1 st\' century steppe bows...

[Folkert van Wijk]

Thanks guys, for the input.

Let me ad the English text from A. V. Simonenko's
"Sarmatian riders of north pontic region"

3.1. Bow
In the North Pontic region, as in the other
Sarmatian territories, findings of bows are
rare. The bows of the Scythian type were found
in kurgan 8 of the Akkermen’-II cemetery
(Вязьмітіна та ін., 1961, p. 103) and in the
grave dated to the end of the 1st century AD
near the village of Vesniane, Nikolaev district
(Simonenko, 1997, S. 392). The only bow of
the «Hunic» type was found in a kurgan near
the village of Porohi (Симоненко, Лобай,
1984, p. 12–14). Judging on the arrangement
of the bone plaques, its length in the released
state reached approximately 120 cm.
Parallels to the bone plaques were found
in the Sarmatian graves of the Volga river
region
and Kalmykia, as well as in the Hsiungnu
assemblages of Mongolia, Tuva, Minusinsk
Depression, and the Transbaikal area
(Худяков, 1986, p. 26 сл.).
The Sarmatians began to use the powerful
bows of the so-called «Hunic» type, reinforced
with the bone plates, in the 1st century
AD. These bows had greater length,
longer range and were more effective than
the «Scythian» type bows. The earliest finds
of parts of the «Hunic» bows in the Sarmatian
graves are dated to the second half of the 1st
century AD. Besides Porohi, the plates were
found in the Ust’-Labinskaia, 29/1 and the
Suslovsky cemetery, 51/1. On the other hand,
most of the Sarmatian arrowheads of the
1st–3rd centuries AD have the same length
and weight as the Scythian ones. It means
that the majority of the Sarmatian warriors
used the bows of the «Scythian» type and the
Sarmatians sometimes got the «Hunic» bows
as trophies or gifts. During the 1st–4th centuries
AD, the «Hunic» bows gradually pushed
the «Scythian» ones out of the entire steppe
region.