And nowhere - for example, in the preface - does it politely say that the deceased was very wrong? Someone try convinced me that there is a normal historical science in England....
Heather notes that Thompson's work largely holds up today, due in part to his familiarity with contemporary Russian ethnographers. Heather also notes that in the revision Thompson was heavily relying on the work of the Russian historian AM Khazanov's work on nomad cultures.
pecheneg said:
And? The dead were buried naked with a sword? This is not to mention the fact that it is just easy to cut off too expensive, and in the vast majority of burials there is no status import. There are no objections about the ceremony, as I understand it.
I was using the Frankish sword as an example of how people can be buried with items not from their material culture. Without a vastly more complete understanding of material cultures in the region, we have effectively no way of translating an item into an identity. Look at it this way: suppose we can clearly identify a certain type of item as indisputably of Hunnic origin. That does not mean the person buried with it identified as a Hun. Perhaps he won it in a battle and treated it as a trophy. Perhaps he was given it from a Hunnic notable as a gift to an allied -but separate- people. Perhaps he was buried with it simply because the culture he was from expected him to be buried with that sort of item and the Hunnic one was the closest one to hand.
pecheneg said:
Аnd what prevents you from right-clicking on the text? Pictures with a bunch of arrowheads?
When I initially clicked the link, the google translate plugin on my phone didn't want to translate it. I tried again on my computer and the google translate feature worked.
As far as the article provided go, I focused on the archaeology section, and it falls into all the problems about archaeology and faintly ridiculous comparisons. For example:
In 451, during the battle on the Catalaunian fields, after the Huns were forced to take refuge in their fortified camp, Atgila ordered to build a bonfire from horse saddles inside him, into which he intended to throw himself, so as not to fall alive into the hands of enemies (Iord.
Get . 213;. Paul Diac.
HR XIV, 7). The frame of these saddles was undoubtedly made of wood, otherwise they would have been completely unsuitable for fuel for a fire. The use by the Huns of saddles of a rigid wooden structure, equipped with front and rear protrusions - "bows", is definitely indicated by the finds in the burial monuments of the Hunnic era of metal (gold and silver) and bone plates for ribbons and front bows
{88} (Fig. 50,
2– ten).Note that no later than the end of the 3rd century. BC. wooden saddles were used by the Central Asian Xiongnu, who, if necessary, could build temporary ground fortifications from them, placing the saddles on top of each other at a great height
The Huns on one occasion burned their saddles, and the Hsiung-Nu were noted to use saddles to create fortifications - clear cultural link!
Similar problems with identifying the burials. How do we know they are Hunnic burials, as opposed to one of the other peoples from the region?
When the authors talk about how bows used by the Huns are similar to that used by the Hsiung-Nu, their example of a 'Hunnic' bow is a
modern reconstruction. A modern reconstruction of what? It looks significantly different than the bow found in a grave in southern Poland the authors assume to be Hunnic.
The authors also have to admit what Marcellinus considers to be one of the defining features of the Huns - their use of bone arrowheads - is nowhere to be found in European graves they view as Hunnic!
It is interesting that Ammianus Marcellinus, speaking of the Hunnic arrows, mentions only those of them that were equipped with bone points, with great skill connected with shafts and variously made (Amm. Marc. XXXI, 2, 9), which is explained, of course, by his particular interest in this rather exotic variety of them. Such tips were usually made by hand: with a knife they were cut out of thick animal bones, and their surface was then carefully polished; a bushing was drilled into them for fastening to the shaft. It should be borne in mind that due to the simple technology of their manufacture, bone arrowheads for nomads, especially ordinary ones, really "were the most accessible, fairly effective and widespread means of engaging an unprotected enemy in remote combat."
{75} .
But, undoubtedly, the Huns of the time of Ammianus Marcellinus also had metal (iron) arrowheads, which are well known from the finds in archaeological complexes of the Hunnic time in the territory of Southeastern Europe.
It is noteworthy that bone arrowheads in them, on the contrary, have not yet been found, but this does not mean at all that Ammianus's message is not trustworthy.
If the iron arrowheads found in European graves are of a central asian variety, that in no way requires a movement of peoples. The separating a movement of material culture from a social culture is one of the major elements of archaeological and historical research in the last 50 years. To use a very simple example, I live in America but my car is Japanese (and Japanese cars are quite popular in my area). Using the "new items means new peoples" line you favor, that would imply the Japanese have taken over this region of America as demonstrated by the replacement of 'American' cars in the material culture with 'Japanese' cars.
Moving on to an example of their use of textual sources, here they quote Jordanes:
This is the tactic that Jordan has in mind when he says that the Huns "subdued the Alans, who were equal to them in battle ... having weakened them by frequent skirmishes" (Iord. Get. 126).
The tactic they are referring to is using long-range bows/ more powerful bows compared to their neighbors to gain a military advantage. However, that is not supported in the quote from Jordanes. Noting that the translation may be mangled going from Latin to Russian, then from Russian into English by google translate, I don't see any reason to assume 'frequent skirmish' translates into "at range with a superior bow", nor that Jordanes is particularly familiar with the fighting style of the Huns approximately two centuries after the events described. (Getica written around 550.) The full quote from Jordanes makes it pretty clear Jordanes isn't writing on the level of military tactics.
Getica said:
The Alani also, who were their equals in battle, but unlike them in civilization, manners and appearance, they exhausted by their incessant attacks and subdued. (127) For by the terror of their features they inspired great fear in those whom perhaps they did not really surpass in war. They made their foes flee in horror because their swarthy aspect was fearful, and they had, if I may call it so, a sort of shapeless lump, not a head, with pin-holes rather than eyes.
It is worth noting that Jordanes does write the Alans were equal to the Huns in battle, and that in many cases the Huns
did not surpass their enemies in war; instead relying on their fearsome reputation.
We can see the poor use of textual sources again in the description of Hunnic tactics:
An extremely important role in the Hunnic strategy was assigned to the factor of surprise in the attack. The Huns fell upon their enemies "like some kind of tornado of nations" (Iord. Get. 126).
The actual text from Jordanes reads:
Like a whirlwind of nations they swept across the great swamp and at once fell upon the Alpidzuri, Alcildzuri, Itimari, Tuncarsi and Boisci, who bordered on that part of Scythia.
There is nothing in Jordanes there that suggests he was referring to battlefield ambush tactics.
I can offer no comment on the Hsiung-Nu portions, but their sections on the Huns is characterized by outdated archaeological methodology (equating items with peoples), unclear identification of graves (what makes a grave 'Hunnic'?), and wanton misuse of textual sources.
pecheneg said:
A textbook for high school, for example
High school textbooks exist to give a very basic overview of a topic that is understandable for people with no prior exposure to it. Especially in history, high school textbooks on matters beyond simple statements of fact (ie, the Soviet Union was formally dissolved on December 26, 1991) are frequently simplified almost to the point of being wrong, decades out of date with the historical consensus (if it exists), or are simply wrong.
pecheneg said:
Wiki says something else, I quoted it. Kulikovsky does not deny the migration of a certain number of "protocols" as such.
Why are you focusing on the wiki article? I have the actual book
Rome's Gothic Wars. In it, Kulikowski emphasizes the only reason a clear link between the Chernjakov and Wielbark cultures is even looked at by archaeologists and historians is because of Jordanes, and in his opinion Jordanes' writings on this topic are too unreliable to be useful.
The site quotes the famous archaeologist Alexander Simonenko.
Google turns up very little on him - directing me instead to various athletes and doctors - but based on the paper you cited and what I could find on the internet, it appears Simonenko is closely associated with the study of the Sarmatians. (Indeed, Simonenko is only referenced once in the paper, and that is in a general reference to how Sarmatians fought.) Unless the google translate function led me astray, it appears that Simonenko was not used to support the authors link between the Huns and the Hsiung-Nu.
pecheneg said:
Based on the Huns borrowing the names of Slavic dishes from the Slavs? Despite the fact that the Huns are terry Mongoloids?
I'm not familiar with Russian historiography, but in English language works, the idea the Huns were the Hsiung-Nu is solidly in the 'no' category. The Hunnic sections I looked at in the paper you linked did not fill me with confidence.
(facepalm) So the Eastern nomads didn't fight with bows because the Romans had a "stereotype"?
Are you unaware of the Roman and Greek ideas regarding ethnography and how it related to their depiction of barbarians? Hence why we have Byzantine writers (who carried on the Greco-Roman ethnographic traditions) from the time of the Crusades refering to peoples like the Cumans and Pechenegs as 'Scythians'.
Procopius is more than 100 years after the first encounter with the Huns. Do you seriously think that the Byzantines did not copy the Hunnic bows? And what kind of bow did the Byzantines of Belisarius use, in your enlightened opinion?
It is worth noting the paper you linked to uses the Strategikon of Maurice, Zosimus, and Agathius for evidence of Hunnic battle tactics. Maurice was writing after Procopius, and both Zosimus and Agathius were approximate contemporaries of Procopius.
Apparently, Ammianus Marcellinus' term cuneatim corresponds to the Greek expression “[to attack] in wedges, that is, in dispersed units,” in the Strategicon of Mauritius, a Byzantine military treatise of the 6th century, as a designation of the military formation of the “Hunnish” ethnic definition) of peoples (Mauric. XI, 2.15 M = XI, 2, 54 D). The word kuna (xouva) present here , which is an unmistakable tracing paper from lat. cuneus, can be understood as the designation of a separate detachment, formed according to the consanguineous (tribal or clan) principle, like the detachments- kuniamong the ancient Germans. In turn, each such Hunnic detachment, on the one hand, consisted of smaller units, and on the other hand, could be part of larger tactical formations, and the number of both more or less had to correspond to the norms of the "Asian decimal system
...
Other ancient authors speak of such a very important tactical maneuver of the Huns as a feigned flight followed by a sudden return to battle (Claud. III, 331; Zosim. IV, 20,4; cf. Hier. Ep,77, 8; Agath. 1,22,1). This military cunning, generally very characteristic of the Eurasian nomads, was extremely effective in the performance of the Huns. During the feigned retreat, they shot accurately with a turn back - i.e. used a technique known as the "Parthian arrow", and the enemies who did not expect this, confident of an imminent victory and therefore weakened their attention, suffered very significant losses. As another favorite tactical action of the Huns, our sources call the encirclement of the enemy's battle formation (Zosim. IV, 20,4; Chron. Gall. P. 652, 52; cf .: Agath. V, 19, 8). The Huns also actively practiced ambushing (Iord. Get. 188; Prise, fr.2 D = 6.1 V; Wed: Claud. V, 270; Agath. III, 18.4-9; V, 18.10), which they generally preferred to open battle.
It is also worth noting the use of feigned retreat, fighting retreats, ambush, and attempted encirclements is widely associated with steppe nomads across history, not particularly associated with the Huns.
The famous invasion of 395, is in the Wikipedia article on the history of the Huns. I gave the link
Ah, the link was broken. Found it now.
Interestingly, the source used in Wikipedia is Thompson's revised work on the Huns which notes while the attack was a shock to the Romans, it was ultimately minor and of no particular concern.
I'm sorry, but my English was enough to read the article. And there is exactly the thesis that you cited - "there is no evidence at all that the Huns used a bow."
Directing you to the whole section on the huns, because you are still insisting Halsall said something he never did. Halsall was explicitly referring to the Huns in the 5th century (particularly the mid 5th century and the campaigns of Attila) by which time the Huns had been settled down in the Carpatian basin and along the Danube, in permanent dwellings, enjoying the luxuries given as payment by the Roman Empire, ruling over a confederation of Goths and other 'Germanic' peoples. By this point in time, the ability of the Huns to maintain their nomad fighting style is in question, and quite possibly could have shifted to a fighting style other nomadic peoples adopted when they moved into close proximity to the Roman Empire.
This point is especially relevant to discussion of the supposedly ‘Steppe’ forces involved in the fifth-century wars: Alans and Huns. Army lists, too numerous to list, often feature token Alan units in various armies of this period, usually as a mix of steppes nomad-style light horse-archers and heavy cavalry with lance and bow.
The Alans are a bit of a problem case. Ammianus Marcellinus describes them in a passage soaked in Roman ethnography about nomads. However, 200 years previously, Arrian had written a treatise on how to oppose the Alans, portraying them generally as charging cavalry, similar (as far as I can tell) to the Sarmatians. Arrian’s proposed battle order aims to counter this rather than skirmishing horse-archery. The Alans who wash up in the west were two generations removed from their steppe homes and many had served in the Roman army. Even by the time of the battle in Baetica in 422 (Part 6), relatively few will have been born, or seen any real military service, outside the Empire. Many were sons of Roman mothers, and possibly only half-Alan fathers. Any fighting style based upon their steppes lifestyle will have been maintained with extreme difficulty. It is likely that the closer terrain of the west led to some change in fighting style, too (if the Alans ever had ‘typical’ steppes nomadic light horse). Roman armies included horse-archers, fighting in somewhat different fashion, in close order. Thus, in the articles in this series I have assumed that the Alans evolved in line with much of the other cavalry alongside whom they fought. In this they are not dissimilar to those faced by Arrian in the second century: close-fighting heavy cavalry but also armed with bows. As the century progressed I assume that the percentage of horse-archers slowly declined although, since this sort of rear-ranks horse-archery is faintly attested in post-imperial Europe, I assume it did not die out completely. Nonetheless, this does not make the Alans very distinctive. By
c.425 I imagine they would have looked much like all the other warriors in and around the Mediterranean area (see below).
And so we come to the dreaded Huns. Everyone knows that the Huns were light horse-archers of the steppes nomadic type and the ultimate fur-clad savages: the illus(trat)ion of a Hun in the WRG
Armies and Enemies of Imperial Rome is a good example of the usual view. This view is based upon literal use of some famous Roman descriptions and upon nineteenth-century ideas that made the Huns into a sort of ‘Yellow Peril’, destroying European civilisation (the fact that many of the most famous paintings of Attila and his hordes come from the time of the European scramble to acquire parts of China and the rise of Japan as a power to be reckoned with is not coincidental). Other bases of this idea are more scholarly attempts to read the Huns in the light of the later, better documented Mongol armies or of ethnographic studies of modern Mongolians. The actual foundations of this image are very insecure. The most famous depiction of the Huns, that of Ammianus Marcellinus, is a patchwork of clichés that cannot be taken at face value. Where he is not describing them in identical terms to those used for Alans and Saracens, he is borrowing stock phrases about ‘ultra-barbarians’ from the earth’s edges.
The celebrated description found in Jordanes’ Getica, it is worth remembering, was written 100 years after Attila’s death, and the point in any case is that he said that the Huns were kin of the Goths. Deformed and wicked kin, but kin all the same. It is a strong possibility that the difference between Huns and Goths, even in the last quarter of the fourth century, was not enormous.
There is no securely identifiable Hunnic archaeology. The deformation of skulls, practised by some people on the steppe and often associated with Huns when found in western Europe, is in fact (surprisingly) attested in western European archaeology right through the period between the first century and the ninth.
As far as the fifth century is concerned, we must commence by recognising that the core of Attila’s ‘empire’ was not out on the Eurasian Steppe, but in the Carpathian basin, much more wooded in antiquity than was the case later (or today). This was not terrain that could support the sort of pastoral nomadic life-style that the Huns might have been used to in the steppes. Descriptions of Hunnic settlements by contemporaries are not surprisingly of permanent dwellings. One Hunnish noble had a bath house constructed for his use. Another point worth bearing in mind is that the Huns were in essence a new political grouping that emerged in the aftermath of the disintegration of the Tervingian Gothic confederacy, destabilised by the Romans in 367-9, and as such incorporated a number of other ethnic identities. As an example of this, most of the ‘Huns’ known to us, not least Attila and his brother Bleda, have Gothic names. Attila’s Huns are not possible to distinguish, archaeologically, from the ‘Gothic’ cultures that succeeded them. The leading men of Attila’s court of whom we are informed were of diverse origins, including some of Roman birth.
This is important: we should not envisage the Huns that terrorised the Empire in the mid-fifth century as the half-naked, fur-clad, horse-born savages portrayed in the famous paintings and illustrations. They probably looked very different.
Even Hunnish armament and tactics are obscure. The ‘famous’ horse-archery of the Hunnic cavalry is actually based largely on surmise and analogy. The word that Ammianus uses to describe the weapon used in their fighting from a distance –
iaculum – actually usually means a javelin, not an arrow, but then the fact that he describes them as tipped with bone (a set-piece in descriptions of ultra-barbarians) means we must take this account with a pinch of salt anyway. The only clear association of Attila’s Huns with archery comes in Jordanes’ account (100 years after the event) of how the emperor Marcian had a prophetic vision on the night of Attila’s death, in which he saw the Hun’s bow broken. Most of the ‘evidence’ for Hunnic horse-archery is indirect supposition, circumstantial and even circular. For instance one argument runs that certain fifth-century Romans (Aëtius, Avitus, Valentinian III) are described as being good archers; this is then explained (quite unnecessarily) as resulting from the influence of the Hunnish horse-archers. This is an entirely circular argument. The evidence that the Huns
were horse-archers in the first place is only provided by the supposition that these Romans were copying them. The same goes for the fact that the Roman cavalry was coming to place a heavier emphasis on horse-archery in the fifth century: the Huns were horse-archers because the Romans were copying them; the Romans must have been copying the Huns because the Huns were horse-archers. I cannot find a single explicit statement that the fifth-century Huns were mounted archers.
[5]
I make this point essentially as a word of caution, to show that some of the most cherished ideas concerning the warfare of the fifth century are not based on direct evidence and may well be quite erroneous.
Attila’s Huns might have included a significant number of horse-archers. Most of the peoples to emerge from the Eurasian steppe have included mounted bowmen of some sort and that comparative argument must carry some sort of weight. Whether, by the middle quarters of the fifth century most Hunnic cavalry was of this sort is, however, another issue. The end of a truly nomadic existence must have had an impact upon the ability to train their horsemen in steppes nomadic tactics. The Huns’ horse-archery may have gone the ‘Sarmatian’ way, as described above for the Alans: provided by heavily-armed horse, who could charge with lance or spear when required. Their light horse might have come to resemble that of other people north of the Danube, more reliant on javelins. The evidence we have does not even rule out the possibility that many Huns fought on foot. The sheer extent of cultural mix among the Huns should mean that we allow these alternative options as
at least as plausible as the idea that the Hunnic strike-force continued to be made up of steppes nomadic style mounted bowmen. Indeed I think they are
more likely.
https://darkagewargaming.wordpress....e-part-4a-fifth-century-armies-basic-aspects/
EDIT:
There is another section from the paper you linked to I want to call attention to, that to me highlights how the authors shift between meaning of words that doesn't appear to be solely the result of google translate:
In 1981, R.P. Lindner came up with an original theory of a radical transformation of the Hunnic army and its tactics. In his opinion, the Huns who came in the second half of the 4th century. to Europe, in fact, for the most part, they could be mounted warriors. But over time, primarily under the influence of reasons of a purely natural nature, namely, the impossibility of maintaining the number of horses necessary for military affairs on the territory of the Great Hungarian Plain (Alfelda), which is limited in comparison with the Asian steppe expanses, the army of the Huns by the middle of the 5th century, in fact, turned from horse mainly into foot, not much different from the army of the then Rome. In support of his theory, this researcher drew on data from written sources and archeology, mathematical calculations on Alfeld's pasture resources, etc.
{113}
However, it is difficult to fully agree with this theory, despite the apparent consistency and attractiveness of the arguments in support of it. First, it seems too straightforward the analysis of the written tradition reports about military actions with the participation of the Huns, carried out by R.P. Lindner: since in many cases they are not mentioned as horsemen there, then, the researcher concludes, they most likely were not. ... However, from a methodological point of view, it is hardly correct to justify the transformation of the equestrian army of the Huns into a foot army by the simple absence in the sources of direct indications of the presence of horses, not to mention the fact that any argument ex silentio ('from silence') is more than dubious, note: these sources do not at all claim that the Huns were infantrymen! Most likely,
[6] .
In addition, one should not ignore the information that for the fire from the saddles (!), Which Attila ordered to build after the failure in the battle on the Catalaunian fields, it took a lot of saddles, and therefore, a significant number of horsemen had to part with them.
The argument made by Halsall draws heavily upon the work by Linder, which is described in brief in the above quote. However, Linder (as elaborated by Heather, as I don't have Linder's work on hand) is referring to the Huns ability to operate as
nomadic cavalry in large numbers, not their ability to operate as cavalry or still be able to field some troops still fighting as nomadic cavalry. Focusing on their second argument against Linder, the account of Huns setting fire to their saddles, that is problematic. The source for the saddle pyre story is Jordanes, who is worth quoting:
Getica said:
They determined to wear him out by a siege, because he had no supply of provisions and was hindered from approaching by a shower of arrows from the bowmen placed within the confines of the Roman camp. But it was said that the king remained supremely brave even in this extremity and had heaped up a funeral pyre of horse trappings, so that if the enemy should attack him, he was determined to cast himself into the flames, that none might have the joy of wounding him and that the lord of so many races might not fall into the hands of his foes.
No mention is made of the size of the pyre, and Jordanes appears to suggest the pyre was just large enough for one man, no mention is made of it being a pyre for a large number of warriors. Assuming the story is true, that Attila was able to find enough saddles to make a pyre makes absolutely no statement as to how the horsemen fought (nomadic or formed), the number of horsemen in Attilas army, or even whether the horses were for riding (ie mounted infantry, which is in itself a problematic term for describing warriors of the period)!
The authors going from Linder's use of
nomadic horsemen -with all that implies about skill and fighting style - to
horsemen is indicative of either the authors lazy use of sources or some problems in translation going from English to Russian and then back to English via google translate.
And next to the statement that in the "Carpathian region"/In Pannonia, nomadic cattle breeding is impossible. I.e., with school geography, English history professors are very bad
Where are you getting the cattle breeding from? In the article linked, Halsall only refers to Carpathia as being more heavily wooded than it is now. No mention of cattle, breeding, or Pannonia is in the article. A cursory search of that website shows the only reference to Pannonia is a geographic one referring to Roman provincial aristocracy. His only reference to cattle is in the context of warfare in post-Roman Britain, and there are no references to animal breeding.
I gotta get a life, this post took me over an hour and a half to write and research.
) does not follow from Vegetius in any way, does not correspond to reality, and in relation to the Goths, it is just funny.
