Frankish and Saxon shoes

[Maginhard]

Hi guys,


I am looking for a specific type of shoe for a time now. I re-enact Frisian/Germanic history from 300-600 AD. Therefor I use a lot of materials that the early Franks and Saxons used.

Now, I find myself a few images from books like the Osprey series where Germanic warriors like Franks and Saxons wear closed shoes.
Does anybody now more about some type of a closed shoe from this period, used by Germanics?

[Martin Moser]

Hi,

could you specify a bit more what you mean by "closed shoe"?
There are a number of finds from Germanic territories that fall or may fall into the time frame you are looking at, but generally they can be described as some sort of one piece shoe / carbatina / bundschuh (e.g. the shoes found at Cujik and Damendorf). Does that count as a closed shoe?

[Maginhard]

Thnx for the reply man.

The Damendorf shoes are great but not what I meant. Here are some examples. I had to look for the pictures from the Osprey series on the internet but found some...

http://mojobob.com/roleplay/franks.html
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1ifvzIhCfOc/TW...arrior.jpg
http://www3.villanova.edu/anthro/skeleton/warrior.jpg

Are these type of shoes just Roman army boots? Because they look typical to me.. I would love some more info and some kind of a model.

[Martin Moser]

As I feared :-)

http://mojobob.com/roleplay/franks.html
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1ifvzIhCfOc/TW...arrior.jpg
http://www3.villanova.edu/anthro/skeleton/warrior.jpg

Are these type of shoes just Roman army boots? Because they look typical to me.. I would love some more info and some kind of a model.

The left shoe in the first link looks a bit like Roman types of 2nd or 3rd cent. The 2nd one more like early-turnshoe examples from a later period. The 3rd one like taken from 6th/7th cent. and later illustrations and/or from the St. Ulrich and Afra boots. Problem is that there is hardlly anything from north of the Alps from the 4th - 9th century. For 3rd-4th century you could go with Roman stuff (sell them off as imports to Germanic areas, say ;-)). After that there is beautiful stuff from Egypt (coptic) as far as actual finds go, but little else. Truly dark ages.

[Maginhard]

Alright. So concluding that the images show boots and shoes that are from the later periods.. I thought so.. that's why I was just wondering because as far as I know we can only use types like Damendorf, iron age types and roman boots.

Thanks for the information man. If anybody has some other information or want to correct me, feel free to post!