What's a Sarmatian and why did I choose to be one?

If you've heard of the Sarmatians, and haven't learned a lot about history beyond what a standard US world history book deems worthy of mention, it's probably because of the 2004 incarnation of King Arthur. They used the  idea that Sarmatians were the main origin of the King Arthur story to the point that the Knights of the Round Table (Sir Lancelot foremost among them) were portrayed as Sarmatian horsemen in the Roman army (a few Arthurian scholars accept this, most don't; more on this later).

 The most basic thing you should know about the Sarmatians is that "Sarmatian" is a collective term for some of the Indo-Iranian nomadic tribes of horsemen who inhabited the steppes of the southwest areas of the Soviet Union from about 600BC to 450 AD. They spoke a language in the Northeastern Iranian group, whose only representatives spoken today are Ossetic (directly descended from the Scytho-Sarmatian dialects) and Yaghnobi. Sarmatians raided neighboring areas for much of their history, making some tribes a thorn in the side of the Roman Empire. Other Sarmatian tribes joined the Roman legions. They used bows and lances, wore scale mail made of horses hooves or bronze, and lived in wagons. Over the centuries, they were largely driven westward by the Goths and the Huns until they eventually melded with other groups and disappeared as a distinct people.

 I spent the entire summer after my first fighter practice researching various cultures to find the one that felt right for me. At that point fighting was my main interest. I wanted to be authentic in that whatever culture I picked, I, not being male, would have fought had I actually belonged to it. I spent days sifting through every pre-16th century culture whose name I could come across until I found references to the idea that Sarmatians are as a possible source for the legends of the Amazons (more on that later, as well). Turns out some Sarmatian burial sites have female skeletons dressed like male warriors. It was perfect! I continued sifting through other cultures, but they ended up being the only ones with a prominent history of female warriors.

Abaev, VI, A Grammatical Sketch of Ossetian, trans. Stephen P. Hill, ed. Herbert H. Paper, 1964. 

Anthony, DW, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language, Princeton University Press, 2007

Brezinski, R, and Mielczarek, M,  Men at Arms:The Sarmatians 600BC-450AD, Osprey Publishing, 2002.