"What Happened to Medieval Battlefields after the..." Topic

… FIGHTING WAS OVER?

"It looks much like you'd expect: there was a lot of opportunistic looting after a battle. Sometimes, if the armour was old or broken, and the victorious army didn't want to lug it home to recycle the materials, it might be left on the bodies. You see this at the graveyard from the Battle of Visby (1361), whose archaeological excavation found a number of bodies buried in old, outdated armour that apparently wasn't worth saving. In some cases, the valuable pieces were chopped off the dead and carried away; the recently discovered Staffordshire hoard (7th century) contains bits of gold that were broken off swords, a helmet, and other things most likely looted from a battlefield, carried off to a crossroads, and buried for later recovery (this is the most recent interpretation, at least). Of course, the victors could upgrade their own equipment from those that had died. In fact, the 9th century poem Beowulf talks about looting weapons from corpses, and later Scandinavian laws (11th century) tried to make this illegal which may suggest it happened a lot. Broken equipment could always be recycled or repaired. Leather straps wouldn't be much good on their own, but iron is easy to rework and there is archaeological evidence of broken weapons and tools being recycled, as well as broken armour could being repaired…."
Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand