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Among the more astonishing finds recovered during the maritime survey project off W. Sicily is a series of bronze helmets and associated cheek pieces, military equipment likely in the possession of the Roman and Carthaginian combatants who fought in the Battle of the Aegates Islands in 241 B.C. The assemblage of galeae or cassides from this unique battlefield context presents a remarkable opportunity to explore the character of Roman armament during the mid-third century B.C., a critical transitory period for the Roman manipular army. Archaeological data for that period is thin to the point of transparency, a circumstance that has necessitated a heavy dependence upon literary sources for reconstructing the character of arms and armor during the middle Republic. Only in the early second century B.C., when recovered weapon hoards become more common, does it become possible to trace developmental patterns in military equipment with more certainty. This is particularly true for helmets, which on the whole tend to be recovered from secondary votive or funerary contexts.

The Aegates Island assemblage provides contextualized material with which we can examine for the first time the evolutionary character of Republican armor of the third century B.C., particularly in regard to the adoption of the Montefortino type of helmet. Studies of scattered helmet distribution during the fourth century indicate that a mixture of regional and overlapping types, often of the bowl-shaped “jockey” type, were in general use throughout western Europe. By the mid-third century, however, the Montefortino type – an Italo-Celtic hybrid that can be traced back to the fifth century in France and Austria – had become the predominant “jockey” type helmet in Italy, Spain and Gaul. These general patterns have led scholars to argue that the Roman infantry of the third century adopted the Montefortino helmet as its primary type during the Punic Wars. The new assemblage has not only confirmed this hypothesis, but has also supplied multiple examples with intact signature parts (e.g. top-knobs, the detachable cheek-pieces and neck-guards) with which we can begin to chart long-term evolutionary changes in Republican design. As an added bonus, recovery in 2012 of a completely different type, conical in shape, might have provided us with a contemporary Carthaginian helmet, what could well be the first of its kind ever discovered.