Lamellar armour is a type of body armour made from small rectangular plates (scales or lamellae) of iron, steel, leather (rawhide), bone, or bronze laced into horizontal rows. Lamellar armour was used over a wide range of time periods in Central Asia, Eastern Asia (especially in China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, and Tibet), Western Asia, and Eastern Europe. The earliest evidence for lamellar armour comes from sculpted artwork of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–609 BC) in the Near East.[citation needed]
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Lamellar armour should not be confused with laminar armour, a related form of plate armour which is made from horizontal overlapping rows or bands of solid armour plates (called lames) rather than scales. By comparison, lamellar armour is made from individual armour scales which are laced together to form a strip of armour which appears to be solid but is not.
Lamellar armour consists of small platelets known as "lamellae" or "lames", 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).[citation needed]
In Asia, lamellar armor eventually overtook scale armour in popularity as lamellar restricted the user's movements much less than scale armour.[1]
The earliest evidence points to the early-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 BC, 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.[2]
Lamellar armour was often worn by itself or as an augmentation to other 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 Langobards as it was simple to create and maintain. Lamellar helmets were also employed by Migration Era and Early Medieval peoples.[citation needed]
Lamellar armour has been found in Egypt in a 17th-century BC context.[3] 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.[citation needed]
The extent to which either type was used is a debated topic. Lamellar was used by various cultures from this time up through the 19th century. Lamellar armour is often associated with the samurai class of feudal Japan, but was commonly used in ancient and medieval China, Korea, and Mongolia. Lamellar was also used in the Russian Far East, the tribes of Siberia and the Sarmatians. Evidence of lamellar armour has also been found in various European countries.
In ancient China, lamellar armour appeared by the 5th century BC. It consisted of individual armour pieces (lamellae, lamella singular) that were either riveted or laced together to form a suit of armour. Iron helmets constructed with multiple lamellae began to replace the one piece bronze helmets of old. One sample discovered in Yi county, Hebei Province was composed of 89 lamellae, averaging 5 cm × 4 cm (2.0 in × 1.6 in). For example, the Terracotta Army of the Qin dynasty is portrayed as wearing six (6) or seven (7) different categories of lamellar armor corresponding to rank and military division. Many different types of lamellar armor have also been uncovered through excavations of Han dynasty archeological sites. Lamellar was used from the ancient period through the medieval period, and was used all the way up to the Qing dynasty.[citation needed]
Lamellar is pictured in many historical sources on Byzantine warriors, especially heavy cavalry. Recent studies by Timothy Dawson of the University of New England, Australia, suggest that Byzantine lamellar armour was significantly superior to mail armour.[8]
Lamellar armour reached Japan around the 5th century, predating the rise of the samurai caste. Early Japanese lamellar armour, called keiko, took the form of a sleeveless jacket and a helmet. The middle of the Heian period was when lamellar armour started to take the shape that would be associated with samurai armour. By the late Heian period Japanese lamellar armour developed into full-fledged samurai armour called Ō-yoroi. Japanese lamellar armour was made from hundreds or even thousands of individual leather (rawhide) or iron scales or lamellae known as kozane, that were lacquered and laced together into armour strips. This was a very time-consuming process.[11] The two most common types of scales which made up the Japanese lamellar armour were hon kozane, which were constructed from narrow or small scales/lamellae, and hon iyozane, which were constructed from wider scales/lamellae.
A lamella (pl.: lamellae) is a small plate or flake, from the Latin, and may also refer to collections of fine sheets of material held adjacent to one another in a gill-shaped structure, often with fluid in between though sometimes simply a set of "welded" plates. The term is used in biological contexts for thin membranes of plates of tissue. In the context of materials science, the microscopic structures in bone and nacre are called lamellae. Moreover, the term lamella is often used to describe crystal structure of some materials.[1]
In surface chemistry (especially mineralogy and materials science), lamellar structures are fine layers, alternating between different materials. They can be produced by chemical effects (as in eutectic solidification), biological means, or a deliberate process of lamination, such as pattern welding. Lamellae can also describe the layers of atoms in the crystal lattices of materials such as metals.
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In surface anatomy, a lamella is a thin plate-like structure, often one amongst many lamellae very close to one another, with open space between.
In chemical engineering, the term is used for devices such as filters and heat exchangers.
In mycology, a lamella (or gill) is a papery hymenophore rib under the cap of some mushroom species, most often agarics.
The term has been used to describe the construction of lamellar armour, as well as the layered structures that can be described by a lamellar vector field.
In medical professions, especially orthopedic surgery, the term is used to refer to 3D printed titanium technology which is used to create implantable medical devices (in this case, orthopedic implants).[2]
In context of water-treatment, lamellar filters may be referred to as plate filters or tube filters.
This term is used to describe a certain type of ichthyosis, a congenital skin condition. Lamellar Ichthyosis often presents with a "colloidal" membrane at birth. It is characterized by generalized dark scaling.
The term lamella(e) is used in the flooring industry to describe the finished top-layer of an engineered wooden floor. For example, an engineered walnut floor will have several layers of wood and a top walnut lamella.
In archaeology, the term is used for a variety of small flat and thin objects, such as Amulet MS , a very thin gold plate with a stamped text from Ancient Greece in the 6th century BC.
In crystallography, the term was first used by Christopher Chantler and refers to a very thin layer of a perfect crystal, from which curved crystal physics may be derived.[3]
In textile industry, a lamella is a thin metallic strip used alone or wound around a core thread for goldwork embroidery and tapestry weaving.[4]
In September , the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a recall of two medications which contained "extremely thin glass flakes (lamellae) that are barely visible in most cases. The lamellae result from the interaction of the formulation with glass vials over the shelf life of the product."[5]
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