Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ARHEOLOKI INSTITUT
BEOGRAD
MONOGRAPHIES 36
Paris Beograd
2012
ii :
Suivi de la publication
Emmanuelle Capet
TABLE OF CONTENTS
II. he Occident
Joan Pinar Gil. Ponto-Danubian traditions of dress in early Visigothic
Hispania: Chronology, dissemination, contexts and evolution ............ 265
Eduard Droberjar. A propos des contacts entre lempire dOrient
et les Germains de lElbe au vie sicle ................................................. 297
Dieter Quast. he Alamanni and Byzantium from the 5th to the 7th century ...... 317
350
DAMIEN GLAD
Fig. 1: Segmental helmet on a fresco from Kerch (Rostovtsef 1913-1914/2003, plate LXXIX).
351
earliest specimen dating from the 6th century B C was excavated in Sardis in western
Turkey, the capital of ancient Lydia (Fig. 2) (Greenewalt, Heywood 1992). he main
features of a segmental helmet are already present: a conical helmet-bowl reinforced by
riveted metal strips which come together under a circular plate riveted to the apex, and a
T-shaped nasal plate. Only an oblong neck-guard distinguishes this Lydian helmet from
its early Byzantine descendants. A segmental helmet appears on coins of the Parthian
king Arsaces I (238-211 B C) (Overlaet 1982, 191). From Parthia, it reaches the steppe
and the Kuban region where conical helmets, similar to those represented on Kerch
frescos and on Trajans Column, were discovered at Gorodskoj in privileged graves dating
from the 2nd century A D (Goroncharovski 2006, 446-450). he type of helmet worn
by Syrian archers on Trajans column and some other eastern auxiliaries of the Roman
army from the 2nd century A D is still found by archaeologists in the second half of the
5th century, at a time when the bulk of the Byzantine army was of oriental origin. his
is also the time when a new type of segmental helmet, the Baldenheim type, makes its
appearance, as we will discuss below.
As for lamellar weapons, many scholars attribute their introduction to the Avars,
a Nomadic people of Central Asia who came into contact with the Byzantine Empire
in the mid-6th century. Once settled on the Danube, the Avars supposedly spread this
type of arms to the Germanic tribes of Central and Western Europe, especially to the
Lombards who left lamellar specimens at Castel Trosino and Val di Nievole in Italy, and
then to the Alamanni beyond the Alps. P. Paulsen (1967) considers the helmet found
in Niedersttzingen (Germany) not as Avar but as Lombard or Byzantine, possibly
produced in a Pontic workshop. According to G. Arwidsson, the lamellar helmet
5 cm
Fig. 2: Parthian or Lydian segmental helmet from Sardis (Greenewalt, Heywood 1992, ig.21)
352
DAMIEN GLAD
5 cm
excavated in Kerch (Fig. 3 : 1), together with lamellar armour, could suggest a PonticScythian origin for lamellar armament.
Regarding the origin of the lamellar weapons, O. Gamber (1964, 14-18; 1966, 17; 1968,
7-44) has shown that lamellar helmets were known to the Egyptians in the 15th century B C,
to the Hittites in the 13th century B C and to the Romans in the 2nd century A D. According
to H. Von Gall (1990, 64), such weapons were known in the Middle East as early as the
Assyrian period. While the lamellar helmet is not attested in 3rd-4th-century Sassanian Iran
(Kazanski 1995, 193), it is worn by eastern auxiliaries of the Roman army on the Arch
of Galerius in hessaloniki (Greece), built between 298 and 305 A D (Laubscher 1975).
Horsemen depicted on the Arch wear lamellar helmets with a T-shaped nasal plate very
similar to those found in the Eastern Pontus.
353
he earliest lamellar helmet from this region was found in a 2nd-century A D Sarmatian grave by the stanica Tbilisskaja on the Kuban; it has a hemispherical bowl resembling the Roman helmets (Simonenko 2001, 263-265). Another Sarmatian burial,
from Kipek in Kabardino-Balkaria, dated between the late 3rd and the irst half of the
4th century, contained glass-paste gems and a lamellar helmet with a T-shaped nasal
plate (Fig. 3 : 2). Likewise, the early Byzantine fortress Ilievka on the Taman Peninsula
delivered a helmet dated to the 5th-6th century (Nikolaeva 1986), with a hemispherical
bowl and a T-shaped nasal plate (Fig. 3 : 3). he igurative ears of the 5th-century lamellar
helmet with a conical bowl found in Kalkhni in Dagestan (Fig. 3 : 4) are clearly indicative
of a Roman inluence (Salihov 1985). his feature is also present on a helmet from Iatrus
(Bulgaria), dated to the early 5th century (Gomolka-Fuchs 2007, ig.13/1629). Helmets
from Kalkhni and Iatrus could be contemporary. hese igurative ears are reminiscent of
Weiler-Guisborough type helmets and face helmets of the early Empire (Feugre 1994).
Archaeological evidences seems to suggest that the lamellar helmet was worn between
the late 3rd and the 6th century between the Black Sea coast and the Caspian Sea in
garrisons under Roman Byzantine inluence long before the arrival of the Avars.
Likewise, lamellar armour is attested on the Black Sea from the 4th century B C: in
irgirin, in Kerch and in Volkovicy-Romny. Since the 2nd century B C, it is present in
Sarmatian graves, including the Tbilisskaja. he lamellae have the same dimensions and
disposition of holes as the early Byzantine specimens from the Balkans (Simonenko
2001, 275-277). he armour of the heavy horsemen on the wall painting from Panjikent
is composed of vertical splints attached to a skirt of mail (Fig. 4). his technique is
5 cm
354
DAMIEN GLAD
355
5 cm
5 cm
356
DAMIEN GLAD
from Batajnica (Serbia), the only one deposited in a grave (Vinski 1954), testiies to
the Empires inluence on the Germanic elites. Others come from the last occupation
layer of Iustinian Prima (Cariin Grad, Serbia), dated between the reign of Justin II and
the abandonment of the city in 615. Novae (Svitov, Bulgaria), Selenca (Serbia) and
Vodno (Markovi Kuli, Makedonia) have produced several more fragments (a complete
bibliography can be found in Bavant 2008).
Since the publication of the Lepcis Magna (Libya) (Pirling 1974) and the Heraklea
Lyncestis inds, the Byzantine origin of the Baldenheim type is widely admitted. he
distribution map produced by Z. Vinski (1982, cf. 1984) shows a concentration of
Baldenheim-type helmets in the western part of the Empire around Italy, but also their
occurrence on sites with no known Germanic presence in the 5th-6th centuries. Recent
studies focus on the identiication and localization of arm factories. M. Vogt (after Bhner
1993; 1994) argued for the existence of a western workshop, presumably in Ostrogothic
Italy, but the publication of several fragments from Iustiniana Prima (Cariin Grad,
Serbia) has invalidated this hypothesis. B. Bavant has demonstrated that all four arm
factories identiied by M. Vogt are Byzantine. hree of them could have been located in
Constantinople or in area around the Sea of Marmara, in Nicomedia or Cyzicus. As for
the fourth fabrica, the western group of M. Vogt, B. Bavant has suggested localizing it
in hessaloniki. he author explains the stability of the Baldenheim type by the centralized control of production exercised by the comes sacrarum largitionum.
he question of the production of the lamellar weapons is more complex. heir
appearance in the Empire has traditionally been dated to the second half of the
6th century. Placed in the context of the confrontation with the Avars, lamellar armour
was considered as a means of resisting the penetrating power of their three-winged
arrowheads. However, the earliest lamellae discovered at the site of a military warehouse
in Topraichioi (near Babadag, Romania; not yet published) come from an occupation
layer dating from the second half of the 5th century, before the Avars arrival. What is
more, the discovery of a large number of lamellae in fortiications far from the conlict
zone indicates the production of this type of armour by Byzantine arms factories
(Bavant, Ivanievi 2003; Bugarski 2006; Ivanievi, pehar 2006; Milinkovi 1995
and 2002). Several lamellar armours found in Viminacium show that they were supplied
to the Gepids, positioned in the front line against the Avars. However, a recent ind of
lamellar armour in Spartaria Carthago (Cartagena, Spain) along with early Byzantine
pottery conirms its wide availability in the Byzantine army (Vizcano Sanchez 2008).
Likewise, 7th-century lamellar armour was excavated in a Byzantine context in Crypta
Balbi in Rome (Ricci 2001, 400). None of these inds can be related to the Avars.
357
358
DAMIEN GLAD
A critical analysis of theories on the origin and spread of early Byzantine segmental
helmets and lamellar weapons reveals the important part played by the Ponto-Danubian
area. It is the barbarian tribes who provided soldiers for the imperial army that became
the main vectors in the spread of early Byzantine weapons in the Barbaricum from the
Steppes to the Rhine. hese weapons, produced by the imperial fabricae for the use
of the imperial army, were considered as prestige goods by barbarian elites. hey were
difused by the same trans-continental routes, including the Silk Road, the Rhine and
the Danube, which promoted cultural transfers from East to West. It would only be fair,
however, to recall a movement in the opposite direction: the study of shield bosses shows
the spread of western Germanic weaponry into the Empire.
If the Eastern Empire was fairly susceptible to the Caucasian and Oriental inluences,
the western Germanic peoples showed little receptiveness to a direct impact of a foreign
culture. Only the elite and the foederati showed attachment to imperial prestige goods,
to which they attributed a particular symbolic value in funeral oferings.
359
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