page_title: Lamellar armour
section_title: Use and history
hierarchical_section_title: Lamellar armour / Use and history
context_page_description: Lamellar armour is a type of body armour, made from small rectangular plates of iron or steel, leather, or bronze laced into horizontal rows. Lamellar armor was used over a wide range of time periods in Central Asia, Eastern Asia, Western Asia, and Eastern Europe. The earliest evidence for lamellar armor comes from sculpted artwork of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the Near East.
context_section_description: The earliest evidence points to the post-Iron Age Assyrians as the people responsible for the early development and spread of this form of armour, during the Neo-Assyrian Empire. In the numerous battle scenes depicted in the reliefs from Niniveh and Nimrud, commemorating the victories of Ashurnasirpal and Ashurbanipal from the 8th and 7th centuries BCE, hundreds of Assyrian soldiers, both infantry and cavalry are represented wearing cuirasses constructed of lamellae. These cuirasses reach from shoulder to waist, and in many instances they have short, close sleeves. If we accept the representations as correct and translate the method of construction literally, then we are confronted with a type of lamellar armour quite different from later specimens.
  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, other steppe peoples, as well as migratory groups such as the Longobards as it was simple to create and maintain. Lamellar helmets were also employed by Migration Era and Early Medieval peoples.
  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 BCE 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 BCE) 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.
  The extent to which either type was used is a debated topic. Lamellar was used by various cultures from this time up through the 16th century. Lamellar armour is generally associated with the armour worn by the samurai class of feudal Japan. Lamellar armour is also associated with Mongolia, Eastern Russia, the tribes of Siberia and the Sarmatians. Evidence of lamellar armour has also been found in various European countries.
caption: Lamellar armour worn by Koryak people
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