The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon

[Robert Vermaat]

though we have other instances of ethincal units whose veterans had been settled in the area where they had served starting thus an ethnical community which would go on feeding their "unit" with new recruits maintainign ethincal connotation and continuity

Indeed, but how long was that kept up?
I know this is not only what Richmond proposed, more than 60 years ago now, but it's also the main line in the Malcor camp, who maintain that this was kept up until the end of the empire, or through the 'free-ranging Sarmatians' that Linda malcor came up with.
In my opinion, the last Sarmatians that we hear of are those north of the Danube, who are most likely subjugated by the Goths. That means that at least for more than a century between that time and the emergence of 'Arthurian Britain', no Sarmatian could have reached Britain.

But in my opinion, this truckload of Sarmatians (even if it was a BIG truckload) was the last to be transported to Britain. the next batches were settled in Gaul and northern Italy.

we should also consider that very often units which originally had had a strong ethnical connotation, when sent to an area far from their homeland (as in this circumstance) , had their gaps progressively filled with recruits from local areas or even from whatever other provinces roman central power considered proper.

Indeed. I think that's what must have happened to the other Sarmatian settlers and units that we know of. Bachrach pointed to the fact that during the late 4th and 5th centuries, it's Alan units that get to be placed in the neighbourhood of where the Sarmatians were settled first. It was his deduction that the Sarmatians, by that time (two generations after being settled there) had lost their military value.Bachrach, Bernard S. (1973): A History of the Alans in the West, from their first appearance in the sources of classical antiquity through the early middle ages, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

I think, then, that the existance of this unit shouldn't and couldn't be used as serious "proof" for anything sarmatian-related in post-roman britain.

My man!

Also read Kovalevskaja's article about the large occurrance of Sarmatian names in Gaul: Kovalevskaja, V.B. (1993): La présence alano-sarmate en Gaule, in: Vallet et Kazanski, L'Armee Romaine, pp. 209-221.[/quote]