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. 

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.

Phrygian caps

A couple days ago, I made my first piece of Sarmatian garb- a Phrygian cap. While the name may be unfamiliar, you've all seen them worn by the members of a certain village of blue people.

The association was ever so lovingly pointed out by my fiancé and his best friend. I don't care if it looks silly; it amuses me and I like it. So there. :P

Phrygian caps have been around a long time and worn by many different peoples. The Phrygians in Anatolia are the namesake of the cap, but it spread to other cultures as well. The Greeks associated it with barbarism- which, in the original sense, means "not Greek" and implies an Eastern influence. Among the Romans, it became a symbol of liberty because freed slaves wore it. This association led to its use by French revolutionaries. Their caps were red and bore rosettes. It has since seen use in American and Latin American symbolism for the same reason, including on the seal of my home state.

Basically, it's a tall cap with an asymmetric, rounded apex, usually made in a material soft enough that it flops over. The apex is very blunt. The pointiest I've seen it is on a bust of Queen Dynamis of Bosporus.

According to Salisbury (2001), the cap is actually her royal headdress. The apex is pointier and curvier than most caps you can find pictured. The stars are something I haven't seen elsewhere. 

It also has a trim. The trim is optional- not all caps had it. Both are options for a Sarmatian persona, as illustrated by Köhler (1871).

Köhler's Sarmatians had floppy hats as opposed to Dynamis', which stands up straight. The Dacians on Trajan's column had Phrygian caps which stood up straighter. Given that Sarmatians were raiders and some were also allied with the Dacians during the Dacian wars, it's not a stretch to assume that Sarmatians could have worn hats that stand up too. By the same token, one could also choose to have the back of the hat extend down to cover the neck like the Scythian pictured in Brezinski and Mielczarek (2002). Ear flaps are another modification that was worn, as seen in a hat from Duro-Europas in what is now Lebanon, though I haven't found a record of them among Sarmatians or their contacts. I could just be missing it, so keep it in mind. A pattern for that hat can be found here.

Whether it's floppy or stands up is probably in part due to the fabric and in part to the cut. Wider fabric up top means the hat is less able to stand on its own (since it isn't given shape by your head that high up). If your hat is thicker leather, felt, or felt-lined, it will be stiffer than if it's only made out of linen, wool, or thinner leather.

Köhler indicated that both male and female Sarmatians wore Phrygian caps. Some classical authors say they would go bare-headed (in Brezinski and Mielczarek [2002]), so if you would feel silly wearing a Smurf hat, your outfit would still be complete without.

I had some cheap felt lying around and decided to try making my hat out of it. It's more suitable for the version that stands up. I also chose to make the kind that doesn't extend over the neck or ears. I cut it bigger than it needed to be so I'd have room to play around, then pinned it in various ways until it held the shape I wanted. Because of the shape and size of my fabric, I had to make it in two pieces (normally it would be in one piece). I stitched the edges together with blanket stitching like the Duro-Europas hat. The apex is more concave than I intended, but I'm otherwise happy with how it turned out. Now that I know what shape and size works for my head, I'll make another later on with nicer fabric and put trim on it. I'll make it taller and less concave in the front as well. I'll probably make a floppy one at some point, too.

You can use the third picture below as a base for your own. The dimensions are 11.5 x 8.5 in.

 

Brezinski and Mielczarek (2002), Men-at-Arms: The Sarmatians 600BC-450AD, Osprey publishing.

Harris, J, 1981, The Red Cap of Liberty: A Study of Dress Worn by French Revolutionary Partisans 1789-94, Eighteenth-Century Studies 14.3, p. 283-312.

Köhler, 1871, Die Trachten der Völker in Bild und Schnitt.

Salisbury, JE, 2001, Women in the Ancient World.