology.org/9701/abstracts/sarmatians.html](http://www.archaeology.org/9701/abstracts/sarmatians.html) > [@](#): > > The warrior women known to ancient Greek authors as Amazons were long thought to be creatures of myth. Now 50 ancient burial mounds near the town of Pokrovka, Russia, near the Kazakhstan border, have yielded skeletons of women buried with weapons, suggesting the Greek tales may have had some basis in fact. Nomads known as the Sauromatians buried their dead here beginning ca. 600 B.C.; according to Herodotus the Sauromatians were descendants of the Amazons and the Scythians, who lived north of the Sea of Azov. After ca. 400 B.C. the Pokrovka mounds were reused by the Sarmatians, another nomadic tribe possibly related to the Sauromatians. In general, females were buried with a wider variety and larger quantity of artifacts than males, and seven female graves contained iron swords or daggers, bronze arrowheads, and whetstones to sharpen the weapons. Some scholars have argued that weapons found in female burials served a purely ritual purpose, but the bones tell a different story. The bowed leg bones of one 13- or 14-year-old girl attest a life on horseback, and a bent arrowhead found in the body cavity of another woman suggested that she had been killed in battle. More info here: [http://www.csen.org/WomenWarriors/Statuses\_Women\_Warriors.html](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](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. ---
**Author:** ![G.Cornelius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@G.Cornelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/G.Cornelius)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2002, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-historical-suits-of-armor-made-for-women-still-in-existance/115638/5 "2002-06-24T11:48:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Incubus \* > \*\*…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)… > \*\* 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. ---
**Author:** ![Tranquilis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tranquilis/32/3639_2.png) [@Tranquilis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tranquilis)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2002, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-historical-suits-of-armor-made-for-women-still-in-existance/115638/6 "2002-06-24T13:59:54Z")
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.