Sarmatian Cavalry

[Alanus]

Hello Matthew,

Good luck on the mid 3rd century. It's a hard period for finding pictorial evidence. The Trajan's column images are earlier, but there had to be an overlap. The Osprey book shows both the early swords (Iazyage) and the longer ones (Alanic) which do fall into your period. Sarmatian swords had a narrower blade than a spatha, or at least the repro spathas made in India. The grips were single-handed, the grip-check straight across, and the pommels were either disk-shaped (earlier) or rings (later).

The Sarmatian sword in the British Museum was short, not much longer than like a gladius, with a ringed pommel. But it appears to be a cross between Sarmatian and Roman. Swords photos that appear from dealers and auction-houses, like Christies or Royal Athena, are long and described as "migration era." But for you, I think migration era is a little late.

Early saddles were probably of the four pommel style. Commitatus has pictures of these saddles and Rusty at Soul of the Warrior sells them. I'm sure John Conyard provided initial imput on these saddles, and perhaps he designed the prototypes. He's very knowledgable. Consensus, I think, is that Sarmatian saddles may have been the impetus of the Roman saddle.

I know how difficult it is putting a "Sarmatian" impression together, considering the dearth of pictorial material. It's further complicated by the fact that there were two Sarmatian cultures, the western extending from the the Scythians and Sauromatae, the eastern from the Saka/Massagetae/Wusun-Alans. The latter used longer sword-blades. This has been pointed out by several Russians and Janos Harmatta. My impression is two centuries earlier than yours, and even here we see differences.:roll: