of their gear there are bronze figurines in armor from sardinia and stone statues on corsica indicating armour styles and a handful of other finds from throughout europe like engraved razors and small stone figures with more hints archaeologists have spent decades analyzing and categorizing this evidence into specific types and subtypes and establishing chronologies though of course debate rages on so i'm going to talk about bronze helmets greaves shields other kinds of armor and then curases first let's talk about the metal helmets of bronze age europe there are about NUMBER_TOKEN surviving metal helmets from the european bronze age and they're classified into two main types according to their manufacture distribution and appearance class NUMBER_TOKEN comprises helmets made of one metal sheet beaten into a round or conical cap most of these had a knob raised to the top for attaching an organic plume of feathers or horsehair or perhaps other magnificent things and class NUMBER_TOKEN comprises helmets made of two metal sheets secured together often with a crested cap so there were two main construction methods the main types have been further subdivided into more detailed classifications that we won't get into but for centuries during the late bronze age there were basically two traditions in western europe they made the crested helmets and in eastern europe they made cap helmets it is believed both types developed independently from organic helmet precursors the eastern style seems to have been an aegean development and the west european one arose from local traditions the oldest european helmets are found in the aegean and this early example is decorated with boar task incisions in the same pattern as an actual bore's tusk helmet this demonstrates that it's a transitional form emerging from the bores tusk helmet tradition of mycenaean grease the boar's tusk helm from dendra has metal cheek plates that match those on this earliest metal helm type again reinforcing their relationship in time the first metal helmet style probably emerged in the NUMBER_TOKENth century bc and then spread north from greece into the carpathian basin and on even to northern germany and this style was still in use as late as the NUMBER_TOKENth century bc in eastern europe although there were undoubtedly trade networks between the aegean and central europe they weren't just produced in greece and traded north they were actually constructed in this style in the carpathian basin the western european helmets seem to have developed independently fusing two sheets of bronze together and integrating a slight crest that tended to grow over time by the iron age in italy centuries later the crests became enormous and elaborately decorated but although there were two initial traditions styles and innovations in arms and armor also spread back and forth throughout europe during the bronze age from ireland to greece and from sweden to iberia the earliest simple helmets of the first class from the aegean and eastern europe might have weighed just NUMBER_TOKEN grams while later taller ones of the second class from western europe weighed up to NUMBER_TOKEN grams which is about NUMBER_TOKEN pounds they didn't just become taller and broader but the bronze was often thicker in the later ones up to five millimeters at the rim and three millimeters at the top of the cap that's quite hefty
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