Equites sagittarii (late 2nd century)

[caiusbeerquitius]

Agreed, apart from below.

However, as I said, the turma inscription is hypothetical & just a suggestion. See above.
This is methodologically questionable:

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.

It can´t. An empiric study would

1. have to be under realistic conditions
2. include 100% realistic helmet reconstructions
3. be published according to the requirements of experimental archaeology

None of this was made by Junkelmann, so his conclusions cannot be regarded as valid for a discussion.
Basically it is not necessary anyway, probably every doctor in Medicine is able to quickly tell what happens to your neck when you drop of a horse backwards wearing one of these helmets.

*snap*

It nowadays is also possible to wear a cake on your head while sitting on a horse, but we wouldn´t expect the Romans to have done so.

I mean, there must be a reason for all the helmets coming from clear cavalry context, and they really are many, have the short neckguards, no? Wouldn´t a Roman soldier be aware of this problem? Would he nonetheless wear such a helmet, when knowing about the problem?
We of course cannot exclude that here and there a cavalryman wore one of these helmets, but we should start to accept that this must have been a rare occasion, and certainly not the rule. Also a comparative look at reliefs really helps, IMO.

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.

Such a study would only be representative if we had larger numbers of objects. For Straubing or Künzing such a case would be clear. But where you have just one helmet from a site this can be hardly used as evidence. The helmet may have been lost by a visitor, e.g. and was thus preserved, because noone else there could use it. It´s a down-scaled Method-Kossinna problem.

It would suffice to collect all data (objects and representations) in form of

Helmet belongs to Infantry
Helmet belongs to Cavalry
Helmet belongs to ?

p.s. there is a larger series of helmets that qualify as "niederbieber" but don´t have neckguards or just short ones. They are in HRR "Cavalry Sports I"