A Kickstarter Project You Might Want to Back, Plus General Update

The woman I took an amazing class on kaftans from at Dragon*Con a few years back is writing a book on kaftan design. I just found out about the Kickstarter she's running for it. Only three days left!

Late last year, I got a job in and moved to Caid. Have been to an event and hung out with people a couple times and I think I'm going to very much enjoy this canton/barony (Mons Draconis in Dreiburgen). Graduation has been delayed. Again. At least I got the defense behind me... I'll be graduating in December come hell or high water, and hopefully my sanity will start creeping back in then.
But I'm kind of sick of research at the moment. Have been for quite some time, actually. This dissertation has been slowly killing me... I don't know how long after I finish I'll be willing to start up persona research again. Might be immediately, might be a few months, but the unfortunately-long hiatus from posts that aren't just links to news on other sites will definitely be over sometime next year.

Saka "Golden Woman" Reconstructions

Two years ago, a new, undisturbed find of a wealthy Saka woman from the 4th to 5th centuries BC in western Kazakhstan made the news. Finding an unlooted kurgan is always great news. So many of them were looted in both distant and recent history (in modern cases, many looters melt the gold down, which means all cultural information is lost). A week ago, images of many of the artifacts in her grave, along with reconstructions of some things (like her clothes and her comb) were published here. Take a look through them! It's pretty awesome.
  The claim that her symbols represent a belief in Zoroastrianism confused me. Maybe something was lost in translation, but worshiping a sky/sun god is kind of an ancestral Indo-European thing (discussed in The Horse, The Wheel, and Language), so it should by no means be indicative of Zoroastrianism over other religions in that category.
  Side note 1: The tall hat would have been made of felt over a wooden frame. I don't know more details than that; it's something that was briefly noted in Warrior Women by Davis-Kimball.
  Side note 2: The "Golden Man" is also a woman. But because the archeologists in charge of reporting her operated in a highly patriarchal paradigm, they failed to report it, even though some of them suspected it. It ruffled their feathers that she was buried with a warrior's accoutrements. Davis-Kimball also recounts how she independently figured it out and the reception of her findings in her book.
  One thing I should note before anyone rushes off to recreate her outfit: just because someone is buried in something, doesn't mean they would have worn it in life. It could be funerary clothing. Someone noted on this facebook page that a hat like that is impractical, so why would someone living on the steppes wear it? Couldn't it get blown away by the wind? All I have to offer to counter that is that there are depictions of steppe women wearing tall hats while alive in their goldwork. See this post for one example. However, it's still possible that they were specifically for ceremonial purposes, rather than for everyday use.

Anthony, D.W., 2007, The Horse, The Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, Princeton University Press, pp. 553.
Davis-Kimball, J., and Behan, M., 2002, Warrior Women: An Archaeologist's Search for History's Hidden Heroines, Warner Books, pp. 268. 

Sarmatian-related Objects in the British Museum

  I was actually able to find some Sarmatian-related things in the British Museum! Yay! Many of them were artifacts from sedentary cultures that were either traded from or influenced by their steppe neighbors, be they Sarmatian or contemporaries of the Sarmatians.

  First up is something a sedentary culture picked up from either the Sarmatians or a contemporary steppe culture. They liked to sew gold plaques on their clothing. There were some in a case of Parthian items from the 1st century AD.
  There are tiny holes on the edges for the thread. Not pictured above these were some gold leaves mimicking early Greek head wreaths. The label notes that the wreath was probably placed on a corpse, so in this case the gold plaques may have been a funerary-specific thing.

 There were also a type of small, three-sided arrowhead which were apparently indicative of Central Asian steppe cultures before some sedentary ones decided they were awesome and started using them themselves. They were apparently quick and easy to make and good at piercing armor. They were fired out of recurved bows—also introduced form the steppes.
 These are from a soldier's cemetary (Deve Hüyük) from the mid-6th to 4th century BC in northern Syria, which was then part of the Achaemenid Empire.

  This horse bit is from the same site as the arrowheads. Nothing was said about whether the style was native Achaemenid or steppe-influenced, but I've included it here since it's contemporary and may be of interest to equestrians.
  I wouldn't advise actually using these on your horses, though. The label noted that the knobs on the snaffle, while allowing control with very small movements, would be uncomfortable for the horse.



  They also found items in at least one female grave there. Bronze mirrors were also ritually buried with priestesses in steppe nomad kurgans. It used to have a wooden handle. The bone tube used to have a lid and contained some sort of makeup. The other items are a cloak brooch and bracelets with stylized calf's head motifs.
  Anyone know what the burial practices of an Achaemenid garrison would have been?  Would they bury wives of soldiers there as well? Would they have had a religious leader there? Or did women sometimes fight in their culture like the Sarmatians? The labels didn't say if these were found alongside martial artifacts or not.

  Fast-forward in time to the Sassanian Empire—the last Iranian empire before the spread of Islam. They made seal stamps out of various minerals. People, animals (real and mythical), plants, and inanimate objects were all possible images on the seals. ...So were tamgas. :)
  The BM display only had the one tamga seal (no provenance given), but you can see quite a few more in a private Austrian collection on this website.


   And, finally, there was the Ribchester Hoard. The hoard itself is too early to belong to any of the Iazyges Sarmatians that were stationed there, but other, later Roman artifacts were displayed in the same case. And some of them looked to be lifted from the Sarmatians. One of the re-enactment groups I'll talk about soon discussed how Romans tended to absorb weapon and armor styles from the people they conquered.
  There were a number of weapons in this case—swords, daggers, etc...—and one of them is a ring pommel sword. Ring pommel swords were popular among Sarmatian from the 2nd century to the 2nd century AD (mentioned in the Osprey book on them). They were also used by other Central Asian peoples, though it doesn't seem like they were very popular until later according to the discussion on this forum. About the time the Iazyges were first drafted into the Roman army, ring pommel sword became popular amongst Romans.
  This sword is from the 2nd-3rd century AD, Pevensey, East Sussex. It was found with coins from Emporer Commodus' reign (176-192AD). It was buried in the ground intact. The wood and leather scabbard(?) (I think they may have meant to say grip there...) rotted away, but the tin-coated bronze pommel is intact.

  I'll talk more about the Ribchester Hoard and the Sarmatian ala there in an upcoming post on the Ribchester Roman Museum.

Oldest Pants

Eurasian steppe nomads--bringing you pants since at least 1000 BC.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/first-pants-worn-horse-riders-3000-years-ago
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618214002808

Thoughts on kurta patterns

  Over the past half a year, I've intermittently been rethinking my original ideas about kurta patterns. Some of it is based on a class I attended, some of it on looking further at pictures of the child's kurta and other depictions of kurtas, and some of it from a recent comment on a past post.

Pattern pieces and their shape
  I had originally thought the front flaps would be trapezoids whose bottom width is from hip to hip, but when you look at the child's coat- it's bottom is only a little wider than the top. Laid out so that the opening is vertical down the center, the outside edges pretty much go straight down. The extra bits on the side are gores.

  Jadi Fatima showed her class at KWARCS a Mongol pattern she'd recreated that used gores and gussets like that on the side. The two gores on the armpit were trapezoids as opposed to the triangles anyone who's ever made a generic T-tunic using a period pattern is used to. There were two additional long trapezoids running from below the armpit to the hem.  It looks like the child's kurta eschews the gussets and just has two gores running down the side.

  Scott, the commenter I previously mentioned, makes his kurtas with triangular gores. He described his pattern as follows:

  My kurta uses these long triangular gussets that function as armpit gussets as well. I have found this to be the easiest and most practical way to go about it. I basically use a 3,3,5 pattern, that is rectangular body panels 3 units wide and 5 units long, sleeves 3 units long and 2 units in circumferance at the widest point. Then I can simply alter the width of the triangular gusset and taper of the sleeve to achieve a good fit. For instance, mine is 1m long, with 60cm wide body panels, 60 cm sleeves that are cut 40 cm wide tapering to 25 cm. The triangular gusset starts about 15cm down the sleeve and is 50 cm wide at the bottom hem and is made up of all the scraps, 3 pieces in one and five in the other. If you just leave the front panel whole instead of splitting it, you have a Byzantine style tunic like the one found in that cave in Turkey, or you can make a narrower side gusset, split the front panel and you have a kaftan pattern.

Keeping kurtas closed
  I had thought that the hem should lie horizontally when the kurta is flattened on the ground, but the child's kurta is opened in such a way that it's pointed in front instead. I have a really hard time keeping my crappy attempt at a kurta closed and was considering adding some sort of button to the inside for practicality's sake.

  That still left me wondering how Sarmatians and others would have kept theirs' closed, because I've never seen any sort of internal fastener. That doesn't mean they don't exist- All the pictures of seen of Sarmatians wearing kurtas have them crossed in only one direction (and Sulimirski mentions this), so maybe they had some sort of fastener on the inside and we just don't have one preserved today [that I know of].

  The one Gamble made for me actually stays closed on its own because the fake silk brocade on the inside creates enough friction that it doesn't budge much. The moleskin on the mine has a slick inside surface that wants to move. I'm sure leather would create friction more like the brocade does. Quilted cotton, too. So maybe fasteners just wouldn't have been needed?

Open vs. closed
  The kurtas of the Scythians on the Greek-made jug and jewelry are barely crossing and have a vertical slit down the center. Someone sent me a link to a Scythian A&S entry in another kingdom (Northshield or Midrealm, I don't remember which), which also demonstrated the vertical opening down the center. I really wish I could find that link, because they created an entire outfit and it was gorgeous. After flipping back and forth through depictions of kurtas with vertical openings (I'm going to call this "open") and those with flaps crossing the front of the body (I'm calling this "closed"), something Jadi had said years ago at Dragon*Con  (and repeated at KWARCS) struck me- what if it's the same pattern, just worn differently by the Scythians than by the Sarmatians?

  She had been trying to figure out a pattern for an open kaftan. I don't remember if it was Persian or Mongol. She just couldn't get the neckline right. She'd already made a closed kaftan from the same culture and was standing in front of the mirror one day while the kaftan was unbelted and hanging open and realized she was wearing the open kaftan. It was the same exact garment.

  This kaftan had fasteners in the same place as you see on Mongol kaftans and some extra attachments on the inside edge of the underflap. Going horseback riding? Cross the flaps and fasten the overflap at the armpit to keep the wind off your front. Walking around town on a hot day? Attach the outer flap to the inside buttons so that there's a vertical slit down the middle.

  Under the assumption that Iranian steppe nomads didn't have fasteners, one could either cross or not cross it before putting on the belt depending on which culture you're emulating. If they did have fasteners, it could be a similar setup to the Persian kaftan.

Turnshoes Part 1: From Foot to Paper

  I am sorely in need of period shoes and have held off buying any because I want Sarmatian shoes and nothing I've seen sold in the SCA looks like them. Our new A&S officer does a lot of leatherworking and he and his wife host craft days about once a month, so I'm finally getting around to doing it. This is a rather lengthy process, so this will be a mulit-part post.

  The first thing you need to do is figure out how to turn the 3D shape of your foot into a 2D shape to cut out of leather. The shape you end up with after doing the steps in this post is not the final pattern. It's a key to what shape your pattern needs to fit and can be used to figure out any turnshoe pattern be it Sarmatian, Norse, or whatever. There are multiple ways to do this. I used the tape method.

Materials:
Two pairs of socks
Two plastic bags
Masking or artist's tape
Fabric measuring tape
Scissors
A marker that can write on the tape (like a permanent marker)
Paper good for pattern drafting
A buddy

Step 1: Prepwork

Apologies for the poor image
quality. I forgot to take my
camera and had to use my phone.

  Put on two pairs of socks (yep, one over the other). One should be the thickness of the socks you'll wear with these shoes. The other should not be thin because it gives you wiggle room. Then stick your feet in plastic bags. They should at least reach your ankle. It doesn't need to go higher no matter how tall your boot. That part is added on later. You'll be taping on top of the plastic bag. The directions I used did not include the plastic bag, but we didn't have any sacrificial socks. If you've got some odd socks, you can skip the plastic bag and just cut through the outer sock.
  
Step 2: Make a Tape Shoe
  You might want a friend to do this part for you so you can stand like normal. Use pieces of tape no more than 3 inches long to tape over your toes (one end on top of your toes, the other on the underside). This is to create the shape for the end of your foot. Then wrap pieces about 7 inches long around your feet to cover the rest of you foot up to the ankle. Overlap each successive piece about a third of their width.

Step 3: Mark Off Parts of Foot
  You'll want your friend to do the marking while you stand. Between the socks and tape, things won't be quite obvious, so flex joints where relevant to help them out. Flex your toes so they can see where their base is. Draw a line separating the toes from the rest of the foot. Now do the same right in front of the base of your leg. Draw a longitudinal line between the big toe and the rest and continue it up the crest of your foot. Draw a vertical one along the back point of the heel. Find the ankle bones that stick out to the sides and draw vertical lines leading from them to the ground.
  Wrap the measuring tape horizontally around the ankle joint. Extend the ends onto the top of the foot. It will not be completely horizontal in front of the leg. To keep the tape flat against the foot, the ends will curl in towards the center of the foot. Make a mark where they cross. Make two more marks on either side of your toes where they start to curve into  the relatively flat sides of the feet.

Step 4: Demarcate the Sole 
  Stand on the paper. Use the marker to draw the shape of your feet onto the paper. Make tick marks everywhere there's a line or mark on your foot. Cut out the two soles. Next, have your friend hold each sole against the bottom of your foot and make an outline of the sole on the tape.

Step 5: Cut off the Tape
   Cut down the vertical line along the inside of your heel to where it meets the sole outline. Cut along the sole outline to the tick mark where your toe curves. Now you can take your feet out. You don't need to wear the socks anymore, either. Continue cutting the sole away from the top of the foot.

Step 6: Flatten the Tape
  Cut away any excess plastic around the edge and on the underside. The parts around the toes and heels are not going to flatten without some modifications. Make small cuts 1 cm long every 1.3-2 cm between the two toe-curvature tick marks and around the heel line. This will help you flatten those parts down. There will be some folding where the leg meets the top of the foot; that's fine.

  Now you have a 2D version of your foot and are ready to make a pattern.

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

Kohler, K., Die Trachten der VölKer in Bild und Schnitt:

 Frazier, J., 2008, The Basic Craft of Turnshoes, The Compleat Anachronist, i. 140. 

Knowne Worlde Academy of Rapier and Clothing Symposium

  The annual SCA-wide fencing and clothing event was this past weekend (as was Calontir's Crown Tourney- congrats to Their new Excellencies Donngal and Catalina!).

  Unfortunate circumstances led to me missing all the morning classes I wanted to go to on subjects such as body mechanics and single rapier fundamentals, so the only fencing class I went to was the rapier and dagger master class. I got some good tips out of it for future reference, but I don't own a dagger yet and the room was waaaay too crowded, so I didn't get to actually try anything.

  The clothing class, however, was extremely beneficial. It turns out I took a class from the same teacher at Dragon*Con two years ago. She taught back-to-back classes on making patterns for Central Asian kaftans (caftans with her spelling; it doesn't really matter). She also gave us background info (hurray!) on why kaftans were constructed the way they were. Having two layers in front with a wrap kaftan I knew about- it combats the cold wind blowing straight at you when you're riding a horse. She also talked about the vestiges of those original purposes which were retained in later period sedentary cultures. One thing she pointed out (which she also talked about in the D*Con class) was how she'd spent a long time trying to figure out the neckline in a Persian (I think) kaftan, only to realize that it was the same pattern used by Turkic nomads, just the two sides attached down the center instead of wrapped.
  She had this brilliant method of teaching us a basic Turkic nomad kaftan pattern. She passed out pieces of fabric for us to cut the pieces for miniature kaftans out of. The fabric was black and white checked, which meant you could designate each small square as being a certain number of inches. It works brilliantly! I need to find some of that now.
One of the things she pointed out that had been bothering me when trying to draft patterns was shoulders. I couldn't figure out how to get the shoulder seams to lay flat against me. Turns out they aren't supposed to (at least not before later period kaftans). Shoulder seams should be straight and the pooching in front is supposed to be there.
Her name is Jadi Fatima. She primarily researches Ottoman, Mongolian, and Persian culture, textiles, and dance. She does brilliant work and I highly encourage visiting her website.

There was a ball Saturday night, for which my ride and I were the only musicians. Christian is a music Laurel (he mostly played recorder with a little guitar) and I played the drum. ...That was the second time I've picked up a bodhran. I think I did okay. o_o As he described the situation, all the musicians were from Calontir and we definitely stayed in tune the entire time.

Event this weekend

I am going to be a bad, bad Calontiri this weekend. It's Crown Tournament...but the Knowne World Academy of the Rapier/Known Worlde Clothing Symposium is also this weekend and just four hours away in the Midrealm (in Itasca, IL). As much as I've been wanting to go to Crown (I've never been to one. :( ), Gamble and I are trying to teach ourselves cut-and-thrust and have no mentors to learn from locally. We're on the Calontir Steel e-mail list, but there's only so much you can learn through exchanging e-mails. This is an excellent opportunity for us to absorb as much information as possible from experts in person and I just can't justify passing it up, seeing as Crown happens twice a year and the odds of this event being near us again are pretty low. On top of that, Gamble isn't sure what style of clothing he wants to wear in the SCA, so this is a fantastic opportunity for him to see examples from all sorts of time periods and cultures.
Anyone else heading over there?

My Anniversary Present!

The hiatus is over now. :)
I've been waiting to post this one for quite a while. I initially held off because it was my husband's entry in Queen's Prize and I wanted to wait to post it until it was over. Then the mundane busy-ness happened.
My husband (who has started going by Gamble in the SCA) is awesome. I was traveling for five weeks prior to our first anniversary and he spent that time secretly plotting and planning my present. I came home to this:

  He looked through the Sarmatian books I'd left behind and referenced a bath robe and jacket I have to make the pattern and figure out the measurements. The extra triangular sections on the front are there because the initial cut didn't wrap around as far as he wanted.
  We don't have a sewing machine, so he hand-sewed the entire thing. He's almost as new to sewing as me (and much better!) and wanted to play around with reversibility, so it's reversible. He used some of the fabric gifted to my by Juturna to imitate deerskin leather and found some polyester imitation silk at the local fabric store. He made it reversible for the heck of it and it is awesome.
   I'll take some measurements and update this post later so everyone has a tried and true kurta  pattern to work with.

Steppe Nomad Symbolism for SCA Armory

   I’ve talked about tamgas being a heraldic tradition of steppe nomads before, but what if your particular culture and time didn’t have tamgas, didn’t use them as heraldry, or you just don't want one? There are still plenty of ways to make your Western-style armory reflect your steppe persona. Just think about symbolism that would have been important to your culture and put that on your device or badge. Mine their art for ideas as well as thinking about their modes of life.
    Below are some ideas. Can you think of any others? Add them in the comments!

Weapons
    Steppe nomads were not exactly a peaceful lot. They raided, they were mercenaries, they fought against empires that threatened them… They also got a lot of their sustenance from hunting. Bows (think Mongol-type bows, not longbows) and arrows were used both for hunting and in combat (Parthian shots ftw!). Some Sarmatian tribes, like the Iazyges, used long lances in combat. Swords and daggers were also prolific (swords in particular held strong symbolic significance for some, such as the Alans). When you emblazon them, just pick the type your persona would have had. Sarmatians were known for swords with little to no guard and ring pommels. They also had dirks which they carried in sheaths strapped to their thighs rather than hanging from their belts as Westerners would have done.

Ring pommels were popular between the 2nd cent. BC and 2nd cent. AD around the Black Sea and Hungarian Plain. They were usually 50-60 cm long, and sometimes had semi-precious stones set in the rings. These are from the Odessa Archeological Museum. (Brzezinski and Mielczarek, 2002)

Vestments
    What would your persona wear? What type of kaftan did their culture have? Were their boots distinctive? What about hats? What type of armor did they wear? Any torques or other commonly-worn accessories? All of these are possible charges.

People
    People are not common in armory- partially because most don’t care for them as charges and partially because they’re harder to draw/sew/embroider/etc… for most. If you do like them, though, you can have people standing around, people riding horses, people shooting bows, etc… Just give them the sort of racial features and proportions your nomads would have had, dress them up in their clothes, and make any other accoutrements persona-appropriate.

Models of dwellings from
Kirch, Crimea circa 600 BC.
(Andrews, 1999)

Wagons and Tents
    Steppe nomads did not simply sleep on the ground or in a bedroll; they had wagons and tents (which or what they look like depends on your persona). You could have a tent or wagon simply placed on your device, show them being drawn or carried by horses, cattle, or camels, or you could have multiples arranged to symbolize an encampment (heraldic options for this are semy, in orle, a semy on a bordure, or in a train (try “on a fess, x wagons/pack animal”).
  
Horses
    The single most important animal in a steppe nomad’s life is their horse. They are transportation, source of dairy, indicator of wealth and status, pack animals, mount during hunting or combat- everything. This makes them an extremely appropriate charge for a steppe nomad’s armory. 

Running deer from: 1-2)The Ukraine,
3-5) Russia, 6) Iran, 7) Kazakhstan,
8) Mongolia. (Lebydynsky, 2011)

 Deer
    Early steppe nomads- both Iranian and Altaic- really like deer as art subjects. This wonderful figure from Lebedensky’s Tamga book illustrates the uniformity of just one deer motif. They sculpted, painted, and sewed them standing, lying down, being attacked by predators, with their legs turned 180 degrees (registering that might be hairy, though you could display it that way), and running. In Western (and SCA) heraldry, courant invokes the image of legs extended, but the steppe depiction is the moment in the stride where the legs are tucked under the body.

Griffins
    Griffins are of huge importance to Iranian steppe nomads. Unlike later Western griffins, it isn’t simply the back half of a lion glued onto the front half of an eagle with ears. You take something that looks like a lioness (or maneless male lion), add bird wings, a beak, pointy, feathery ears, and a fish-fin type crest running down the length of its neck. If you want to get really fancy, have it vulning (standing on top of and attacking) a deer or ibex. Depending on your culture, the deer’s legs may or may not be twisted 180 degrees from the front of the body.

 Camels

Phalera with two Bactrian camels.
Bronze, Filippovka, 4th cent. BC.
(The Golden Deer of Eurasia)
They have pompadour mullets!

    Camels were (and are) important to many Altaic nomads. A fairly common theme that you see in nomadic art is two Bactrian camels with fangs standing side-by-side and biting each others' back legs. I seriously doubt that particular pose could be registered, but the “combatant” pose was created with the intention to show animals attacking one another, so try registering that instead (the word may be changed to “respectant” during registration since they’re herbivorous). Alternatively, you could have them standing and facing one another (statant respectant). Then when you display it, shift it to the form more appropriate to your persona.

Monsters
    You don’t often see unique chimerical monsters in SCA heraldry, but they do exist and are completely registrable (there are currently 37 registered). You just have to blazon the different parts they’re made of. Some steppe nomads left behind depictions of chimerical monsters. The most common example it to start with either a deer or a horse. Say you have a deer- you can give it a bird beak. You may put stylized griffin heads on the ends of its antler tines. The blazon would read something like "a monster composed of the beak of an eagle and the body of a deer, with antler tines ending in gryphon heads". If you start with a horse instead, you do the same thing while adding deer antlers.

In steppe terms, this is a lion-headed, goat-horned gryphon (with front leg proportions more akin to a goat, but still ending in paws). Because of the difference between medieval gryphons and early steppe gryphons, this chimaera would be better blazoned as "a bird-winged monster composed of an ounce's head, paws, hindquarters, and tail, a goat's horns, ears, and forequarters, and a dragon's neck" if you want to register something like this in the SCA. It could be taken to be couchant (lying down) or sejant erect (sitting, but with front legs raise), but make it more obviously one or the other for registration purposes. It's wings are addorsed and inverted if you want to blazon that detail. Remember that steppe art involves squishing and stretching things to fit the space.
From a scabbard made by a Greek with Scythian designs and for a Scythian. Gold, PLACE, TIME. (From the Lands of the Scythians)

 What Not to Have

   Once you've come up with a steppe-themed charge, you might find that you want to put a little bit more on your device but don't want the rest of the obviously steppe options. Instead, you might find yourself flipping through the PicDic or medieval armorials for possible charges. What should you avoid if you want it to still make sense for a nomad? Big ships, for one- horse nomads have no reason to go sailing (unless you want to be one of those Iazyges who went to what's now England, or an Alan who crossed Gibraltar to raid with the Goths, but those were one-off trips). That's not to say they didn't fish in rivers or any of the seas in or near the steppes- you can occasionally find a zoomorphic fish- but big whales? No. Pelagic fish? No. Also avoid any objects which postdate your particular culture or that they never would have encountered. Maunches, for example- the angel-armed sleeves- are not from a time or place in which they could be encountered by a Saka. Farming implements (aside from some involved in animal husbandry) would also be uncharacteristic. If your persona didn't have a written language, books and quill pens wouldn't make much sense. Unless you have evidence that a steppe nomad encountered tales or depictions of New World fauna, it would be best to avoid them considering how temporally and geographically restricted knowledge of them was in SCA period. These are just a few examples. Basically, just do your homework and use your best judgement when picking charges not specific to steppe nomads. :)

One Final Note

   Keep in mind with all of these that if a steppe nomad motif looks much different from the Western standard, there is the risk of it not being registered if submitted as such. I’m not saying it couldn’t, but keep in mind that typical SCA heralds have to be able to blazon it consistently. Stylized zoomorphic art has been registered in the past, but so far as I know it isn't anymore, so definitely avoid that aspect when drawing for submission. When it comes time to display your armory, though, show everyone your steppe persona!

From the Lands of the Scythians: Ancient Treasures from the Museums of the USSR, 3000 BC-100BC, Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol 32, no. 5, 1975.

The Golden Deer of Eurasia: Scythian and Sarmatian Treasures from the Russian Steppes, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000.

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

Andrews, P, 1999, Felt Tents and Pavilions, Melisende UK Ltd.

Lebydynsky, I, 2011, Les Tamgas: Une "Héraldique" de la Steppe, éditions errance.

Notes From Lilies

Lilies was so much fun! I learned a lot about many different subjects, including how to do a handful of crafts, and met a bunch of fun and nice people in the process. I weaved a seamless bag which I need to felt now. My husband made a leather jack and did really well with the tooling. He is much better at basket-weaving than I. I also learned that Yoda speaks Latin in English. My husband (now going by the name he'll be submitting, Gamble) and I are going to buy a couple rapiers to practice Calontir Steel cut and thrust on our own. I really, really need to find a place where I can practice thrown weapons 'cause it is tons of fun. Especially spears. We also saw Their Royal Majesties and Highnesses from five kingdoms do the wave in court.
I drew two device submissions for heraldic consultants. One of the pre-prints I had painted previously was given to a new Boga-Fyrd. I was the only entrant in the borders competition, but was assured I didn't win by default. I drew up another zoomorphic border. I'm kicking myself for forgetting to take a picture before handing it off... I did two deer with their hind limbs flipped above their backs and long antlers filling up the extra space- one on the top left corner, the other on the bottom right with antlers extending vertically up/down the sides of the sheet (scroll is in landscape format), and horizontally to the center of the page. At the center, they turn vertically toward the center of the sheet for just an inch or so to hold onto a blank circle for an order badge at top and a blank escutcheon for personal arms at the bottom. Their Majesties' scribe suggested painting around the colors instead of over them since she's seen paint not stick to gold gesso before. I picked up an illumination how-to book which described a masking method that might make that easier to do. I'm excited to try it out next time.

I finished skimming through the giant French tamga book in time for my class at Lilies. I had one student who's currently exploring Mongol stuff and we had a lot of fun talking shop. It would probably be a copyright violation to post translations of the book online, but I will e-mail relevant passages to anyone who asks as well as discussing each chapter on here once I'm finished translating each one.

Ashina Turk on the left, modern Mongol on the right

On a related note, to the reader who asked for a raven tamga- There actually was a tamga in the book which means "crow/raven" (the French word used, corbeau, does not differentiate between the two). It seems that tamgas didn't have specific names or meanings (other than identifying the one who uses it) in the beginning, but later on some were given names. Modern tamgas in Mongolia are still used this way, including the raven tamga. This tamga first showed up in a source cited as "The Book of Tang". It was compiled from earlier sources in the tenth century and in it are illustrated the tamgas representing various nomadic tribes within the then-borders of China. A Turkic clan called the Ashina used a tamga basically identical to the modern Mongol raven tamga.


The dumpling class was an even bigger success. I had seven people show up and they all seemed to really enjoy themselves. I ended up giving out a couple copies of the recipe beyond the class as well. I almost entered them in the "Cooked On Site" competition, but given that I forgot to re-look up and write down the scant documentation I'd found beforehand, I decided to wait until next year.
If you have the opportunity to go next year, I highly recommend it. So much fun!

Possible kurta pattern

At the request of a reader, here's a possible pattern for a kurta. I don't have time to test it before leaving for Lilies, so if anyone tries this, let me know any problems or ah-ha moments you have. It's based on the child's kurta in the Hermitage Museum I posted previously.

I would recommend not actually cutting the triangles out of the sleeves (just sew along where the seam should go) until you've tested whether you have full range of motion with your arms. It's entirely possible that it could have a more complex shape than a straight line.

This post will be updated after I make one.

Eight Strand Braid

   My sister convinced me to join Pinterest yesterday. I've already seen some interesting stuff on there, including this tutorial for braiding eight strands together, posted by another Shadowdalian. I saw it and the craft bug hit. It looked fun and easy and my SCA belt is MIA. But I'm not currently home, so I had to run to the local arts & crafts store and buy supplies. It was a Michael's, so the selection was minimal. I ended up buying some fasteners intended for necklaces and pendants to function as belt buckles. They didn't have any fasteners that jumped out at me (I bought a pack of plain ones in case I decide to give some away), so I had to do some finagling to make a pendant work. They also didn't have any string-type things similar to what the person in the tutorial was using in the colors of my device (the resubmission of which has finally been put on an ILoI. Yay!), so I ended up just going with yarn. This means the belt is very narrow (~1cm) and you can't make out the pattern anywhere near as well, which is fine. It's still functional, was fun to do, and I like the way it looks. And to top it all off, it only took about 2 1/2 hours to make.


Here's the pendant. I like that the two pieces fastened together look like they could be two parts of a belt buckle even though they aren't.

 
Here's an example of what the braiding looks like. I used two strands of black, one of silver, and one of blue (all doubled over to make eight strands). The black strands started on the outside.

To make it both removable and fastenable, I added the following steps to the parent tutorial:
1) Thread all loose ends through the other end of the pendant. I wanted the hanging part to be unbraided, but you could also braid it for the entire length if you so desire.
2) Slip it over your head and down to your waist, keeping track of the longest it needed to be to comfortably go around them.
3) While it's at this length, tie a knot just beyond the pendant. Pull to tighten and cut off unwanted length of thread beyond knot. This knot keeps the belt from coming out of that end.

4) To fix it in place, cinch it, then tie the same sort of loose knot as you would with the ring belts you see a lot in the SCA. To remove, just untie that knot and slip it back over your head and shoulders.

   UPDATE: I made this belt in Calontir's colors two days ago after finding a Joanne's with more selections. The buckle is actually intended to be part of a purse; I'm guessing the attachment for bag to handle. They had several options that work well as simple open buckles. The string is rattail cord. It's not period by any stretch of the imagination, but it's sturdy, holds it's shape well, and passes the 10-foot test. I could probably have left the end unknotted and it would be fine since it isn't prone to fraying, but I did it anyway just to be sure. It also makes the pattern very easy to see. The yellows both started on the outside, so there's a series of lopsided 'V''s running down its length.
   I did the braiding the entire length this time. It can accommodate up to about a 48" waist after being tied off. I intend to give it to the Crown as largesse, so the length puts much less of a restriction on who can wear it.

Phrygian Caps Take Two

   I made a second Phrygian cap to wear at Lilies. It's my first war (a big interkingdom SCA event), and I wanted something patriotic to wear. This cap is designed as Calontir's populace badge (a badge than any Calontiri can wear to show their association with the kingdom). The blazon is "Purpure, a falcon striking within a bordure Or".

   I used this pattern to make a different style than my red hat. It's taller and has flaps over the ears. The purple part is one piece. When you cut it out, the backside of the cap is the midline, so you fold your fabric over there. The two pieces are stitched together along the crown.  There isn't any overlap in my finished piece. I think the point of it is to size it to different size heads, so I cut off the excess.

I had to trim the open edge around the face a bit to get it to look right, so play around with the pattern based on how it sits on your head. Another thing I did differently is that I didn't fold the back piece under as indicated on the other website. The back wasn't sitting low enough for my tastes and I'm not sure what the purpose of cutting that flap out was in the first place. I had already cut the slots, though, so I didn't sew them back together. Maybe they'll allow a bit of give when putting it on one's head? They're covered by the bordure.

   Like my red one, it's entirely made of felt. I don't know if steppe nomads did felt on felt designs, but they did felt on leather (like this saddle blanket). I didn't have purple leather, though, so I used some of the purple and yellow felt I had leftover from another project. I couldn't find my yellow or purple thread before I left town to do research, so I used black thread instead. Had I found them, the thread on the bordure would have been yellow and the rest purple.

   The stitching is all blanket stitching (like the last) except for the stitching on the falcons and the stitching holding the bordure on inside the cap- those I did as straight stitches. The internal border was to save time since no one will see it. I've never done embroidery before, so I have no idea if what I did on the falcon is period or even correct, but I had to show the internal detailing somehow.

Here, the top is depressed so the point points up.

   I did the bordure as separate pieces since there are so many turns. The stitching holding the pieces together is also blanket stitching, but I did that stiching on the underside so less thread would be visible on the outside.

Truth or a lie #3

FALSE

The Sarmatians didn't have a hat with flaps worn over the face, but someone had a hat with flaps sewn above the face.
If you go to the Hermitage Museum's collections database and type in "Sarmatian", one of the entries that comes up is this:

Hat
Fur; h. 21 cm
Tashtyk Culture. 3rd - 4th century
Oglakhty Burial VI, Grave No. 4 (Excavations of Prof. L.R. Kyzlasov), South Siberia, Khakassia Republic, left bank of the River Yenisei, near Mount Oglakhty
Russia
Source of Entry:   Archaeological Expedition to Khakassia of the Moscow State University. 1969

There it is- a hat with flaps over the face. It's kind of odd and I highly doubt they were worn that way since they'd cover the eyes and all that. Perhaps they were wrapped around the sides of the face and tied under the chin to keep the sides of the face warm? Or else tied behind the head to help hold it on?
You may notice that the caption says nothing about Sarmatians, but instead mentions the Tashtyk culture. The Tashtyks might be the same people as the Yenisei Kirghiz ( Name culture=lingo for archeological finds of uncertain affinity), but they're too far east to be Sarmatians (they definitely aren't Alans in service to Mongols). The child's coat from the kurta post is another Tashtyk artifact, but so close to Sarmatian style that I have no issue presenting it as something to base a pattern on for Sarmatian personae (steppe nomads shared a lot of similarities). This hat I haven't seen anywhere else so it's probably something particular to the Tashtyk.


www.heritagemuseum.org
Grousset, R., 1970, The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia, Rutgers University Press, 718 pp.
Xipoliya Yanke Suo Jian Xiajiesi Monijiao" ("Siberan Rock Arts and Xiajiesi's Manicheism") 1998 Gansu Mingzu Yanjiu

Kurtas

  Sarmatians are usually pictured with a type of jacket called a kurta over their tunics. Kurtas are a type of kaftan, which are worn in various forms by Asian peoples such as Mongols and Indians. Picture a T-tunic in which the front is made of two triangular flaps which cross one over the other and you'll have the general appearance of a kurta (for Sarmatians, it seems the right flap goes on top). The Sarmatians cut them off at mid-thigh and they could have slits up the sides. This kept them from bunching up and pulling or whatnot while riding a horse. Some sort of trim could be included.

The man on the horse is wearing a quilted kurta. The one being attacked is a Scythian. I'm not sure what the woman's jacket was based on.

Wrist straps

  The ends of the sleeves could be longer than the wrist (though they weren't all this way). The reason for this was to create a hand flap which functioned as a sort of glove when the temperature was cold. If you don't want the glove, you pull the end back over your wrist. There's an image of Scythian men with this same modification and they have straps hanging down which would have been sewn to the inside of the sleeve. I'm guessing the straps were used to tie the hand flap closed. In the image, they had the flaps folded back over their wrists and let the ties hang. It looks like the ties end in a big triangular shape.

A pot made by Greeks. They seemed to have made a lot of things depicting the Scythians for the Scythians

  The fronts of these Scythian jackets look a little different from Sarmatian kurtas, though- this particular style has two slits in front- one over the mid thigh and one over the inner-thigh. I haven't seen this in any Sarmatian kurtas.

Scythian kurta with multiple slits

A polka-dotted Scythian

  Sarmatian kurtas could be made out of leather (deer is common) or cotton (which can be quilted). They could also be lined in fur (squirrel seems to be common). Cotton might seem out of time for those of you who have Western personas, but it was around and used for clothing in the East long before it showed up in the West. They could be decorated with floral or geometric designs. Little gold plaques which would have been sewn on are commonly found in kurgans. Fabric paint is another option which is known to have been used by Scythians (One known paint pattern- polka dots. C'est amusant.). There's a leather saddle with felt appliques preserved, so it seems like a logical inference to say leather kurtas could too, but I haven't seen any examples illustrating this. You have the option to include it if you lean heavily towards the "creative" side of the SCA, but unless I find evidence of it, I don't really feel comfortable including them on mine. For the most part, though, Sarmatian kurtas seem relatively unadorned in comparison with Scythian ones.
  Most of the documentation you find will be in images of the Sarmatians created by other people. We actually did get very lucky, though, in that a child's kurta was preserved in a Siberian kurgan, which is now housed in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russian.

Child's Fur Coat
Fur; l. 35 cm
Tashtyk Culture. 3rd - 4th century
Oglakhty Burial VI, Grave No. 4 (Excavations of Prof. L.R. Kyzlasov), South Siberia, Khakassia Republic, left bank of the River Yenisei, near Mount Oglakhty, Russia
Source of Entry:   Archaeological Expedition to Khakassia of the Moscow State University. 1969

  I just made my first kurta in time to wear at the St. Denys' Day event. I wanted to go the leather route, but unless I had gotten lucky and found enough for sale at an event, my cheapest option was to invoke the unwritten "Ten Foot Rule" (if it looks genuine from ten feet, it's acceptable [unless on enchanted grounds]). Which means that this financially-limited student used tan moleskin from Joanne's Fabrics to imitate deer leather.
  I did some things wrongly because my measurements turned out to be wrong- the jacket doesn't go past my hips, for one- but given that I'm a novice seamstress making my first kurta, I wasn't expecting perfection (another reason I used cheaper fabric). From a lot of the depictions, it seems like they didn't have inserts (gores and gussets), but I didn't trust my patterning skills (or lack thereof) to make one without gussets in which I my arms would still have full mobility, so I included them. But then I more closely examined the child's coat above, and it looks to have gores that go all the way from hem to armpit sewn next to roughly rectangular front pieces. The shape modifications around the arm-body seam look similar to those in the above depiction of Scythian men. I'll try this solution in my next run and see how that goes.
  Because I used woven fabric instead of leather, I had to hem all ends that weren't cut on the bias, though the child's coat didn't have them except maybe on the ends of the sleeves (one side looks like it was hemmed but the other doesn't; not entirely sure what's going on there). Other options I chose were: side slits, no hand flaps, and no decorations
  Below are results of the pattern I actually used. Once I make another, I'll do a second post about the modified pattern. Don't make your own with this pattern, it's only here for future reference so you can see the differences from it and from a standard T-tunic build. There are so many things wrong with it...

Finished product

Waaaaay too short

*--Unless otherwise specified, pictures of artifacts all come from "From the Lands of the Scythians"

From The Land of the Scythians: Ancient Treasures from the Museums of the U.S.S.R., 3000 B.C. - 100 B.C. (Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Volume XXXII, Number 5, 1975)
Brzezinski, R., and Mielczarek, M., 2002, Men-at-Arms: The Sarmatians 600BC-450AD, Osprey publishing.
Sulimirski, T., 1970,  The Sarmatians, vol. 73 of Ancient Peoples and Places, Praeger Publishers, Inc.