02-18-2010, 01:04 PM
Thank you (again) for posting that picture of the Aberlemo stone.
It probably tells us--concretely, at that :roll: --as much as we can hope for about mounted warriors in post-Roman Britain. Advances in equipage probably came slower than digressions in those days. So we can reasonably posit that similarly equipped horse warriors existed a century or two before and after the event depicted. (Notice the lack of stirrups, which fits the theory that hard stirrups were not introduced to the West until after the Battle of Tours in AD 732.) And certainly might be valid for mounted forces at the battle of Catraeth circa AD 600, whatever the Y Gododdin recorded.
Of course, if the stone was carved too long after the Battle of Nechtansmere fought in AD 685, there's the danger that then-current hardware is depicted, rather than the styles actually employed.) 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.
I'm with Robert. I don't care much about the derivation of names as much as on equipage and tactics. I too have polluted the discussion with digressions about [he who should not be named]. :oops:
It probably tells us--concretely, at that :roll: --as much as we can hope for about mounted warriors in post-Roman Britain. Advances in equipage probably came slower than digressions in those days. So we can reasonably posit that similarly equipped horse warriors existed a century or two before and after the event depicted. (Notice the lack of stirrups, which fits the theory that hard stirrups were not introduced to the West until after the Battle of Tours in AD 732.) And certainly might be valid for mounted forces at the battle of Catraeth circa AD 600, whatever the Y Gododdin recorded.
Of course, if the stone was carved too long after the Battle of Nechtansmere fought in AD 685, there's the danger that then-current hardware is depicted, rather than the styles actually employed.) 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.
I'm with Robert. I don't care much about the derivation of names as much as on equipage and tactics. I too have polluted the discussion with digressions about [he who should not be named]. :oops:
"Fugit irreparabile tempus" (Irrecoverable time glides away) Virgil
Ron Andrea
Ron Andrea
