Plains Indian Shields - historic references part I

Salve amici mei,
it is almost the summer and my blogging will slow down considerably starting in mid-July until September. But I promise to pick up again in mid-Spetmeber as I should have plenty of interesting topics to tackle and artwork/photos to share.

My last post was about the shields and armour of the Plains Indians. Allow me to share with you some period (XIX century) iconographic material demonstrating the method of carrying such shield when on foot or on horseback. Let us start with the ledger drawings and Kurz drawing of Rotten Tail

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... Rudolph Friedrich Kurz

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Note, that in the future I will 'go deeper' in many of these images, especially regarding the horses, horsemanship and tack as well as other aspects of the material culture of the XIX century Plains tribal peoples.

Plains Indians sketches - shield and armour

Salve,
some sketches of the Plains Indians and ways of carrying the shield:  work-in-progress

horse armor in concept

idea of the Plains Indian horse armour of XVIII century, especially Comanches, Plains Apaches (then Lipan, Mescalero, Jicarilla etc) and Shoshones

Comanche shield of the mid-XIX century, and some sketches showing ways of carrying the shield

Crow warrior, horse with a pad saddle and long shabraque - old sketch

Cheyenne mounted on a horse with a bison hide horse mask, early 1800s

Lakota warrior

late XIX century generic war chief mounted on a horse with a leather mask and breastplate

Sketches - ancient Persia

Salve,
some more sketches from around the ancient greater Persia - Achaemenid, Parthian and Sassanian horsemen

 Please note all sketches-in-progress
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great book on the Eurasian steppe nomads of the Bronze and Iron Age - Kurgans, Ritual Sites, and Settlements - free to download

Sketches - continued

Salve Amici Mei et kind visitors,
 more sketches-in-progress Great Eurasian Steppe - including Khalchayan and Huns (both Hephthalites and European Huns)

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Sketches

Salve,
today my sketches I have been working on - all work-in-progress - early modern period to Napoleonic

.. a Polish Nobleman - XVII century

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Mongol saddles and a Mongolian warrior in MyPaint

Salve,
I would like to share a quick sketch I made after a Chinese drawing of Batu-khan and look at the Mongolian saddles through history.
I admit I have neglected the Great Eurasian steppe so there are some images and text to do away with this awful negligence on my part - :)

Again, I will start a link to this great article on the medieval and later Central Asia saddles. And another article titled 'Mongolian Horse and Horseman'

Well, the Mongolian-style saddles of the Great Steppe developed, over a period of 1000 years, from the horned saddles invented by the Indo-European nomads - Saka and Tocharians (Yuezhi) sometime during III-II centuries BC [e.g. according to prof. Nikonorov] - nota bene  there are some very recent interesting discoveries from Mongolia related to soma ritual, amanita muscaria (''muchomor czerwony'' in Polish) in form of tapestries showing armoured warriors, horses and saddles -  through the saddles most fully seen in the Tang Chinese  sculpture and paintings of VI -VIII centuries AD, as evidenced by this beautiful horse here or by image of the saddle horse of great Tang Emperor Tang Taizong:

This is the Middle Ages Mongolian saddle tree from the Ulan Bataar Museum, dated to XV century:

and another old saddle tree:

And this is a beautifully lacquered and painted saddle tree from the Ming Dynasty:

Photos a Mongolian saddle tree and here, and here is an image of modern saddle from Mongolia:

And here there is a great photo of full modern Mongolian saddle outfit.

 And this is my sketch:

 Beautiful saddle (intricate metal work of the pommel visible) from the National Museum of Mongolia.

On this site there is a book on how to make Mongolian saddles [sic!]

Some interesting stories and images of modern Great Steppe by the so called Salomon 'nomads'- or modern travellers in search of adventure

ps
prolific Polish early modern history blogger and researcher Michal Kadrinazi offers a link to a docudrama on the battle of Vienna 1683 Ad.
Also,I can happily share with you that my friend Radek Sikora has finished a book on the winged hussars during the 1683 battle of Vienna.

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the first image  is a painting of a Mongol warrior painted during the Ming Dynasty.

Tarim Mummies et al. - lectures from Penn Museum

Salve,
yesterday I came across a series of video lectures by some of the most pre-eminent scholars researching the history of the Great Eurasian Steppe and Central Asia ancient civilisations.

Last year the Penn Museum held this very important symposium devoted to the history of the Silk Road (here an article on the history of the Silk Road) in light of new discoveries and analysis of the discovered material, especially as related to the Tocharians (the image above shows Tocharian warriors from the Qizil Cave in Tarim Basin, dated to late V - early VI century AD).

   I am going to list my favourite lectures out of the whole symposium, by names of the scholars who presented them.

Prof. David Anthony - "Horseback Riding and Bronze Age Pastoralism in the Eurasian Steppes"- my favourite lecture.

Prof. Elizabeth Wayland Barber - "The Xinjiang Textiles: More Corridors in the Goldmine"
 She wrote a very interesting book on the textiles of the Tarim Mummies, titled "The mummies of Urumchi."

Prof. James P. Mallory -  Indo-European Dispersals and the Eurasian Steppe - who, amongst other works, wrote a very important book "In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth" (1989), and together with Victor Mair  ''The Tarim Mummies''- ground-breaking work on the subject of the ancient Indo-Europeans in Central Asia.

Prof. Victor H. Mair - The Northern Cemetery: Epigone or Progenitor of Small River Cemetery No. 5? , in addition, there is also his very interesting lecture  on the Tarim Mummies, given at Penn Museum as well.

Prof. Colin Renfrew - Before Silk: Unsolved Mysteries of the Silk Road - author of too numerous books and articles to list. In this lecture prof. Renfrew, amongst others, shows an photo of a leather pad saddle with a bridle and a bit with cheekpieces unearthed in the Tarim Basin, and a rather crude drawing showing a reconstruction of this very ancient horse tack. also images of Sintashta chariots

Dr Michael Frachetti - Seeds for the Soul:  East/West Diffusion of Domesticated Grains along the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor. - I happen to have his book "Pastoralist Landscapes and Social Interaction in Bronze Age Eurasia." (2008)


ps
!thanks! my Persian friend Nadeem I am going to share with you a link to this great  magazine - The Silk Road Journal -  devoted to the archaeology, history and culture along the Silk Road - and it is free to download - :)

ps'
A sketch-in-progress of a North Iranian nomadic warrior performing a rite; they worshipped both wind (''breath'') and the sword, because they believed that the wind gave life, the sword because it took it [Lucian, Toxaris - after Prof. Mariusz Mielczarek, ''The Sarmatians'')

Pacem Eaternam, maestro Peter Connolly

Salve,
I learned yesterday that Mr. Peter Connolly, British academician and artist and one of the greatest scholars in the area of Ancient Greece and Rome  reconstructions passed away on May 3, 2012.

His works and especially his reconstructing via illustrations of the Greek and Roman fighting men, daily life, equipment, architecture etc has no parallel in the modern world. For the historians and enthusiasts of the historians of horsemanship it was Mr. Connolly who reconstructed the horned saddle of the Roman cavalry.

Some of his images available on the Net here
There are some of his books in my own library:
* (1979), Pompeii
 * (1991), The Roman Fort, Oxford Univ. Press
* (1993), Greek Legends: The Stories, the Evidence

* (1988), Tiberius Claudius Maximus: The Cavalryman, Oxford Univ.Press.
*  (1988), Tiberius Claudius Maximus: The Legionary, Oxford Univ. Press.

* (1998), Greece and Rome at War, Greenhill Books and Stackpole books
* with  H.Dodge (1998), The Ancient City, Life in Classical Athens & Rome, Oxford Univ. Press
* (1998), The Ancient Greece of Odysseus, Oxford  Univ. Press


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all  images attached are in copyright and are shown here under fair use to give some, albeit inadequate, impression of Mr. Connolly's talent and expertise.