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Sarmatiana: A List of References, Old & New - Flavivs Aetivs - 04-04-2013
That reminds me of Vicus Helenae, where Aetius and Majoran attacked Chlodio during a wedding ceremony (or something like that) catching his army off-guard.
Sarmatiana: A List of References, Old & New - Alanus - 04-04-2013
Surprise is your best allie.
Sarmatiana: A List of References, Old & New - Sutoris - 04-11-2013
In search of Sarmatians I found this, don't think it's mentioned before 8)
http://www.academia.edu/694594/The_technique_of_gold_inlaid_decoration_in_the_5th-4th_centuries_BC_silver_and_iron_finds_from_the_early_Sarmatian_barrows_of_Filippovka_Southern_Urals
Sarmatiana: A List of References, Old & New - Alanus - 04-12-2013
Thanks!
I just downloaded it. Treister seems to be fairly much on the money, so this should be interesting.
Sarmatiana: A List of References, Old & New - ValentinianVictrix - 04-17-2013
Alan, you forgot to mention that Ammianus discusses Constantius II campaign against the 'Free Sarmatians' and gives a graphic description of what happens when a Sarmatian audience becomes angry when an Emperor addresses them!
Sarmatiana: A List of References, Old & New - Flavivs Aetivs - 04-17-2013
I remember reading about that campaign. Indeed.
Sarmatiana: A List of References, Old & New - Alanus - 04-20-2013
Quote:Alan, you forgot to mention that Ammianus discusses Constantius II campaign against the 'Free Sarmatians' and gives a graphic description of what happens when a Sarmatian audience becomes angry when an Emperor addresses them!
Thanks for that. When I started this thread, I mentioned Ammianus' records of the Alans, Huns, and Goths. That's in Volume 3. But for a full picture of earlier Sarmatian/Saroumatae types, we have to go back to Volumes 1 & 2. Good point.
mile:
Sarmatiana: A List of References, Old & New - Alanus - 10-07-2014
A new addition to an old thread. Just keeping it up to date when something new comes along from the steppe. Recently, a PDF of Eran ud Aneran, Studies Presented to Boris Ilic Marsak on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday has arrived on Academia.edu. It's a free download to members, and membership is free. The PDF contains "Part 1" or the first 316 pages. Quite a bit of Sogdian and early Turkic here, also the interaction of those two cultures. Part 2, when it arrives, will have Yablonsky's Sogdian Costume, a very informative piece on steppe clothing. Enjoy.
Sarmatiana: A List of References, Old & New - Holly Herda - 10-22-2015
I have a few things to add to this!
One book: Scythians and Sarmatians by Katheryn Hinds. A children's book, really--even more basic than Osprey--but it does include some nice close-ups of artifacts. The less-cluttered overview and timelines might actually be appreciated by beginners.
Also, I'm not sure if anyone's familiar with The Great Courses, but they offer a course called "The Barbarian Empires of the Steppes" which you can get in multiple formats:
http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-barbarian-empires-of-the-steppes.html
All the formats are quite expensive, but they have a LOT of sales (often up to 75 or 90% off). Also, once you sign up for an account, they send you physical catalogs with even more coupon codes and whatnot. I got the DVD set (those on-screen maps are a blessing) for under $100, as opposed to the $374 listed now. Actually, I still have to finish watching it. I stopped after the Sarmatians. :whistle:
RE: Sarmatiana: A List of References, Old & New - Michael Kerr - 10-28-2015
Thanks for the recommendation of the Great Courses lectures on the Steppe empires, I haven’t seen this thread for a while so I thought I might add a few publications that have cropped up in my collection since posting on this thread a while ago. Roger Batty’s book “Rome and the Nomads – The Pontic-Danubian Realm in Antiquity” is a good source for Steppe peoples who lived around the Crimea and Danube. Batty is an economist and if you are after a book on military campaigns of the Sarmatians, Alans and Scythians then this book is not for you. But he covers climate, soils, the condition of the Danube and Black Sea in ancient times compared to now and nomad and pastoral economies trade and the necessity of raids and how the nomads interacted with their neighbours like the Greeks, Dacians, Thracians, the Bastarnae and the Romans and before them the Greek city states.
Another book I recommend although it covers Central Asia (It does cover the Sarmatians and Alans though) is “Mounted Archers” by Laszlo Torday. It starts with the rise of the Hsiung-nu and how their expansion affected the rest of the tribes of Central Asia like the Saka, Scythians, the Yueh-chih, the Wusun and the oasis trading centres of the Tarim Basin, the routes used as well as how these movements and migrations affected Europe, Persia, China and India.
“The Urals and Western Siberia in the Bronze and Iron Ages” by Ludmila Koryakova and Andrej Epimakhov is also a good book which covers in English a lot of Russian research into the archaeology of the Urals and Western Siberia which is usually not available to non-Russian speakers. It has interesting material on a few ancient cultures like Sargats and how they interacted with their neighbours like the Scythians, Sarmatians etc. and covers ancient mining and metallurgy as well.
Lastly another book covering the Alans from 1st to 15th centuries although it is in French is “Les Alains” by Vladimir Kouznetsov and Iaroslav Lebedynsky. It covers the history and migrations of the Alans with lots of maps and illustrations of weapons, costumes, utensils, jewellry and horse gear. I found that Google Translate does a fair job of translating various sections of the book. If you subscribe to Scribd it is available free for download as a PDF which makes it handy to copy and paste sections for translating.
Regards
Michael Kerr
RE: Sarmatiana: A List of References, Old & New - Alanus - 10-28-2015
Thank you, Holly and Michael.
Nice to resurrect an old thread with new material. It's becoming a great data-base.
I'm not sure if these have been listed, but a "really old" one is Records of The Grand Historian (aka Sima Qian) Han Dynasty II, translated by Burton Watson, Columbia, 1993 revised. Sima Qian continues with the Han Dynasty by lengthy details on Emperor Wu Di... being the first ruler to contact and commence trade with the Wusun and Yue-chi. Thus we have an introduction to the "heavenly horses" and the "blood sweating horses," exceedingly similar to the Altai breed and the later Akhal-teke.
Another volume (somewhat dated) with general info on the steppe cultures is, The Empire of the Steppes, a History of Central Asia, by Rene Grousset, translated by Naomi Walford, 1970, Rutgers. Grousset loved his Persians and Mongols, somewhat at the expense of other and earlier steppe tribes, but he does mention "nomad hordes" in the first four or five dozen pages. Not worth buying but interesting in his seeming dismissal of the Saka and Alans. So, find it in a library and have a chuckle.
Well, anyway. Watch out for those "hordes" or they'll get-cha!
RE: Sarmatiana: A List of References, Old & New - Holly Herda - 12-31-2015
Got a few more!
John Colarusso is releasing a new book in May--an English translation of the Ossetian Nart Sagas. Apparently the FIRST English translation of the Ossetian Nart Sagas:
http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Narts-Ancient-Legends-Ossetians/dp/0691170401/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1451529031&sr=8-1&keywords=tales+of+the+narts
Also, if anyone is interested in learning Ossetian, there's a recently created YouTube channel called "Ossetian for Everyone" with fairly short lessons that I find quite easy to follow.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCo0YL97pGJuaIj0nKU0ufg
By the way, we should add "The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World" by Adrienne Mayor to this list.
RE: Sarmatiana: A List of References, Old & New - Michael Kerr - 12-31-2015
I have an earlier Colarusso book "Nart Sagas from the Caucasus" so I will check that one out. The one I have covers Circassian, Turkic and Ossetian tales but you can detect an earlier Sarmatian & Alan influence in a lot of them & you can see the similarities with a lot of ancient Greek myths in them probably due to early contact with the Greek city states on the Black Sea. You get a good feel how important weapons, armour, raids & horses were to the Sarmatians/Alans.
Regards
Michael Kerr
RE: Sarmatiana: A List of References, Old & New - Alanus - 12-31-2015
Thanks, "Guys"
I knew about Colarusso's book, but it was supposed to arrive a couple of years ago. Adrienne Mayor is one of my Facebook friends. She really knows her "Amazon" stuff, using archaeological findings wisely. I've got this one on my hardcover list.
I've got more PDFs for this Sarmatiana thread. They're sitting stale in a folder on my desktop, but I'll get to them soon.
