[Sentrad]

I am really very glad, that Oliver opened this thread to get more information about the armour of the Southern Philippines / Northern Indonesian region. As far as I know, both Portuguese and Spaniards introduced helmets of the Comb-Morion and Morion-Cabasset types made of steel and of bronze. Still today similar local made helmets are in use during festivities in the Bangsamoro region, the Northern Moluccas and Northern parts of Sulawesi, made out of copper alloys. Most of them are of brass, which is cheaper, but not as hard as bronze. Brass helmets are normally not as old as bronze helmets.
Originally Comb-Morions out of the Bangsamoro region had ear flaps, but nearly all I saw missed them or had later made replacements and I believe without having the helmet of the above mentioned eBay auction in hand, it is difficult decide wether the ear flaps are original or not. As far as I remember the Moro helmets in the Naval Museum and the Museo Nacional de Antropologia in Madrid are complete pieces with ear flaps and cheek pieces, perhaps one of our Spanish members could check how they look like?

Here are my helmets:
A Comb-Morion, greenish-brownish patinated bronze, with one plume holder; a crack int the peak guard; ear flaps are missing,
and a Morion-Cabasset, brownish patinated bronze, three plume holders, some holes in the corpus (corrosion? faults of the casting?).
(I did not make metallographical analyses, to check the components of the alloy.)

Udo