What was a gorget?

One of the last pieces of armour to survive in the British Army was the gorget. It was a kind of collar, originally worn to protect the throat. Discoveries made in Egypt show that warriors wore armour as long ago as 1500 B.C., and by the sixteenth century both horse and rider were encased in steel from head to foot. But during the seventeenth century the main body armour was dispensed with. Some gorgets were retained as decoration. Although abolished in the British Army in 1830, gorgets continued to be worn elsewhere in Europe, and during the Third Reich the Germans revived the practice.