I have been meaning to get this book for a couple of months now, but finally got my hands on it last weekend. Richard Brzezinski and Mariusz Mielczarek's The Sarmatians 600 BC - AD 450 is one of the latest additions to Osprey's 'Men-at-Arms' series. It certainly fills a need, since English-language material of any kind on these peoples is scarce and often inaccessible to the general reader. The authors bring a great deal of recent, non-English research and archaeological information and add the benefits of plenty of line drawings, maps and Gary Embleton's vivid colour plates.

Trying to cover 1000 years of history and a range of different tribes - the Sarmatians, Aorsi, Siraces, Izagyes, Alans etc - in one 48 page book is ambitious, though the scarcity of the evidence means it isn't impossible.

This book tackles the question of whether the Sarmatian peoples' dominance over their Scythian predecessors was due to their use of armoured cavalry, and decides that this was not the case - concluding that the bulk of their cavalry was unarmoured and that this style didn't come in until later anyway. It also dispels the idea that heavily armoured horses were used extensively by the Sarmatians, pointing out that the evidence for scale barding is actually pretty minimal.

The book is full of small but interesting details, like the Sarmatian tribes' use of short swords which were strapped to their thighs in a central Asian style. The colour plates illustrate some of these vividly. They also bring some iconic scenes to life. The one which shows an Aorsian noble pouring a cup of blood on a ring-pommelled sword stuck in the ground, for example. Or the one of a kontos-armed lancer unhorsing a mounted archer - a scene taken directly from one depicted on one of the Kosika vessels.

On the whole this is a very worthwhile book and a great addition to my small but growing collection on the steppe peoples. More information on the Alans and Sarmatians in Europe in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries would have been useful, but I have Bernard Bachrach's History of the Alans in the West on order, so I will post a review of that here when I get it.

Contents
The Sarmatian peoples - Sauromatae, Iazyges, Roxolani, Aorsi, Siraces & Alani
The Sarmatians in Roman service
Offensive arms - lances, swords, archery gear
Defensive arms - body armour, helmets, shields, lassoes
Horses & horse equipment
Standards - the 'draco'
Military organisation
Tactics
Myth & legend

Paperback; August 19 2002; 48 pages; ISBN: 184176485X