Lamellar armor

Lamellar armour is a type of early body armour, made from small rectangular plates (scales or lamellae) of iron, leather (rawhide), or bronze laced into horizontal rows. Lamellar armor was used over a wide range of time periods in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and across Asia.

Lamellar armour is one of three early body armour types, the other two being scale armour and laminar armour.

Lamellar armour consists of small platelets known as "lamellae", which are punched and laced together, typically in horizontal rows.

Lamellae can be made of metal, leather cuir bouilli, horn, stone, bone or more exotic substances. Metal lamellae may be lacquered to resist corrosion or for decoration. Unlike scale armour, which it resembles, lamellar armour is not attached to a cloth or leather backing (although it is typically worn over a padded undergarment).

In the orient, lamellar armor eventually overtook scale armour in popularity as lamellar restricted the user's movements much less than scale armour.

Lamellar armour was often worn as augmentation to existing armour, such as over a mail hauberk. The lamellar cuirass was especially popular with the Rus, as well as Mongols, Turks, Avars, and other steppe peoples, as it was simple to create and maintain.

Lamellar is pictured in many historical sources on Byzantine warriors, especially heavy cavalry. It is thought that it was worn to create a more deflective surface to the rider's armour, thus allowing blades to skim over, rather than strike and pierce. Recent studies by Timothy Dawson of the University of New England, Australia, suggest that Byzantine lamellar armour was significantly superior to mail armour.

Lamellar armour has been found in Egypt in a 17th-century BC context.Sumerian and Ancient Egyptian bas-reliefs depicting soldiers have been argued as portraying the earliest examples of lamellar armour, particularly on chariot drivers, but it is not until the time of the Assyrians (circa 900–600 BC) that possible examples of lamellar appear in the archaeological record. Among finds of Assyrian armour (often individual or unconnected scales), there are examples that can clearly be classified as scale armour as well as others that appear to be lamellar, and there exist a large number of finds whose function has proven difficult to determine.

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