Quote:Perhaps the Scholae Palatinae shown in the game Brabarian Invasion are a better comparison. But at least we've made advances, now we have eye-witness accounts of Sub-Roman British cavalry which actually fit the specifications of "heavy cavalry", and more importantly, is actually reliable! All right, weapons check. Contos, out the window. Longsword, without a doubt. Javelins, pretty much any shape and size. Four-Sided spear, debateable but destructive. Hmm... not a bad ensemble, doesn't fit with Melcor's ideas (thank goodness!) or the Romances (Perfect!) but it is certainly realistic. As for armour we have mail, paded leather jerkins, a small shield, and maybe just a dash of scale armour. Also perfect for the circumstances. Agraes, I'll need your help for this one, with this sort of equipment could the cavalry preform the functions your Breton cavalry does and still fight hand to hand with infantry? Also does nyone have a lead with Y Gododdin's shaggy white ponies? With that final bit of information we might get somewhere definitive and end all argument once and for all! (Well, one can hope) and then move on to details like numbers, tactics, and location. How exciting is that!

Quote:That the mounted characters were assumedly Northumbrian King Ecgfrid's soldiers tells us that the Germans, now the resident rulers to the south, have adopted mounted warfare despite earlier documentation that they mostly fought on foot. It is exactly that transmission of Roman technology to the Anglo-Saxons--and the question of what the intermediate stages may have looked like--which interests me.

Quote:Thank-you for the response. However I should like to bring up the fact that I don't really think comparing Picts to Britons is a fair comparson. Picts and Britons had two different fighting styles. Picts struck like lightning and then ran away. Britons struck hard, struck fast, and followed up the first attack with more and more charges. Also, the Alans, whom you compare the Bretons too, didn't just swarm their opponents with javelins, once they were out of javelins and the enemy disorderly and confused they charged into the thick of it. Also I know a game isn't a good comparison for tactics and strength, I just meant for apperace. (And I actually have downloaded Arthurian, briliant job by the way) And leather scales or llamelar doesn't change a thing but the materials.

Quote: I now realise that the "hue of swans" part was poetic license, but perhaps the shagginess of the fur is a better lead.

Quote:Agraes: And last no least, a friend from my group Letavia told me it is really possible to pick up a fallen javelin from the battlefield on horseback.

Quote:Fell ponies were used as the official horse of Sub-Roman British cavalry.

Quote:

ArthuroftheBritons:2bhz2bob Wrote:Fell ponies were used as the official horse of Sub-Roman British cavalry.

Assuming that anything even existed that we could call 'official horse of Sub-Roman British cavalry'. Which I think there is no evidence for.

Quote:Also, and I might be wrong about this, don't Picts prefer to go into battle with minimal armour or even clothing? as far as I know the only Romanised parts of Pictish combat were the missile weapons like the crossbow. And what I found interesting is that the Saxons -who are supposed to cream the British cavalry- are so terrified that they will fight hand-to-hand that they run behind their Frankish cousins before the first set of javelins even made contact. Obviously they could fight hand-to-hand if they wanted to but were they feared enough to have superior infantry be terrified of a missile exchange? Also if they fought hand-to-hand would they prefer the sword or the spear?

Quote:I missed the connection between the Picts and Britons, other than occupying the same island. I was under the impression that the Picts were a distinctive people (as much as any tribal group could be different from its neighbors) distinguished from both the Briton tribes to their south, who became Romanized under the Empire, and the Dalriada Scots, who began to invade/settle/whatever to their west about AD 600. Is that not true?

Horses widespread in Britain before the Roman invasions (pulling chariots, if nothing else), weren't they?

Quote:there is a clear difference between the representation of horses at Bronze Age and Iron Age sites (Figure 1; Bendrey, 2007b). In the Bronze Age the horse contributes a relatively small proportion of individual assemblages (typically less than five percent of the horse and cattle bones). ... In the Iron Age, horse is not only present in all but the smallest assemblages, as in the Late Bronze Age, but often makes a more significant contribution to assemblages (Figure 1). This could reflect a mix of phenomena, related to changing attitudes to horses, such as horses being eaten more regularly, access to greater numbers of horses or horses being more commonly deposited as ritual acts. ...it was not a regular part of the diet, and ... the earliest use of the horse was not primarily as a food animal (Bendrey, 2007b). ...By the Late Bronze Age, horses appear to have had a critical impact on human society. They then entered widespread use, harness fittings and chapes were first used and largely complete horse skeletons began to appear in what are interpreted as ritual contexts (Bendrey, 2007b). ...

Quote:Antler cheekpieces, parts of the horse’s harness, first appear in the archaeological record in the Late Bronze Age (Britnell, 1976). The presence of chapes in the early first millennium BC suggests a role for horse riding in warfare (Darvill, 1987). These winged chapes, from the end of sword scabbards, developed so that a sword could be drawn while on horseback (by hooking the chape under the foot) (ibid., 128). The date at which wheeled vehicles came into use in Britain is also uncertain (ibid., 128). Cunliffe (2005, 538-539) states that although vehicles are known from the Hallstatt period on the continent there is no evidence for their use in Britain at this time (the Late Bronze Age) and suggests that the light two-wheeled vehicle was probably introduced to Britain during the La Tène I period in the late fifth or early fourth century BC. Presumably, therefore, functional use of the horse before this, without wheeled vehicles, would have consisted of riding, pulling loads without wheels, or pack-use. It is probably the case that the importance of riding in the Iron Age has previously been under-represented in the literature (e.g. Cunliffe, 2005), largely due to the archaeological visibility of vehicles and vehicle fittings and relative invisibility of riding (Bendrey, 2007c).

Quote:I missed the connection between the Picts and Britons, other than occupying the same island. I was under the impression that the Picts were a distinctive people (as much as any tribal group could be different from its neighbors) distinguished from both the Briton tribes to their south, who became Romanized under the Empire, and the Dalriada Scots, who began to invade/settle/whatever to their west about AD 600. Is that not true?