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

Truth or a lie #2

TRUE


This find is detailed in the book "The Golden Deer of Eurasia". Deer were a common motif in Sarmatian art. These particular statues have wooden cores covered in gold leaf that was hammered on and attached by tiny bronze nails. While they were all made based on some set template, the degree of craftsmanship present varies wildly. Some of them were undoubtedly made by artisans who knew exactly what they were doing. Others were made by people who probably hadn't tried anything like this before. Some show influences from other cultures that those Sarmatians would have been interacting with at the time- meaning that, whoever this leader was, he was important or beloved enough that foreigners took part in paying tribute to him. Below are select pictures from the book. I'd like to try my hand at making one of these someday. Maybe I can get Bob to join me so we have a range of skills from his sculpting experience and my lack thereof. :)

 

Truth or a lie #1

TRUE(almost)

Depending on who you ask, the Alans were Sarmatians or they weren't. It's not a question of "can they trace their genealogy back to older Sarmatian tribes (because they can)- it's a question of where the cultural cutoff is. They were around much longer than the rest of the Sarmatians, so that's to be expected. I haven't learned the details of the differences yet...I have two library books on the Alans sitting on my shelf staring woefully at me while my nose is buried in various paleontology books and papers.
 Anywho, the Sarmatians proper made it all the way from their homelands north of the Caucasus to Britain. They didn't actually choose to go all the way to Britain- it was a single regiment of Iazyges soldiers in the Roman army. The Alans, however went marching all the way to Gaul, where they eventually joined with the Vandals after their king was killed. They then group crossed Gibraltar and went raiding in northern Africa. Another group of Alans traveled eastward and ended up living in what is now Beijing, China as a military attachment in the Mongol army, who then ruled the city. They didn't quite make it all the way to the easternmost part of Eurasia (that would be north of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia), but they still spanned almost the entire continent east-west.
The journeys of various Alan groups are really quite fascinating. They did an awful lot to influence things in western Europe that are never mentioned in world history textbooks. Expect some future posts to give more detailed accounts of their travels and fates.

(Apologies for the lack of references. They'll be added later in April after comprehensive exams are over.)

Happy April Fool's Day!

It’s become tradition, on April Fool’s, for people on the internet to post something untrue and present it as true, then reveal the next day that it was all a prank and they made it up (or else post something true which people believe is false, then the next day revealing that the prank is that it’s actually true, as a clever friend of mine once did). But we all know how the world works- if it’s jokingly presented as truth for the purpose of pranking or for irony, someone will miss the memo and think it fact.

So instead, let’s play a game of “Two truths and a lie.” I’m going to say three things about the Sarmatians and on the 8th, 15th, and 22th I have scheduled the posting of each topic wherein I will explain how and why each is true or false

TRUE OR FALSE?
Sarmatians lived from one end of Eurasia to the other.

TRUE OR FALSE?
Sarmatians had hats that covered their faces.

TRUE OR FALSE?
Dozens of golden deer were found in a Sarmatian king's tomb.

Hiatus

It seems I've taken an unintentional hiatus in my efforts to focus on school. It's comprehensive exams season, so I think it's probably best that I make the hiatus official. I will be posting the results of the tamga class at Bellewode come the end of March, but after that the hiatus will resume until late April.
EDIT: I had forgotten about some posts I wrote ahead of time and scheduled for April. Three of them will be showing up during my hiatus from real-time blogging, so as far as you guys are concerned, it ends at the end of March.

Medieval limp bookbinding

My wedding was very DIY. We designed all the stationary and made the RSVPs ourselves. The RSVP paper was the type made to look like parchment, so I decided I wanted to use it for an illumination project (no point buying the good stuff as a beginner). I enjoy bestiaries and decided that would be a good project which would use all or most of the paper. (For those who don't know, a bestiary is a medieval catalogue of animals. They include ones we now know to be mythical and each entry typically has some sort of moral lesson.)
I'll go into the contents in a later post once I have some pages completed; for now I want to focus on the actual book itself. I decided to make one of my own and stumbled upon this [sadly dead] blog with lots of A&S tips on a variety subjects. The link will take you to her posts on bookbinding.
The style is called "limp binding" because the spine of the book isn't stiff. I've never done bookbinding before and this seemed like an easy place to start (plus we have some scrap leather lying around). I'm not going to go into how it's made or what materials you need because she does such a fantastic job of it.

The one thing she doesn't give is an idea of how far apart the holes need to be. I had found a written how-to which said half an inch from the edges was a good place for the end holes, so that's what I did. The next set in I did an inch away because that roughly seemed to be what she did for her book.

Horizontally, I ended up placing them way too far apart. I only have two signatures of four sheets each in my book and put them about half a centimeter apart. I could probably slip an entire third packet between them, so a quarter of a centimeter apart seems like a good place to start if you make your own.

The flap on mine looks completely different because I only trimmed off the part of my scrap that went beyond overlapping the front cover. It already had an appealing shape, so I decided to keep it.

It's no masterpiece, but it was a fun, worthwhile project. It was really quite easy and only took a single evening to make, so anyone doing an A&S 50 Challenge which could count this, I recommend it.

Heraldic, Scribal, and Dance Symposium 2012

This is a fun event which I attended last year. It's nothing but classes- lectures, discussions, participatory how-tos... It's fantastic for anyone interested in these three broad subjects from the novice to the expert. Even if you're not particularly interested in them, you can take useful classes like Awards and Sumptuary Laws of Calontir, wherein you learn which pointy hats are what rank and how to address them, who wears what color belt, and what each award is for. Last year I taught a participatory class on how to debke. This year I decided to do something related to my persona, so if you're in the neighborhood, why not attend:

 Tamga: The Pre-Heraldic Tradition of Eurasian Nomads

Eurasian nomads used abstract rune-like symbols called tamga in ways much like later standard European heraldry. Some of those funky abstract symbols in Polish heraldry may be later adaptations of them. Basic information about tamga and the particulars of the Sarmatian style will be presented with a Q&A following. 

I'm planning on about 30 minutes of lecture. I'll go over some basic information about tamgas, then switch tracks and discuss the Sarmatian style (like the blurb says). I'll have a Power Point with lots of pictures and provide a handout as well. I'm hoping I can intrigue the audience enough to provoke discussion about how tamga are like Western heraldry and how they differ, and if I'm lucky some discussion on the possible modified tamga in Polish heraldry.
The event takes place in Bellewode (Kirksville, MO) on March 31.

P.S. I haven't gotten my tamga submission together yet, though the incoming new rules seem like they might make it easier to register one. Gathering the materials and writing a convincing academic-sounding argument will take time that I, at the moment, do not have in excess.

*Debke can't without a doubt be traced back to the SCA's period, though there are snippets [that I can't re-find the citations for, grrrr] of information describing a dance that could be debke or proto-debke. It's a least closer to period than belly dance, which is extremely popular in the SCA...but that's a topic for another day.