Bret Devereaux

...(Plb. 6.23.2). The Kasr-al-Harit shield is normally the guideline for that sort of thing. But I suspect that means, if you make a Hellenistic thureos as thick as the scutum in the center, you don't actually save so much weight by making it shorter and narrower...

...because those parts of the scutum are the thinnest already and thus don't have the bulk of the mass. So while it ought to be lighter, I'd guess it's not massively so - and taking 20% of the mass off of the scutum still leaves you with a 10-12lb shield.

Yes, I'd guess approximately 10lbs might be about right. Maybe a little less, maybe a little more, varying upon thickness, method of construction, material, and actual size/shape.

In an ideal world, we'd have for Greek and Roman shields what we have for Gallic ones (also Iberian caetra) - a few sets of bosses where the rivets still connect to the handles, giving a fixed, clean way to measure thickness at the core.

At some point some useful material like that has to come from the Egadi work.

I was talking with William Murray at SCS/AIA this year, and they're breaking out some metal-detector fancy tech to try to find more stuff like that in up-coming seasons. They found a (badly preserved) sword already - along with piles of helmets.

I am both excited and a bit terrified by what they find - they could confirm or completely blow up most of my research with one lucky bronze bit of armor!

What are you working on that's so closely tied to armor?