heavy cavalry engaging heavy cavalry

[Michael Kerr]

I think we had this problem before with this particular thread when it has to create new pages. It acknowledges that you have posted something but no one can read it. I have found that if you post something after then the previous one appears. So no worries as it is up now. In answer to your quiz Tomyris as she was the one who ended up with Cyrus's head to decorate her tent or wagon. "Winners are grinners".
Regards
Michael Kerr

[Michael Kerr]

Alanus, for some reason with these multi page threads, we can't see the last post and I can't read yours. Don't know if there is a problem with scripting but I only wrote this as it sometimes brings up the previous post. Getting back to the subject, while unclear about the term heavy cavalry ( is it heavily armed or heavily protected by armour & does the armour include the horse as well as rider) but never sure whether offensive/shock cavalry was developed to combat mounted archers or chariots, any thoughts? For example was the natural progression in ancient cavalry warfare that chariots first dominated the battlefield, then horse archer units developed to run rings around & pick off chariot crews and then slightly heavier armed horsemen to combat horse archers who before the introduction of stirrups and being somewhat restricted seated in their saddles had less agility to turn all the way around on their right assuming most held their bow with the left arm & thus would be exposed to attack from behind their right flank by mounted lancers and vice versa if you held the bow with the other arm. It seems that ancient cavalry especially mounted archers were always vulnerable on the right flank according to A.D.H. Bivar in his paper "Cavalry Equipment and Tactics on the Euphrates Frontier". (Maybe the horse archers who used the Parthian shot in battle will disagree) but there has to be some restriction in turning all the way on the side of the arm pulling the bowstring back to his ear & it seems to me that it restricts him if attacked from that side (I am getting bogged down with technicalities now). I notice that a few members have had a go at mounted archery and would be keen to know their thoughts on this as I can only theorise. But John W. Eadie writes that it was probably Massagetae &/or Chorasmians who first developed heavier cavalry but he does credit the Assyrians with some role in the development.
John W. Eadie wrote in his paper "The Development of Roman Mailed Cavalry".

Cavalry equipment brought to light by excavations around the Aral Sea, begun in the 1930's, indicates that similar experimentation with cavalry tactics and armour was under-taken simultaneously by the Massageto-Chorasmian peoples of central Asia. Unfortunately, neither the precise nature of each phase in the development nor the exact relationship of this experimentation to contemporary developments elsewhere can be discerned in the archaeological record, but it is clear that a distinctive Chorasmian cavalryman evolved by the sixth century B.C. According to S. P. Tolstov and B. Rubin, this cavalryman was the prototype cataphract i.e. a partially armoured rider, wearing a coat of mail and perhaps a metal helmet, on a horse whose head and flanks were partially protected by metal plates. The offensive weapons of the Chorasmian cataphracts and the Assyrian' hybrid' horseman were identical (bow and pike): both could fire arrows from a distance and then charge with their pikes to engage infantry or cavalry at close quarters. They differed, however, in one major respect: the Assyrians, as far as we know, did not attempt to protect the horse as well as the rider.

Regards
Michael Kerr

[Alanus]

"Winners are grinners".

And it seems most likely the Massagetae heavy horse extended to the first recorded Alanic tribe, the Roxolani. But the Massagetae had contemporaries playing the same game. Herodotus mentions a little-known tribe called the Issedones who pushed the Scythians westward to the Pontic. (Herodotus, IV, 13). Archaeologists know them as the Sagarskaya culture. They lived just above the Massagetae, east of the Urals in the Tobal region, most kurgans found around the Isset River (aka "Issedones").

Their women had "equal authority with the men," just like the Massagetae; and 20% of female Sargat graves contain archery equipment. The bows, "usually survive in mortuary contexts only as four or seven bone plaques, which were used for strengthening the central part and two shoulders. Such a bow was about 1.5 meters in length. Iron and bone arrowheads, which appeared en masse in the 3rd to the 2nd centuries BCE, were used by this larger bow. As a result of this more powerful weapon, bone armor was replaced by iron. (Linduff & Rubinson, Bersenova chapter, 140). It seems likely that this bow appeared in the Sargat area earlier than in the Sarmatian territory (Moshkova 1989, 184)." This so-called "Hunnic" bow was developed in a region 1,000 km west of the Xiong-nu, the supposed developers of the style.

Bersenova then moves to heavier equipment, "The complex of Sargat elite armament included a bow, dagger, long sword, and in special cases, a shield, helmet, and lamellar armor, initially fashioned from bone and leather, and later from iron. The elite weaponry recovered from unrobbed graves in Sidorovka and Isakovka I belonged to the catafractian type of heavily armed mounted warrior, which became widely known in Eurasia from the last centuries BCE (Matyushenko and Tataurova, 1997; Pagodin 1998). There is a direct analogy between Sargat weapon types and those of the Scytho-Sarmatian world." Here is a Russian artist's reconstruction drawing of a Issedone/Sargat cataphract. Also an archery thumb guard, an akinakes hilt, and the remains of a long sword.

[attachment=9804]Sargatskayaculturehorseman.jpg[/attachment]

[attachment=9805]Sargatskayathumbring.jpg[/attachment]

[attachment=9806]Sargatskayaakinakesandsword.jpg[/attachment]

So, what we are looking at is a sophisticated heavy-horse society, powerful enough to eject the Scythians from their homeland... and clever enough with bent-wood technology to define a newer-and-deadlier composite bow.

[Michael Kerr]

Alanus, we seem to have the same problem when creating a new page on thread where I can't read your post. So I shall just submit this post and hopefully yours will come up. Going by artist's impression which I assume is based on archaeological finds, horse protection was important which I suppose means bigger and stronger horses than your average steppe ponies.

Regards
Michael Kerr

[Alanus]

Well, we seem to be OK now. :whistle:

I know this is about heavy cavalry vs heavy cavalry, and it looks like the Sarmat horse were heavier than the Scythian ones, yet what's surprising are the Sarmat's bone-syahed bows, which evidently date prior to the 3rd century BCE. This is a century earlier than we previously thought. :errr:

ALSO-- I changed my avatar picture... but I'm still viewing the Old one. How inextricably odd!

[Michael Kerr]

So do you think the heavier cavalry of Sargats were probably developed to combat Scythian horse archers? Also are these drawings from Simenko's book? BTW your newer avatar shows when I am doing an edit but not on normal page.
Regards
Michael Kerr

[Flavivs Aetivs]

I read that the reason the Scythians were pushed out is because their Symmetrical bows couldn't punch through Sarmatian/Massagetae/Saka/Whatever cataphract armor.

[Dan Howard]

I read that the reason the Scythians were pushed out is because their Symmetrical bows couldn't punch through Sarmatian/Massagetae/Saka/Whatever cataphract armor.

No bow can punch through metal armour unless it is very heavy and very close.

[Alanus]

So do you think the heavier cavalry of Sargats were probably developed to combat Scythian horse archers?

I think the Sargats developed heavy cavalry to protect themselves from their southern neighbors, the Massagetae. It's probably a chicken or egg question. However, new wrinkles in armor and weapons probably gave them an edge over the Scythians. As we know, Scythians used short swords-- not the most effective slashing cavalry weapon-- while the Sargats/Issedones had long-swords. Also, the new composite bow had syahs, or "ears" which give arrows an extra "punch" of speed at "take-off." The Sargatskaya culture was a combination of forest hunter-gatherers (the indigenous inhabitants, and not Indo-Iranian) under an Indo-Iranian speaking overlordship. They were a kurgan culture, and the elite practiced skull deformation, both men and women. More weapons are found in Sargat (and Sarmatian) female graves than found in Scythian ones. This duality alone gave the Sarmats an edge. I found information through Natalia Berseneva's chapter in Are All Warriors Male? Gender Roles on the Ancient Eurasian Steppe, 2008, edited by Linduff and Rubinson. PDF online.

I found the illustrations online while googling Sarmatskaya culture. Prior to this, I had seen the drawings in articles by Novasibdom.ru History; but they are in Russian. Also, Simonenko shows one illustration-- this one:

[attachment=9807]DSC_0020_2014-05-06.JPG[/attachment]

To Evan,
The reason the Sargats discontinued bone armor was due to new techniques-- iron forging. The culture dates back to the 6th century BCE in the forest-steppe zone just east of the Urals. This is exactly where Herodotus placed them. The real advantage of a asymmetrical bow is a shorter lower section, easier to swing while on horseback. The syahs make for a longer bow; but if it is built to "zero tiller," the bow is extremely accurate. Longer bows are not more powerful than short bows; both can be constructed in draw-weights that easily exceed 100 pounds of pull. But a bow with syahs will give a faster release. Steppe warriors developed bodkins in the mid first millennium BC, and this precipitated advances in armor as a counter-action.

[Flavivs Aetivs]

Thinking of Sarmatian armor, do you happen to have images of the Spangenhelmets found belonging to the lower Ob culture circa 100-200 AD-ish?

[Alanus]

Evan,
No I don't. Lower Ob culture? Either Roxolani or My-Sasages, eh? Who else would be there? :-|

Hey! My revised avatar is showing up on the regular pages now. That Jasper! I'll have to thank him. :-)

Hold it! No it doesn't. It only shows up on the editing pages. :dizzy:

[Flavivs Aetivs]

Lower Ob, blegh, that's like north Siberia. I meant upper Ob. It was making the transition to Hunnic at the time the helmets were found, and they were spangenhelmets similar in their general appearance to the Leiden or Deir El Medinah one.

[Alanus]

Ah! The Upper Ob... right next to the Upper Arm.
No, as of yet I haven't found any pics, Hunnic or Sarmatian. I google "spangenhelms" quite often. But we have to remember that writers, Russian or otherwise, may not term a helmet as a spangenhelm. There are no rules within the rules. Even the actual weight of 20-weight paper. :dizzy:

But if you find anything, please post it. mile:

[Flavivs Aetivs]

Yeah, I'm like burned out right now just looking for scraps of info on Hunnic Warfare and the Huns in general. Finding a picture of a Spangenhelmet would be a big improvement.

[Michael Kerr]

Hhh