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Book and Sword

~ Pontifex minimus

Book and Sword

Tag Archives: ancient

Sir Charles Oman Almost Understood

16 Saturday Jan 2021

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Medieval

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

ancient, hoplite controversy, medieval, methodology, Sir Charles Oman

In print and on this blog I have written a lot about how I think the basic debate in the study of Greek warfare from 1989 to 2013 was about whether we should read Greek writers as giving faithful glimpses at a timeless unchanging practice of warfare, or as class and civic partisans whose stories about the good old days were just as wishful as the ones we hear today. People who like to talk about abstract ideas often link the second approach to words like deconstruction and postmodernism and names like Eric Hobsbawm and Jill Lepore. But they were not the only thoughtful people to realize this, and in October I found some similar thinking in an unexpected place.

Back in 1924, Sir Charles Oman revised his history of warfare in Middle Ages after being introduced to the works of Hans Delbrück. Have a look at his new account of the battle on the Marchfeld between Austro-Hungarian and Bohemian forces in 1278, in one of the chapters which he says he specially reworked in response to the German historian.

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Another Lovecraftian Revelation c/o Dimitri Nakassis

01 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Modern

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

ancient, ideology, methodology, Mycenean Greece, stereotypes about the east

I grew up thinking that guff about the ancient Greeks being uniquely rational, creative, free, and so on was as dead as Theosophy. The writers who influenced me as a child, like Peter Connolly or L. Sprague de Camp, either ignored it or mocked it, and none of the teachers and books which influenced me at university took it seriously. But I am watching a talk by Dimitri Nakassis on “Orientalism and the Myceneans” and I am coming to a horrid revelation.

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Some Comments on Turner on Old World Iron

21 Saturday Nov 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

ancient, archaeometallurgy, article review, historical datasets, Iron Age, methodology, quantitative methods, SESHAT

an outline map of Eurasia with coloured dates marked on it, all multiples of +100 or -100 except for the year 1

Map 1 from Turner 2020. “First acceleration in the use of iron across Afro-Eurasia … When iron becomes a material used for multiple object types … iron is used on a much greater scale 100 years after the proposed date and on a much smaller scale 100 years before the proposed date.”

Someone associated with the SESHAT project has taken Andre Costopoulos’ suggestion to focus on things which leave good archaeological evidence like metallurgy. They wrote a study of the spread and improvement of iron technology across the Old World. That is a topic that I am an expert on, so how does the paper hold up?

  • Turner, Edward A. L. (2020) “Anvil Age Economy: A Map of the Spread of Iron Metallurgy across Afro-Eurasia.” Cliodynamics 11.1 https://doi.org/10.21237/C7clio11145895

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My First Book is Out

Featured

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Achaemenid Empire, ancient, shameless plug

the cover of "Armed Force in the Teispid-Achaemenid Empire: Past Approaches, Future Prospects" (Franz Steiner, 2021)

Armed Force in the Teispid-Achaemenid Empire: Past Approaches, Future Prospects. Oriens et Occidens Band 32 (Franz Steiner Verlag: Stuttgart, 2021) 437 pp., 8 b/w ill., 4 b/w tables. ISBN 978-3-515-12775-2 EUR 74,– (softcover) (publisher’s website)

My first book is coming out from Franz Steiner Verlag this month. Its the first book on Achaemenid armies since 1992, and the first written by someone who can read any ancient Near Eastern language. I show that most of what we think we know about Achaemenid armies and warfare goes back to classical writers and to 19th and 20th century stereotypes about the east. So many books sound the same because they are repeating the ideas of early authorities in new language. By focusing on indigenous, contemporary sources and placing the Achaemenids in their Near Eastern context- the standard methods in Roman Army Studies and Achaemenid Studies since the 1980s- we can tell a different story.

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Insights from Experience, Excavation, and Reconstruction

07 Saturday Nov 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Medieval, Modern

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

ancient, archaeology, experimental archaeology, Han Dynasty, Late Bronze Age, medieval, modern, prehistoric European martial arts, sixteenth century

In September and October, I came across several projects in archaeology which help us understand early warfare. This week’s post will take us from China to Germany, Italy, and England and from the Bronze Age to the 18th century CE.

Figure 7 from Hermann et al. 2020 (see below). Left is a replica sword which has delivered a strike to the socket of a bronze spearhead, right is an original bronze sword

I will start with the Bronze Age (best age!) then move on to ages of other metals. A German-UK-Chinese team published the latest project trying to understand how Bronze Age swords were used. They examined damage to the edges of originals and then compared it to damage on replica swords by Neil Burridge after performing Andre Lignitzer’s six sword-and-buckler plays. I’d like to see more studies like this borrowing ideas from other martial arts like Shastar Vidiya to see which seem to work best with Bronze Age weapons from Europe. Fifteenth-century German fencing such as Andre Lignitzer’s plays has a lot of blade-on-blade contact and twisty actions while the blades are crossed, whereas other martial arts rely on the shield to defend or prefer simpler weapon-on-weapon actions. But I think that the evidence that swords from some periods often have marks characteristic of controlled parrying, whereas in other periods the edge damage is more random, is valuable. I am also glad that they experimented with common matchups like sword against spear, and not just the rare occasions when a sword was used against another warrior with a sword who was ready for the attack.

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Battles and Sieges

24 Saturday Oct 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Medieval, Modern

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

academic navel-gazing, Achaemenid Empire, ancient, book project, statistics

Eannatum of Lagaš’s Stele of the Vultures in the Louvre, from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stele_of_Vultures_detail_01-transparent.png

Academic histories sometimes get very narrowly focused. There are some good reasons for this, but its not so good to read a book on archaic or classical Greek warfare which barely acknowledges that Italy or the Hellenistic period existed. Did I fall into that trap in my book on Achaemenid armies and warfare?

To find out, I made a list of all the battles and sieges which I mentioned in my forthcoming book.

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New Magazine Articles

15 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Medieval

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

ancient, medieval, shameless plug

an issue of "ancient warfare" magazine and an issue of "medieval warfare" magazine on a hardwood surface

So far this calendar year, I have published three articles for money:

  • “The Achaemenid Empire’s Jewish soldiers: Serving the Great King,” Ancient Warfare XIII.5 (2020) pp. 34-37 (for sale from Karwansaray BV)
  • “The Amathus Bowl, ca. 700 BC: World of mercenaries,” Ancient Warfare XIII.5 (2020) pp. 24-25 (for sale from Karwansaray BV)
  • “Turning Your Back: The Late Reinvention of Backplates.” Medieval Warfare X.4 (2020) pp. 38-41 (for sale from Karwansaray BV)

In another year I would have posted the bibliographies or some bonus content, but I don’t have the words in me and I should probably be doing something better with my time.

Papponymy

28 Monday Sep 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Modern

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

ancient, genealogy, methodology, modern, onomastics, Russia

a plaque of a naked woman (or godess) standing with her hands clasped in front of her stomach

An Old Babylonian terracotta in the Louvre, Paris

In the past few weeks I underwent a kind of Inanna’s Descent with the help of some dear friends who were kind enough not to point and laugh as I did what had to be done. Another thing which helped was classical music, and listening to my favourite radio station gave me an excuse to talk about ancient history.

Papponymy is the practice of naming a son after their paternal grandfather, so that names alternate between generations. Many ancient cultures sometimes practiced it, just like Anglos today sometimes name a son after the father. The satraps of Dascyleium / Hellespontine Phrygia included a Pharnabazus son of Pharnaces son of Pharnabazus. If you know to look for papponymy, you can use it as a clue in guessing family relationships and how many generations stand between individuals who happen to be mentioned in surviving writing. If the names are the same, one or three generations are probably missing, if different then two or four.

Listening to that radio station, I learned about a family which practised papponymy in the 20th century:

  • Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (composer) father of …
  • Maxim Dmitrievich Shostakovich (pianist) father of …
  • Dmitri Maximovich Shostakovich (conductor)

An ancient historian would call these Dmitri II Shostakovich, Maxim Shostakovich, and Dmitri III Shostakovich (Dmitri I was the composer’s father) because ancient historians value genealogy and umambiguity and have learned about regnal numbers. But in ordinary circumstances, nobody is likely to confuse the grandson and the grandfather.
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Cross-Post: Books on Ancient Warfare 2005-2020

21 Monday Sep 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

ancient, book recommendation, cross-post

Over on closed social media, someone asked for books published between 2005 and 2020 which readers of Ancient Warfare Magazine should know about. I thought the list was too interesting to get lost on closed social media, so I copied it here, deleting the things which were published too early and the ones which summoned pushback and ones which cost more than about $150.

A question mark ? notes books which I have not flipped through (or been recommended to me by someone I know and respect), and an obelus † marks books which I could not recommend without warnings.
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Cross-Post: Persika

03 Thursday Sep 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Achaemenid Empire, ancient, horse, Iran, video

Prolific ancient historian and Iranologist Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones’ latest venture onto the Internet is a vlog on ancient Iran called Persika: Persian Things. Check it out!

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