Basilike G. Stamatopoulou wrote a whole PhD thesis on the Argive shield (the domed shields with a rim used by Carians, Dorians, and even Etruscans). That thesis is online as photos of individual pages. Since few people outside Greece can read Modern Greek well enough to handle a 500-page PhD thesis, this is not available to most of us. Paul Bardunias and Giannis Kadoglou published a two-page English summary but it leaves many questions unanswered. I have a plan so cunning you could pin a tail on it and call it a weasel.
The so-called aketon seam (see bellow): finish the edges, then place right side to right side, join the two finished edges with a whipped or overcast stitch, and unfold to reveal a smooth seam without excess bulk
A challenge in dress and textile history is that people use names for stitches or seams and do not define them or sketch them. Since people use different names for the same thing, and the same name for different things, it can be hard to understand what they mean. An Egyptologist says that seams on garments from Bronze Age Egypt are “mainly of the flat (‘tatbeet’) type, and the very similar run and fell seam … was used for children’s sleeves.” (Rosalind Janssen née Hall, Egyptian Textiles, Shire Publications: Princes Risborough UK, 2001, pp. 57, 58) There are no pictures so what did she mean?
I am not conquering this offcut of wood as I turn it into two laths for a scabbard core but I hope to get something lasting and valuable out of it
In 2023, Assyriologists specialized in the Achaemenid and Neo-Assyrian empires such as Christopher W. Jones and historians of warfare since 1500 such as Wayne E. Lee are interested in the mechanics of conquest. In the USA this may grow out of their failed adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan (link), while in Europe its part of the attempt to build support for the study of the ancient world. This post contains a bibliography on how people try to turn military success into lasting gains, whether by conquering and governing new subjects, terrorizing the inhabitants into giving periodic tribute, depopulating an area and settling it with their own people, or carrying off slaves and precious goods.
Drawing of the Orlat Plaques after Jangar Ya. Ilyasov and Dimitry V. Rusanov, “A Study on the Bone Plaques from Orlat,” Silk Road Art and Archaeology 5 (1997–98), pl. IV:1. care of https://sogdians.si.edu/orlat-plaque/
A lot of history forums and subreddits confuse me, but the main thing I got out of them was pointer to sources I did not know about. One of those sources that I learned about in 2009 was the Orlat Battle Plaques. These are polished bone belt-ends from a grave near Samarkand dating sometime between the 2nd and 4th century CE. On the right plaque mounted archers chase ungulates, while on the left plaque cataphracts battle with swords, lances, and piercing axes / sagareis.
The local deer don’t live in an economy and they don’t seem lonely. Photo by author, 16 May 2023
This post is not about all the terrible people on the Internet and social media who make their money giving the lonely someone to blame. It is about changes in rich economies over the past 20 years which make it possible to do more and more things without interacting with another human being beyond “how much?” or “oh, one last can of that wet food!” (and corps are pushing self-checkout to reduce the first).
While many aspects of my life hobble along, some of my print publications have been coming out like arrows in a Scythian battle over the past few months! I wrote about the family of Akhenaten, swords in archaic Greece, reviewed Matthew Waters’ book on Cyrus the Great, and turned my first book into an article which is more concise and focused on giving my best guesses at answers rather than on why its really hard to know about the armies of the Teispids and Achaemenids.
Simon James is not the most prolific researcher, but his words are always worth carefully considering. A few years ago he had this to say:
In discourse on the European Iron Age, the terms ‘war’ and ‘warrior’ are rarely examined or defined. ‘War’ (except ‘civil war’) is commonly understood to connote organized collective armed violence between polities. Yet in many historically attested societies, possessing, displaying and using lethal weaponry are/were not about war, primarily and sometimes hardly at all. Rather weapons may articulate social dynamics, mutual fear and conflict within a polity – as exemplified by the contemporary United States.
Simon James (in press) “Ch. 30: Arms, the armed, and armed violence.” In Colin C. Haselgrove, Katharina Rebay-Salisbury, and Peter S. Wells (eds.), Oxford Handbook of the European Iron Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
