DARK MIST RISING: AVALON UNVEILED

The Pictish stone in the churchyard at Aberlemno Parish Church (sometimes known as Aberlemno II). The battle scene depicted is generally accepted to be that of the Battle of Nechtansmere. So, exactly what, if any, evidence do we have that the Picts used cavalry in warfare? Unlike the Scythian  kurgans , the bulk of Pictish equestrian evidence has not been extracted from grave remains or goods. Irene Hughson’s splendid article,  Pictish Horse Carvings , tells us that there is “not a great mass of either skeletal material or horse gear” in Pictish burial remains. So, where do we go for Pictish cavalry evidence? A little of it comes from literature. The testimony of ancient poets like that of Aneirin, who wrote  Y Gododdin , which describes “swift, long-maned stallions under the thigh of a fine lad”, tells us that his Brythonic and possibly also Pictish readers prized beautiful, fleet horses and used them as cavalry. But the snapshot provided by  Y Gododdin  is, at...

  Painter of Munich: By ArchaiOptix - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=93548087 So, have any horse remains actually been found in the Scythian  kurgans ? The short answer is “Yes”. The longer answer is “Wow!” Not only have large burials yielded piles of horse bones; but a circle of twenty-two horse skulls wreathed the perimeter of one kurgan. Of course, that find was small pickings compared to what awaited archaeologists at the famous Pazyryk I site. At Pazyryk I, archaeologists discovered a burial of ten golden horses. (Not horses made of gold; palominos). This shade was highly prized in antiquity; maybe it was rarer then. Their modern descendants are famous in equine circles as the “Turkmen horse”. (I’ve never heard of it before, but then I don’t run with the “horsey set”). Other types found in the grave sprang from the crossbreeding of a small, hardy, local variety with a Central Asian breed. Although all the manes and eyebrows we...

  VIDEO: SCYTHIAN NEURI/NEUROI/ENAREI MEET PICTISH NIDUAR I

"Amazon Breaking a Savage Horse", 1843, bronze, by Jean-Jacques Feuchére. On display at the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts on the Stanford University campus in Stanford, California.  By I, BrokenSphere, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4270411 No culture in history has been more bound up with one animal than that of the Amazons. Fabled warrior women of the steppes, they are known to have fought from horseback and to have employed weapons, such as the long spear and bow-and-arrow, that enabled them to capitalize on their skill as cavalrywomen and minimize any physical shortcomings. As women then and now generally possess less upper body strength and a shorter reach than men, it would have availed them nothing to have fought on foot or hand-to-hand. So, it seems that the Amazons played to their strengths. Horses were and are an intrinsic part of steppe culture. Steppe nomads still ride horseback as part of daily life, and...