Istvánovits Eszter: International Connections... (Jósa András Múzeum Kiadványai 47. Aszód-Nyíregyháza, 2001)

Eszter Istvánovits - Valéria Kulcsár: Sarmatians through the eyes of strangers. The Sarmatian warrior

Sarmatians through the eyes of strangers. The Sarmatian warrior" Eszter Istvánovits - Valéria Kulcsár The history of the Sarmatians in the Carpathian Basin - like that of the majority of the barbarian peoples living on the borders of the Roman Empire - is the history of wars and periods of peace. Fighting defined the life of a barbarian almost to the same degree as food production. Thus, if we can ascertain some idea of the military practices and organisation of the Sarmatians, their social structure and - to some degree - their whole way of life can be deduced. Given this premise, we have been collecting, classifying and evaluating data concerning the military art of the Sarmatians (ISTVÁNOVITS-KULCSÁR 1992; ISTVÁNOVITSKULCSÁR 1994; ISTVÁNOVITS-KULCSÁR 1995). The basic sources can be divided into three main groups: 1. archaeological finds; 2. literary sources; 3. depictions. The latter group - the depictions - has not been thoroughly studied recently, although András Alföldi did draw attention to the importance of the pictorial evidence more than fifty years ago (ALFÖLDI 1942, 209, 77 citing the few works on this subject). But before turning to the appearance of Sarmatian warriors, we should first deal with unarmed Sarmatians and their costumes. From the start we have to assume that depictions - whether Roman or barbarian - essentially excluded women or children. It was the real enemy, the warriors, who the Empire was interested in, so we see mainly barbarian men in the main Roman pictorial sources, the Columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius. Of course, women and sometimes children also appear representing the population of barbarian villages destroyed by Roman soldiers and barbarian families fleeing from the Romans or taken as slaves (fig. 1). These depictions, however, are very schematic and do not contain useful information on the female costume, hairdress or decorations. Most barbarian women wear a classical Greek-Roman dress without special (ethnic) features. This becomes evident if we compare depictions of the Aurelian Column with reconstructions of costumes made on the basis of archaeological finds found in Sarmatian burials in the Carpathian Basin (fig 2: 4),

1 Ukraine, and South Russia (fig. 2: 1-3, 5-6).

2 The unarmed men depicted mainly on the Aurelian Column (fig. 4: 1-2, 4) also lack specificity of costume: they wear the usual barbarian wide trousers and a long shirt with two-folds typical of most Iranian peoples (Scythians, Sarmatians, * The work on this article was supported by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA), grant N T032778. 1 In the Hungarian publications of the Sarmatian material no attempts were made to reconstruct complete costumes. Only parts, like the belt (VÖRÖS 1981, 9. kép; VADAY-SZŐKE 1983, 22-23. kép; VADAY 1980, Taf. III: 7) (fig. 3: 2-4, 7), decoration of the neck of the dress (FARKAS 1998, 6. kép) (fig. 3: 1), and that of the belt-purse (ISWANOVITS 1993, Abb. 10: 3; LovAsz 1989, 6. kép) (fig. 3: 5-6) have been reconstructed. On shoes see: VADAYKULCSAR 1983, ris. 8, pl. III: 8. We could also mention here a reconstruction of a horse-harness (VADAY 1986, Abb. 6: 10), but this is a topic for a different study. 2 The best known reconstructions come from the Ukranian sites of Sokolova Mogila (KOVPANENKO 1986, ris. 133) (fig. 2: 1) and Porogi (SIMONENKOLOBAI 1991, ris. 29) (fig. 2: 5) and from the Kuban region of Russia: Peschanyi (ZHDANOVSKJ 1990, ris. 35) (fig. 2: 3). We have a draft reconstruction on the basis of the Novocherkassk/Hohlach (Lower Don) burial (ZASSETSKAIA 1995, 56) (fig. 2: 6). The female costume from Novo-Alexandrovka (Azov region) was obviously reconstructed on the basis of that from Sokolova Mogila (LouKiACHKO 1995, 106) (fig. 2: 2).