Working With Roman Military Equipment Studies as a Publication Field
Academic work on Roman military equipment isn't as neat as the popular literature makes it look. The Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies, often abbreviated JORMES, has been around since the mid-1990s and operates out of Sheffield. It publishes peer-reviewed papers on Roman arms, armor, equipment, and the material culture of the Roman soldier. That's the basic description. What the journal actually demands from contributors is another matter entirely. The journal covers everything from gladii and pilum replicas tested against historical accounts to diegetic and non-diegetic evidence analysis. It publishes on Roman forts, fortifications, and the everyday gear of legionaries and auxiliaries. Papers can be short notes or full-length research articles. The focus is on empirical, material-based argumentation rather than speculative reconstruction. If a paper argues something about Roman equipment without dealing with the actual archaeological or artistic evidence, it will likely get rejected. That's by design. I've submitted papers to this journal and read enough submissions to know where they tend to go wrong. The most common problem I've seen is authors treating Roman military equipment as a fixed system. It wasn't. Equipment changed regionally, temporally, and often in ways that contradict what you'd expect from the iconography. A centurion's crest on a monument doesn't mean every centurion in Britain wore the same thing. Regional variation matters more than most people give it credit for.
How to Approach Writing for This Journal
The submission process itself is straightforward. You prepare your manuscript according to their guidelines, which emphasize clear sourcing of visual evidence and rigorous typological classification. References to British Museum collections, Roman frontier fort finds, and well-known typologies like those of Oelmann or Löwenstam are expected. The journal uses a blind peer-review system, so your name shouldn't appear in the body of the manuscript. Here's what I wish someone had told me before my first submission. Don't rely primarily on sculptural or mosaic evidence without acknowledging its limitations. Iconographic sources are stylized and often anachronistic. A soldier depicted on Trajan's Column wearing a particular type of helmet doesn't mean that helmet was standard-issue in the province where the monument was erected. I made that exact mistake on a paper about auxiliary helmets and spent three months revising after reviewers pointed out that I was conflating Italian workshop production with provincial usage patterns. The workaround was to anchor every iconographic claim in a corresponding archaeological find spot, and where none existed, to flag the uncertainty explicitly in the text.
Common Pitfalls That Derail Submissions
There are a few recurring issues that show up in nearly every submission cycle. Over-reliance on reconstruction photography. Presenting a modern recreation as if it were historical evidence is an automatic red flag. The journal wants analysis of original material, not contemporary interpretations dressed up as primary sources. If you include reconstructions, they should be clearly labeled as such and used only to illustrate a point that the original evidence cannot make alone. Typological overreach. Assigning a precise date or unit affiliation to a piece of equipment based solely on its shape is risky. Typologies are useful heuristics, but they carry uncertainty margins that many authors ignore. A pugio blade that matches a published type from Augsburg doesn't necessarily originate from a legionary stationed in Germany. It could have been traded, inherited, or moved through loot or veteran settlement patterns.
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Ignoring the auxiliary perspective. Most equipment studies focus on the legionary. The auxilia wore different gear, sourced it from different regions, and changed their equipment profiles at different rates. Treating them as identical to legionaries is a frequent and easily avoidable error.
Practical Guidance for Getting Published
Read the last five volumes cover to cover before you submit anything. You'll quickly notice the methodological standards the editorial board expects. Papers that succeed tend to combine careful analysis of primary sources with a clear argumentative structure that doesn't overstate its conclusions. Scale your project to the journal's format. A 4,000-word paper with eight well-chosen illustrations and a tight argument is more likely to succeed than an 8,000-word survey that touches everything without digging deep. The journal has a preference for focused, evidence-driven pieces over broad-style articles. If your research involves new excavations or unpublished material, make sure you have the necessary permissions and that the finds are adequately recorded with provenance data. The journal will not accept papers based on unprovenanced material, and reviewers will check for basic archaeological documentation. I learned this the hard way when a colleague had a paper rejected because the provenance records for a batch of brooches and fittings were incomplete. Six months of correspondence with a museum curator couldn't reconstruct the missing data fast enough to save the submission.
When This Journal Isn't the Right Fit
Some projects simply don't belong in JORMES. Historical narrative pieces that don't engage with material evidence, purely theoretical papers on Roman military organization without equipment focus, and broad surveys that don't offer new analysis of primary sources are better suited for journals like the Journal of Roman Studies or Britannia. Knowing where your work fits is part of the process. The submission timeline runs roughly six to twelve months from submission to publication decision, depending on reviewer availability. Plan accordingly. If you need publication for a thesis deadline, this journal may not align with your timeline.
Final Thoughts on Using the Journal
The Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies remains one of the most focused venues for specialized research on Roman arms and armor. It's not a generalist publication, and that's its strength. The work it publishes tends to be technically precise and evidence-bound. If you're doing genuine research on Roman military material culture, it's worth reading and potentially submitting to. If you're looking for a broader or more accessible outlet, there are better choices. The journal doesn't cater to general interest audiences, and the editors make that clear from the first page of every issue.
