Equites sagittarii (late 2nd century)

[jho]

As far as I can see in the pics linked above, the neckguards are considerably smaller.

I was thinking e.g. of the helmet found at Woerden, NL. There used to be a thread with pictures of it on RAT but I cannot find it now.

Of course it is possible to wear these helmets on horseback, any other suggestion would be silly. The question is: Did the Romans do it? Which cannot be answered by an empiric study at all.

Well, I believe that we agree that empiric study CAN tell us that the deep neck guard does NOT prevent cavalry use and therefore we cannot exclude that some were used by cavalry. Any positive allocation to cavalry or infantry use would require an unequivocal inscription or depiction which we hardly ever have (only the Sivac helmet with the centuria inscription and the Bodegraven helmet with the turm inscription come to mind).

One argument Waurick used to identify these as infantry helmets (long before that idea was even considered by other authors) was connecting find spots with known infantry or cavalry units in garrison but the Roman habit of mixing troops (coh.eq., equites legionis) made that a largely inconclusive exercise. Still, if we could make a catalogue of at least a large proportion of known finds (many more than at Waurick's time) and repeat the exercise there is at least hope that we may find statistical indications for the type of use.