Sub-Roman Britain (Cavalry etc)

[Thiudareiks Flavius]

That's true, of course, but you'd think it would show up on monuments or mentioned in records. Guess it was too trivial.

I guess we'll have to wait until someone comes up with something concrete...or, in this case, leather.

But we do find ('hard') stirrups being depicted in art and mentioned in documents at around the time we find them turning up in the archaeological record. We also see the Latin verb for getting on a horse change at the same time, indicating that stirrups were now being used to allow a rider to 'ascend' to the saddle rather than 'vault' into it.

If 'soft' stirrups' had appeared centuries earlier, we have to ask ourselves why we don't see this ancilliary evidence of a change. I think the most obvious answer is that there simply were no earlier 'soft' stirrups at all.