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Roman Military Equipment

From Start to Finish

Why use drawings and not photos in B&C2?

Why use drawings and not photos in B&C2?

February 11, 2023 MCB

There are hundreds of artefacts illustrated in edition 2 of Roman Military Equipment, and we have often been asked why use drawings and not photos in B&C2? This question has some history to it.

Shire: drawing of a Tekija apron terminal

Our first book on the subject, published by Shire Publications, had to be produced using the minimum resources available: there was no allowance for photographs. We simply could not afford to illustrate everything we wanted with photographs. Thus, using specially prepared ink-on-film line illustrations was an obvious solution, given that one of us was trained as an archaeological illustrator.

The same consideration came into play (albeit on a much larger scale) when we moved on to produce the Batsford volume, even though we had a small allowance for illustrations for that. We decided to put that towards a colour plate section in the book and expand the line drawings to serve most of our needs. The advantages of line drawings are that 1) it is possible to present artefacts with a consistent lighting source (top left, as in most archaeological artefact illustrations); 2) more than one photographic or line source image can be consulted to produce a composite result; 3) the drawings can have a consistent style and range of scales across the volume. As with the Shire, these were all ink-on-film drawings for B&C1.

B&C2: drawing of a Tekija ‘apron’ terminal

For the second, Oxbow, edition of the larger book (B&C2), all of the original ink-on-film drawings were scanned at high resolution before being revised and enhanced. Some had items replaced or re-arranged, others were completely new additions reflecting the broader scope of the text, but all were also given a tonal refresh to help the objects ‘pop’ from the page. Labelling styles were also changed to make them less obtrusive.

The phenomenon of books by other writers appearing with unnecessarily ‘redrawn’ versions of our illustrations subsequently inspired us to make the B&C2 drawings freely available with a Creative Commons BY-SA-NC licence. If contacted, we also usually give permission for commercial reuse of the illustrations, particularly by early career or independent researchers. To save time, then, this licence has now been modified to BY-SA, so use them! You can also find some of our illustrations used on web pages.

Ultimately, a decision that was taken due to limited resources has turned out to be one of the best we made. That, in a nutshell, is why we made the decision to use drawings and not photos in B&C2.


B&C2, drawings, photos, Shire

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Gallery Samples

Curved rectangular shield umbo with a green patina and with a hemispherical boss in the centre for the hand grip.
Curved, rectangular copper-alloy shield boss with six of eight domed shield nails in situ. Image: P. Gross
Shield boss
Soldiers with oval, coloured shields (red, white, and blue) and similarly coloured leggings.
Crossing the Red Sea fresco from the synagogue at Dura-Europos depicting soldiers with multi-coloured shields lined up before standard-bearers with vexilla. Image: Wikimedia Commons
Fresco
Fragmentary ferrous back plate attached to scales, found in the Millennium excavations at Carlisle. The ferrous components are corroded brownish orange and the copper-alloy examples are mid-green.
Ferrous back plate and scales from lorica squamata from Carlisle (GBR). The mostly ferrous scales are interspersed with copper alloy scales. Image: scrappy annie (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Scale armour
A ferrous cavalry helmet with partially surviving bronze sheathing includes horizontal trilobate protrusions above the brow.
Ferrous cavalry helmet with copper-alloy (probably brass) embossed and incised sheathing (most of it missing over the bowl). The cheek piece may not be original (or may be a clumsy repair). A plume tube survives on the left-hand side just above the ear. Image: National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden (CC0 1.0)
Cavalry helmet
Brass-coloured belt plate with four empty rivet holes, one in each corner.
Copper-alloy belt plate from Chichester, hinged for a buckle or suspension frog. Image: MCB
Belt plate
Silvered phalera junction with three strap loops and a trifid pendant.
Three-way strap junction from harness found at Doorwerth. Three junction loops and a trefoil pendant are hinged to loops on the rear face of the phalera. Brass with silver foil soldered on the front face and with niello inlay depicting stylised vine leaves and grapes. Image: National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden (CC0 1.0)
Phalera junction
To the top is a heavily corroded ferrous Antonine dagger blade and tang with part of the handle adhering, whilst below it is the ferrous frame scabbard for the weapon, also corroded.
Dagger and scabbard of the Antonine form from Stillfried (AT). Part of the handle survives on the blade and tang. Image: Wolfgang Sauber
Dagger and scabbard
A ferrous helmet with broad neck guard, cheek pieces, and brow guard.
Ferrous Weisenau (Imperial-Gallic)-type helmet. Image: MCB
Helmet
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