The Excavations at Dura-Europos conducted by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters 1928 to 1937. Final Report VII: The Arms and Armour and other Military Equipment

This book is dedicated to

Peter Connolly

Excavations at Dura-Europos 1928–1937

Final Report VII: The Arms and Armour and other Military Equipment

© 2004 The Trustees of The British Museum

First published in 2004 by The British Museum Press

A division of The British Museum Company Ltd

38 Russell Square, London WC1B 3QQ

Paperback edition 2010 by Oxbow Books

ISBN 978-1-84217-371-8

EPUB ISBN: 978-1-78297-355-3

PRC ISBN: 978-1-78297-356-0

Simon James has asserted his right to be identified as Author of this work

All photographs, line drawings and paintings are copyright the author, except the following:

Courtesy Yale University Art Gallery Dura-Europos Collection: Plates 3–7, 9 and 10; Figs 1, 2,

6–9, 11, 13; 14 and 15 (adapted by author); 18, 20–23, 51, 52, 74, 77–79, 84, 100, 106, 107,

109–111, 113, 115. After Breasted 1924: Fig. 19; after Brown 1937: Fig. 115. After Cumont 1926:

Plates 1 and 2. After Florescu 1965: Fig. 93. After Du Mesnil 1944: Figs 10 and 12.

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Contents

List of illustrations

List of tables

Summaries in English, French, German and Arabic

Acknowledgements

Preface

Plates

Part 1: Discovery and context

The assemblage and its potential

Aims of the present research

Previous work and publications

Methodology

Organization of the Report

Notes on illustrations, conventions and terminology

The historical and geographical context

Deposition, recovery, recording and preservation

Preparations for a siege, and the subsequent fighting

Supplementary sources for soldiers and warfare at Dura: visual representations

Part 2: The assemblage

Military dress and horse harness

Catalogue: Fittings from military dress and horse harness

Helmets and head protection

Catalogue: Helmets and head protection

Armour

Catalogue: Armour

Edged weapons

Catalogue: Edged weapons

Shields

Catalogue: Shields

Shafted weapons

Catalogue: Shafted weapons

Bows, arrows and archery tackle

Catalogue: Bows, arrows and archery tackle

Torsion artillery

Catalogue: Catapult ammunition

Part 3: Discussion

Deposition and transformations of the material

Composition and attribution of the assemblage

Cultural distinctiveness, interaction, convergence and identity in martial material culture

Manufacture, supply, use and repair of equipment at Dura

Evidence for the use of equipment in combat

Reconstructing the appearance of third-century Roman soldiers at Dura

Conclusion and prospect

Future research

Afterword

Bibliography

Tables

Concordances and indices

Concordance of known provenances and catalogue numbers

Concordance of museum locations and accession numbers with catalogue numbers

Index of materials of manufacture and embellishment

Index of references to catalogued items

General index

Illustrations

Plates

Figures

Tables

Summaries in English, French, German and Arabic

Summary

Among the remarkable finds of Hellenistic, Parthian and Roman date revealed by the Yale/French Academy excavations at Dura-Europos, Syria (1928–37), were extensive military remains. These included large quantities of arms, armour and other martial equipment, mostly deposited during the Sasanian Persian siege which destroyed the city around AD 255–6. Overwhelmingly, this martial material culture represents the equipment of the Roman garrison trapped in the city, although some belongs to the Sasanian besiegers or to earlier occupants of this Hellenistic foundation. The present work, Volume VII of the Final Report series, presents a catalogue and analysis of the material, and attempts to place it in its regional and wider context. It investigates what the weapons and evidence of military dress can tell us about Roman, Partho-Sasanian, Syrian and Mesopotamian soldiers of the period, and warfare and other cultural interactions between them.

The martial assemblage from Dura is of great importance to the military history of the Roman and Sasanian empires, and to that of the indigenous peoples of the Middle East. It is exceptionally large, and unusually well dated. Further, much of it is outstandingly well preserved, including many items composed of organic materials which rarely, if ever, survive elsewhere. It also comes from a site yielding important epigraphic and papyrological data and, equally valuable, visual representations of Roman soldiers and other warriors. All this provides rich contextual information for interpreting the material.

As yet, relatively little is known archaeologically about the arms and equipment of the Parthian or early Sasanian empires, or that of indigenous Syro-Mesopotamian peoples, making the small number of finds from Dura attributable to these societies especially precious. In contrast, while imperial Roman military equipment is already well understood from European sites, Dura provides the only really major assemblage from the eastern provinces. It is therefore of great potential interest for the insight it gives into Rome’s relatively little-researched eastern armies.

A number of the finds, most notably several painted wooden shields and two horse armours, have been famous since their discovery because of their unique state of preservation. There are also hundreds of smaller objects, whole or fragmentary, many in much poorer condition, which nevertheless represent almost the entire repertoire of dress and fighting equipment used by the Roman and other ancient armies. These include remains of body- and limb-armour, fragments of swords and daggers, several kinds of shield, arrows and archery tackle, and ammunition from torsion artillery. Several hundred metal items, mostly copper alloy castings, represent fittings from military dress and horse harness, almost all of known Roman types. However, some categories of equipment are represented poorly or not at all. No components of catapults were found, there are few spears or javelins, and only a handful of helmet fragments are known apart from one complete iron example.

This iron helmet is one of the most important of the finds. It almost certainly belonged to one of the attackers, and so is an important piece of early Sasanian archaeology. However, it is of a form which, by the early fourth century, was adopted by the Romans. Adoption of foreign equipment and practices across cultural boundaries is a key theme of the discussion, where it is argued that the evidence from Dura and elsewhere reveals this to have been a multi-directional process. Romans, Iranians, Syrians and Mesopotamians all appropriated elements of each other’s martial material culture. In particular, it is argued that Middle Eastern peoples had had a significant role to play in shaping the equipment, and especially the personal dress or ‘uniform’, worn by Roman soldiers like those besieged at Dura.

The Roman military equipment from Dura is also examined against the background of the wider Roman empire. In a world without industrialized mass production, and in a military governed by custom and tradition rather than modern-style books of regulations, it is remarkable how similar many items found at Dura are to artefacts recovered from as far away as Scotland and Morocco. These patterns are considered in conjunction with evidence from ancient texts and visual representations in the context of recent theoretical advances in understanding of the archaeology of identity. It is suggested that the observed tendency towards uniformity in Roman military equipment is largely explicable in terms of the active use of material culture, especially items of dress and personal accoutrements, in the construction of Roman soldierly group identity. ‘The soldiers’ as an identity group were central to middle imperial Roman politics, as well as warfare. In the third century AD the Roman military was a regionalized, multi-ethnic entity, mostly composed of locally-recruited men; this is reflected in the overwhelmingly Syrian origins of the soldiers attested at Dura. Within this heterogeneous body, centrifugal tendencies and regional tensions were a serious threat to stability and mutual security. It is argued that the soldiers stationed at Dura and hundreds of other military bases across the empire sought to maintain a sense of common Roman soldierly identity and solidarity, especially through convergent styles of dress and near-uniform visual appearance. Although specifically seen as ‘Roman’, by the third century AD such dress drew on styles and traits taken from the Danube lands and the Middle East far more than the Mediterranean.

Empire-wide homogenization of equipment in Rome’s multi-ethnic armies was so extensive, and the military history of Syria in the AD 250s so complex, that it is uncertain whether Dura’s Roman equipment all belonged to Syrian-recruited troops, or perhaps partly came from European expeditionary soldiers serving in the East at the time of the siege. However, this very ambiguity underlines the fact that the Syrian soldiers of Rome’s eastern armies were a fully integrated and important part of the wider Roman military, just as contemporary Syrian aristocrats were fully integrated into the cosmopolitan imperial elite, several of them becoming emperors. The story of the soldiers of Dura, even that of its Roman garrison, is very much a part of Syrian history, and no mere footnote to the chronicle of successive foreign imperial powers which once fought over the land.

Résumé

Parmi les plus remarquables découvertes d’époque hellénistique, parthe et romaine faites par la Mission de l’Université de Yale et de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres à Doura-Europos (Syrie, 1928–37), se trouvait un abondant matériel militaire. Celui-ci comprenait une grande quantité d’armes, d’armures et d’autres équipements guerriers liés principalement au siège conduit par les Sassanides qui a mis fin à l’existence de la ville en 255–6 de notre ère. Une partie de ce matériel provient des assiégeants sassanides ou même des occupants plus anciens de cette fondation hellénistique mais, pour l’essentiel, celui-ci constitue l’équipement de la garnison romaine de la cité.

Le présent ouvrage, qui est le volume VII des Final Reports de la Mission de Yale, présente un catalogue et une analyse de ce matériel qu’il tente de placer dans son cadre régional puis dans un contexte plus large. Il cherche à déterminer ce que les armes et l’habillement militaire peuvent nous apprendre sur les soldats romains, partho-sassanides, syriens et mésopotamiens de la période concernée, sur la guerre et sur d’autres interactions culturelles entre eux.

L’ensemble de ce matériel de guerre est d’une grande importance pour l’histoire militaire de cette époque concernant les empires romain et sassanide et les peuples du Proche Orient. Particulièrement abondant et bien daté, ce matériel est, dans sa majeure partie, étonnamment bien préservé, y compris de nombreux objets en matières organiques qui, ailleurs, ont généralement—si ce n’est toujours—disparu. De plus, le site d’où il provient a fourni un abondant matériel épigraphique et papyrologique et, fait appréciable, des représentations de soldats romains et d’autres guerriers. Tout ceci forme un contexte riche d’informations pour l’interprétation du matériel découvert.

Jusqu’ici nos connaissances sur les armes et l’équipement militaire de l’empire parthe, de l’empire sassanide à ses débuts ou des peuples syro-mésopotamiens étaient très limitées. Cela rend particulièrement précieuse l’attribution à ces sociétés de quelques découvertes faites à Doura. Et si l’équipement militaire romain est déjà bien connu à partir des sites d’Europe, le seul véritable assemblage majeur connu dans les provinces orientales se trouve à Doura. Ce matériel est donc d’un grand intérêt documentaire potentiel sur les armées d’Orient si peu étudiées.

Certaines trouvailles, en particulier plusieurs boucliers de bois peint et deux caparaçons de cheval, sont devenues célèbres depuis leur découverte en raison de leur remarquable état de conservation. Il y a aussi des centaines d’objets plus petits, dont plusieurs nettement moins bien préservés, qui représentent le répertoire complet du vêtement et de l’équipement de combat des armées romaines et d’autres armées de l’antiquité. On y trouve les restes d’une cuirasse, des fragments d’épées et de poignards, plusieurs sortes de boucliers, de flèches et d’arcs et des munitions pour l’artillerie à torsion. Plusieurs centaines d’objets en métal, pour la plupart fondus en alliage cuivreux, représentent des ornements de vêtements militaires ou d’équipements de cheval, pour la plupart d’un type romain connu. Cependant, certaines catégories d’équipement sont peu représentées oumême absentes. Aucune pièce de catapulte n’a été découverte, peu d’épées ou de javelots et l’on ne connaît que quelques fragments de casque en plus d’un exemplaire complet en fer.

Ce casque complet en fer est l’une des pièces les plus importantes. Il appartenait certainement à un attaquant et représente ainsi une pièce importante de l’archéologie sassanide ancienne. Cependant, c’est une forme qui a été adoptée par les Romains au début du quatrième siècle. L’adoption d’équipements et de pratiques étrangères en dépit des frontières culturelles est un thème majeur de discussion où l’on considère, à partir des découvertes de Doura et d’autres sites, qu’il s’est agi d’un processus multi-directionnel. Les Romains, les Iraniens, les Syriens et les Mésopotamiens se sont emprunté les uns aux autres des éléments de culture matérielle militaire. En particulier, on considère que les peuples du Proche Orient ont eu à jouer un rôle significatif dans la constitution de cet équipement, et particulièrement le vêtement personnel d’uniforme porté par les soldats tels que les défenseurs de Doura.

L’équipement militaire romain de Doura est aussi considéré dans le contexte général de l’ensemble de l’empire romain. En un mot, sans production de masse industrialisée et dans un système militaire régi par la coutume et la tradition plus que par des règlements écrits comme aujourd’hui, il est remarquable que de nombreux objets trouvés à Doura soient si semblables à d’autres provenant de sites aussi éloignés que ceux d’Ecosse et du Maroc. Ces objets sont confrontés aux informations tirées de textes d’auteurs anciens et de représentations figurées et examinés dans le contexte des nouvelles théories concernant l’archéologie de l’identité. On a suggéré que la tendance à l’uniformisation que l’on observe dans l’équipement militaire romain peut largement s’expliquer par l’utilisation active de la culture matérielle, particulièrement les pièces de vêtement et d’habillement personnel, dans la construction de l’identité de groupe militaire romaine. ‘Les soldats’ comme identité collective était une notion centrale pour la politique du moyen empire romain, tout autant que l’art de la guerre. Au milieu du troisième siècle, l’armée romaine était une entité régionalisée et multi-ethnique, composée essentiellement de recrues locales, ce qui apparaît dans le fait qu’on trouve une majorité de soldats d’origine syrienne à Doura. Au sein de ce corps hétérogène, les tendances centrifuges et les tensions régionales étaient une menace sérieuse pour la stabilité et la sécurité mutuelle. On a soutenu que les soldats stationnés à Doura et dans des centaines de bases militaires à travers l’empire cherchaient à maintenir un esprit commun d’identité et de solidarité militaire, en particulier à travers des styles convergents de vêtements et d’aspects extérieurs presque uniformes. Bien que considéré comme spécifiquement ‘romain’ au troisième siècle de notre ère, un tel vêtement reflétait des styles et des traits provenant des régions danubiennes et du Proche Orient beaucoup plus que du monde méditerranéen.

L’homogénéisation de l’équipement des armées multi-ethniques de Rome à l’échelle de l’empire était si aboutie et l’histoire militaire de la Syrie des années 250 si complexe qu’il n’est pas certain que tout l’équipement de la Doura romaine provienne de troupes recrutées en Syrie. Une partie peut avoir appartenu à des soldats d’un corps expéditionnaire européen servant en Orient à l’époque du siège. Cependant, cette réelle ambiguïté souligne le fait que les soldats syriens des armées romaines d’Orient étaient pleinement intégrés et formaient une part importante de la grande armée romaine, exactement comme les aristocrates contemporains syriens étaient pleinement intégrés dans l’élite cosmopolitaine impériale, ce qui a permis à plusieurs d’entre eux de devenir empereurs. L’histoire des soldats de Doura et même celle de sa garnison romaine fait véritablement partie de l’histoire de la Syrie et ne peut être considérée comme une simple note dans la chronique des puissances impériales successives qui se sont affrontées sur cette terre.

Zusammenfassung

Unter den bemerkenswerten Funden aus der hellenistischen, parthischen und römischen Zeit, die bei den Ausgrabungen durch die Universität Yale und die Französische Akademie in Dura-Europos, Syrien (1928–37) entdeckt wurden, befanden sich besonders viele Militaria. Die meisten Waffen, Rüstungen und sonstigen militärischen Ausrüstungsgegenstände stammen aus der Zeit der sassanidisch-persischen Belagerung, die zur Zerstörung der Stadt um das Jahr 255/56 n. Chr. führte. Die Militärgegenstände können zum größten Teil den belagerten römischen Truppen zugeordnet werden, einzelne gehören zu den sassanidischen Belagerungstruppen oder zu früheren Bewohnern dieser hellenistischen Gründung. Das vorliegend Buch, Band VII der, Final Report’ Reihe, enthält sowohl einen Katalog als auch eine Auswertung der Militärgegenstände und versucht, diese in ihren regionalen und größeren Zusammenhang einzuordnen. Die Studie untersucht, was die Waffen und anderen militärischen Ausrüstungsgegenstände aus Dura zu unserer Kenntnis der römischen, partho-sassanidischen, syrischen und mesopotamischen Soldaten dieser Zeit sowie ihrer kriegerischen und auch kulturellen Beziehungen beitragen können.

Das Kriegsmaterial aus Dura ist von großer Bedeutung für die Militärgeschichte des römischen und sassanidischen Reiches und für die Geschichte der ursprünglichen Bevölkerung des Mittleren Ostens in dieser Zeit. Die Sammlung ist außergewöhnlich umfangreich und ungewöhnlich gut datiert. Der Erhaltungszustand der Militärgegenstände ist bemerkenswert gut und die Sammlung enthält viele Gegenstände aus organischem Material, die sonst, wenn überhaupt, nur selten erhalten sind. Die archäologische Erforschung der Stadt hat wichtige epigraphische und papyrologische Quellen sowie bildliche Darstellungen von römischen Soldaten und anderen Kriegern hervorgebracht. Dies alles liefert reichhaltige zusätzliche Informationen zur Interpretation des Materials.

Bis heute ist unsere archäologische Kenntnis der Waffen und Ausrüstungsgegenstände des parthischen oder des frühen sassanidischen Reiches ebenso wie die der ursprünglichen syrisch-mesopotamischen Bevölkerung relativ beschränkt, was jedoch die wenigen Funde aus Dura, die diesen Kulturen zugeordnet werden können, umso wertvoller macht. Während kaiserzeitliche römische Militärgegenstände aus Europa gut erforscht sind, liefert Dura die einzig wirklich größere Materialsammlung aus den östlichen Provinzen. Die Militärgegenstände aus Dura sind deshalb von größter Bedeutung für unsere Kenntnis der bisher relativ wenig erforschten römischen Heere im Osten.

Einige der Funde, ganz besonders mehrere bemalte Holzschilde und zwei Pferdepanzer, sind seit ihrer Entdeckung für ihren ungewöhnlich guten Erhaltungszustand berühmt. Die Sammlung enthält außerdem Hunderte von kleineren, vollständig oder auch nur bruchstückhaft erhaltenen Gegenständen, von denen sich einige in einem weniger guten Zustand befinden; sie repräsentieren aber dennoch das gesamte Repertoire der von den römischen und den anderen antiken Heeren benutzten Rüstungs-, Kleidungs- und Kampfgegenstände. Diese Sammlung beinhaltet verschiedene Rüstungsteile, Bruchstücke von Schwertern und Dolchen, mehrere Sorten von Schilden, Pfeilen und Bögen sowie Munition für Torsionsgeschütze. Mehrere Hundert, hauptsächlich aus einer Kupferlegierung gegossene Metallgegenstände stellen Zubehörteile für bekannte Typen von römischer Militärbekleidung und Pferdegeschirr dar. Andere Kategorien sind jedoch weniger gut oder gar nicht vertreten. Es wurden keine Katapultteile und nur wenige Lanzen und Speere gefunden. Ferner sind nur ein kompletter Eisenhelm und einige Helmfragmente erhalten.

Dieser Eisenhelm ist einer der wichtigsten Funde, weil er höchstwahrscheinlich einem der Angreifer gehörte und deshalb einen wichtigen Beleg früher sassanidischer Archäologie darstellt. Gleichzeitig ist dies aber auch ein Helm-Typ, der im frühen 4. Jahrhundert von den Römern übernommen wurde. Die Übernahme fremder Kriegsausrüstungen und –praktiken über die kulturellen Grenzen hinweg ist ein zentrales Thema der wissenschaftlichen Erörterung und das Material aus Dura und anderen Orten beweist, dass dies ein Prozess in viele Richtungen gewesen ist. Römer, Iraner, Syrier und Mesopotamier eigneten sich Bestandteile der jeweils anderen militärischen materiellen Kultur an. Es liegt auf der Hand, dass die Bevölkerung des Mittleren Ostens bei der Herausbildung der Ausrüstung, insbesondere der Bekleidung oder, Uniform’ der römischen Soldaten, eine bedeutsame Rolle spielte.

Die römischen Militärgegenstände aus Dura werden vor dem Hintergrund des übrigen römischen Reiches untersucht. In einer Welt ohne industrielle Massenproduktion und in einem Heer, das von Brauchtum und Tradition und nicht von neuzeitlichen Vorschriften bestimmt war, ist es besonders bemerkenswert, wie ähnlich viele Funde aus Dura Gegenständen aus Schottland oder Marokko sind. Diese Ähnlichkeiten werden im Zusammenhang mit antiken Textquellen und bildlichen Darstellungen analysiert und vor dem Hintergrund von theoretischen Fortschritten auf dem Gebiet der, Archäologie der Identität’ diskutiert. Es deutet vieles darauf hin, dass die beobachtete Tendenz hin zur Uniformität in der römischen Militärausstattung mit der aktiven Nutzung materieller Kultur, insbesondere der Kleidung und der persönlichen Ausrüstung, in der Konstruktion römischer soldatischer Gruppenidentität erklärt werden kann.

‘Die Soldaten’ als eine Identitätsgruppe waren von zentraler Bedeutung für die mittelkaiserzeitliche römische Politik und Kriegsführung. Im 3. Jahrhundert war die römische Armee eine regionalisierte und multi-ethnische Einheit. Der Großteil der Soldaten wurde aus der unmittelbaren Umgebung der Militärlager rekrutiert; so stammen zum Beispiel die meisten Soldaten in Dura aus Syrien. In einer derart heterogenen Armee stellen zentrifugale Kräfte und regionale Spannungen eine ernste Bedrohung für Stabilität und Sicherheit dar. Der Autor vertritt den Standpunkt, dass die Soldaten, die in Dura und in Hunderten von anderen Militärlagern im römischen Reich stationiert waren, ein Gefühl für gemeinsame römische soldatische Identität und Solidarität anstrebten, insbesondere durch die Übereinstimmung im Stil der Kleidung und ein nahezu gleichförmiges Erscheinungsbild. Obwohl sie als ‘römisch’ angesehen wurde, enthielt diese Kleidung weit mehr stilistische Merkmale aus den Donauländern und dem Mittleren Osten als aus dem Mittelmeerraum.

Die reichsweite Vereinheitlichung in der Ausrüstung von Roms multi-ethnischen Armeen war so umfassend—und die Militärgeschichte Syriens in den Jahren um 250 n. Chr. ist zudem so kompliziert—dass es bis heute unklar ist, ob die römischen Militärgegenstände in Dura von aus Syrien rekrutierten Soldaten oder von europäischen Expeditionstruppen, die während der Belagerung der Stadt im Osten dienten, stammen. Diese Vieldeutigkeit unterstreicht die Tatsache, dass die syrischen Soldaten in den östlichen Armeen Roms einen voll integrierten und wichtigen Bestandteil des römischen Militärwesens bildeten; ebenso waren zu dieser Zeit syrische Aristokraten, von denen einige sogar Kaiser wurden, vollkommen in die kosmopolitische Elite integriert. Die Geschichte der Soldaten von Dura und die der römischen Garnison ist sehr wohl ein Teil der Geschichte Syriens und nicht mehr nur eine Fußnote in den Chroniken der vielen auswärtigen imperialen Mächte, die einst um dieses Land kämpften.

Acknowledgements

Firstly and most importantly, I would like to thank Susan Matheson, Curator of Ancient Art at Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, USA, for making this publication possible, by generously giving access to the artefacts and archives constituting the Gallery’s Dura-Europos Collection over an unconscionably long period. Her research assistants over that time, from Katina Lillios to Genevieve Gessert, Megan Doyon and others, provided invaluable assistance, both in the Gallery and via internet and mail. The staff of the John W. Higgins Armory Museum also kindly provided access to the parts of the collection then in their care. I am also extremely grateful to curators at the other museums where Dura material is housed, especially Dr Sultan Muhesen and the National Museum, Damascus; John Hayes and Alison Easson of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; and M-J. Castor of the Louvre, Paris.

My original PhD research on the arms and armour was financed by British Academy grants, which enabled me to pursue studies in Syria and the USA. I also owe particular debts to my PhD supervisor, Mark Hassall, for his unstinting and enthusiastic support, and to Martin Millett and the late Tim Potter for their careful additional scrutiny of my thesis, and unflagging encouragement. During the post-doctoral phase Mike Bishop, Lindsay Allason-Jones and Jürgen Oldenstein kindly scrutinized the catalogue and my arguments, and provided much helpful comment and information.

The major subsequent expansion of the project to include the hundreds of other military fittings was made possible by the kind granting of a Special Research Fellowship funded jointly by the Leverhulme Trust and Durham University. I am especially grateful to Colin Haselgrove for facilitating and supporting my post-doctoral fellowship application, and to John Reeve and The British Museum for allowing me leave of absence to take up the fellowship from which, in the event, I never returned to Bloomsbury.

In recent years, an invaluable additional source of information, ideas and understanding of Dura and its archaeology has been the friendship and support of Pierre Leriche and his colleagues of the CNRS. Their kindness in giving me a role in the current Dura research project, and access to the new finds of military material from the site, while they do not form a direct part of the present volume, have nonetheless greatly assisted and enhanced it.

There are innumerable other individuals who assisted or contributed in various ways, to whom I would like to express my gratitude. In no particular order these include: Katina Lillios for permission to use her unpublished metal analyses of scabbard fittings; Mrs Wright, widow of the late Donald Wright for permission to have a copy of his unpublished work on the Dura arms; the late Merrill Lindsay, for his hospitality during my early visits to Yale, and discussion of our shared interest in the Dura arms; Dietwulf Baatz and Michael Lewis for discussion of catapults; Catherine Johns and Valerie Rigby for comment on the belt fittings; Edward McEwan for his expertise on archery; Margaret Snape for discussions on brooches; Richard Reece for advice on coins, and general encouragement; and Carol van Driel-Murray for help in understanding Roman leatherwork, especially footwear, and providing assistance with illustrations. Anny Allara (sadly deceased), Julian Bowsher, Dragan Bozic, Jon Coulston, Phil Freeman, Pam Graves, Francis Grew, Jana Horvat, Ralph Jackson, David Kennedy, David Nicolle, John Paddock, René Rodgers, Margaret Roxan, St. John Simpson, Guy Stiebel, David Thomas, John Peter Wild and John Wilkes also all provided information, advice, support or assistance in various ways; my thanks to them. Pierre Leriche, Hella Eckardt and Wajdan Majeed kindly provided translations of the summary, and Helen Foxhall Forbes undertook the indexing. On a practical note, thanks to Brian Alvey and Jonathan Moffat for help with the early stages of computerizing my thesis; my mother for initial typing work, and Patricia Price for support and proof-reading of the thesis; my sister Judith and a friendly Arab horse for modelling for the equestrian reconstructions; and my wife Jill Harrington for helping me make the time to get it all finished. By no means the least of my debts are to my editor at BMP, Teresa Francis, and copy editors Lindsey Taylor-Gutharz and Sean Kingston, for their help and patience. I am also extremely grateful to the Trustees of the Dr M. Aylwin Cotton Foundation for their grant towards the costs of publication.

After a lapse of so much time I am bound to have omitted names, and therefore offer my apologies to anyone accidentally forgotten.

Finally, I have one much wider general debt to acknowledge: to Peter Connolly, an outstanding illustrator and self-taught experimental archaeologist who, in his time, has taught the academics more than a thing or two. Over the last twenty years and more Peter has inspired my own work in many ways, not least in placing central importance on visual representation. It is with great pleasure that I dedicate this volume to him.

Figure 1 Aerial photograph of Dura from the south, taken during the 1930s.

Figure 2 Reconstruction of Dura-Europos in Roman times.

Preface

No excuse is needed for returning again to the extraordinary series of discoveries made at Dura-Europos in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Whatever reservations we may have as regards the presuppositions of those who undertook these investigations, about their methods and procedures, and about the still incomplete publication of their results, the work done there still represents one of the most wonderful and creative chapters in the whole history of archaeology. (Millar 1998, 473)

Dura-Europos was a city on the Middle Euphrates, founded by the Macedonians, largely populated by Mesopotamians, long ruled by the Parthians, and annexed by the Romans (Fig. 1). It spent its last decades as one of many cities in the Roman East hosting an imperial garrison. Not the least remarkable of the remains to survive from the ancient town are the artefacts representing these soldiers and their activities – particularly the desperate but unavailing defence of the city against the Sasanian Persians who, in the middle of the third century AD, took the city and depopulated it, leaving it virtually abandoned to the winds for more than sixteen centuries.

It is now over eighty years since the site was reidentified as the Dura or Europos of Antiquity. The site was rediscovered in the aftermath of the final clash between European and Asiatic empires, the last in the long series from Alexander to Allenby, which culminated in the fall of Ottoman Turkey. Throughout its half-millennium history, from around 300 BC to the mid-third century AD, Dura-Europos was always subject to foreign imperial powers, and was sometimes garrisoned by their auxiliaries. It was founded by one empire – the Macedonian Seleucid state – and became a western stronghold of another – the Parthian kingdom – although it was garrisoned by archers from the oasis city of Palmyra. Then, as an eastern frontier base and fortress of Rome, it continued to be manned largely by Palmyrene auxiliaries (now formally incorporated as a Roman regiment), and legionaries of Syrian birth. It was destroyed by a Sasanian Persian army, again probably consisting mostly of contingents from subject and allied peoples. It is therefore perhaps historically appropriate that when the site was revealed to the modern world during the collapse of a later empire – Ottoman Turkey – the instruments of that discovery should be colonial troops of yet another imperial power, this time Britain.

The remarkable painting of the Roman tribune Julius Terentius sacrificing to the Palmyrene gods (Plate 1; Fig. 18), the first glimpse of Dura’s ancient garrisons, was revealed by men of a British-commanded Indian battalion. On operations to suppress local Arab resistance to the establishment of European colonial rule in succession to the Ottomans, the battalion was camping in the then anonymous ruins. It was on 30 March 1920, while digging defensive positions along the earth-shrouded city walls, that men of the battalion revealed wall-paintings. Encouraged by visiting American archaeologist James Henry Breasted to extend their digging in search of others, they brought the Terentius scene to light (Breasted 1924, 50–7). This painting revealed the name of the city and also depicted men of its garrison, as we now know the auxiliaries of cohors XX Palmyrenorum (Plate 1). Thus it was that Asian auxiliaries of the British empire came face to face, so to speak, with Asian auxiliaries of the Roman empire. To round off these imperial symmetries with some echoes of a specifically Roman past, the first substantial excavation of 1922 was largely undertaken by men of the French Foreign Legion (Cumont 1926, 90), while the first Yale/French Academy season of excavation in 1928 was conducted in part by soldiers of the French-raised Syrian Legion (Rep. I, 2).

The involvement of the Syrian Legion in the uncovering of Dura illustrates a fundamental point: while on the surface this is a story of imperial ideologies and the clashes of great but distant powers on the plains of Mesopotamia, the actors themselves were frequently people of much more local birth. Throughout, whether they thought of themselves as Greeks, subjects of Parthia, Romans or simply Durenes, this is mostly a story of Syrians and Mesopotamians, of peoples of whom some at least were already called Arabs (Gawlikowski 1997, 41). This is very much part of Arab history, too.

Between the World Wars, Dura was extensively excavated, but the rich material record of the military life (and death) of the city which was revealed has languished, largely unpublished, for a lifetime; the projected Final Report VII on the arms and armour was not even started by the excavators. I have been fortunate to have the opportunity, finally, to fill the gap.

The present volume began as my doctoral thesis (James 1991), which was initially intended to be a general study of the arms and equipment of the later Roman army. However, various factors conspired to limit its scope to material from one city, deposited, for the most part, in a single year. The main reason for this refinement was my visit to Yale University Art Gallery in 1981, which revealed the potential of the unpublished arms and armour recovered during the Yale/French Academy excavations at Dura; most of the material is housed there. It became clear that study of this remarkable assemblage would require a thesis in its own right. This project was made possible especially by the warm welcome I found at Yale, and the unstinting support I have since received from Susan Matheson, Curator of Ancient Art at Yale University Art Gallery, who permitted and encouraged me towards writing Final Report VII. It could never have been completed without the generous help and support of many other scholars in the USA, Syria, Canada, France and the UK. The following is an analysis of the material available to me in the United States, Canada and Syria, supported by work on other published evidence.

The present work is more broadly drawn than either my original thesis, or Yale’s original publication plan. It includes a consideration of all the identifiable military artefacts, including those pertaining to dress which, it became apparent, were of vital importance to understanding the soldiers of Dura. This has involved a virtual doubling in size of the catalogue and discussion, and required reconsideration of some material already published by others.

This volume has taken far longer to complete than I ever anticipated, and some words of explanation, if not justification, are called for. Had I known that it would take over twenty years of intermittent effort to bring this project to fruition, I would never have dared to start it. When I began, circumstances were very different from those now prevailing. Today it is commonplace in the UK for PhD theses to be finished within four years; then it was seen as equally important while undertaking the research to gain experience of teaching, to publish, and if possible to find a permanent job, which usually resulted in long delays in thesis completion, or failure to do so. Of my peer-group of about half a dozen postgraduates, to my knowledge only two of us ever finished – the kind of outcome which subsequently led the State to tighten up the rules – although all of us are now using our expertise in professional archaeology, the heritage sector or higher education. In my own case, the original thesis was long delayed by a combination of various unanticipated personal and domestic difficulties which required me to divert my efforts into writing for money, while the exigencies of my full-time job in the British Museum Education Service allowed no formal time for research. The latter meant the thesis, and various other research I was engaged in at the time, largely had to be completed during evenings, weekends and leave, and in such time as could be begged, borrowed and stolen with the informal sympathetic support of my superiors there. Subsequently, the post-doctoral phase of the Dura research was only made possible by the generous support of Durham University and the Leverhulme Trust.

Nevertheless, there have been some unanticipated consolations arising from the delay. Not least, it has allowed me to take some advantage of the general advances in archaeological theory in recent years. There has also been a wave of scholarly activity and innovatory thinking about ancient armies – or, more especially, soldiers – and about warfare and frontiers, particularly pertaining to the Roman world which, if it is not yet a revolution, promises to become one. Recent years have seen the appearance of ground-breaking works on both Roman military affairs in general (e.g. Goldsworthy 1996, Whittaker 1994) and on the East in particular (e.g. Isaac 1992, Kennedy 1996a). I have been extensively influenced by these developments, and have sought to make my own contributions to them (James 1999, 2001a, 2001b, 2002). In preparing this volume, I have been fortunate to have access to a number of other publications of collections, both military ones like Boube-Piccot’s province-wide catalogue of Moroccan bronzes (1994) and site assemblages like that from South Shields (Allason-Jones and Miket 1984), and also wider, mainly civil collections such as Colchester II (Crummy 1983), from which many examples could be taken and lessons learned. I hope the result approaches best current practice, within the limitations of the data available. Last but by no means least, I have been able to draw on the work of Mike Bishop and Jon Coulston, whose Roman Military Equipment (1993) provides the fundamental point of reference for any such work as this.

It must be admitted at the outset that the label ‘Final Report’ is misleading, since it really represents the mapping-out of an assemblage on which a great deal of important work remains to be done. Dura is a key potential laboratory for what archaeology, in combination with studies of visual representations, epigraphy and papyrology, can tell us about the martial aspect of Antiquity. The present volume is a first step in this process for, given the scale of the task, the relatively modest resources available and the confines of a manageable publication, it can only be a provisional interpretation. However, I have felt that it was essential that this should go much further than simply presenting a catalogue and discussion of the artefacts. I have attempted to follow through to an initial assessment of the wider implications of the assemblage, for Dura, the world of Rome and its neighbours in general. Although I am a Roman archaeologist, and the Dura military equipment is mostly about Rome, I believe that in peace or war Rome, civil or military, cannot usefully be studied in isolation, but can only be understood in the context of two-way interaction with other peoples, something I have argued for Roman Britain (James 2001b) and argue here for Roman Syria, and Dura in particular.

The result at least contributes to the filling of the remaining gaps in the publication of the Dura excavations deplored by Millar above. I hope that it also lays the foundations for further projects on the artefacts themselves, especially exploring their context in greater depth, to see what they can tell us about the life (and sudden death) of soldiers in Roman Dura and contemporary Mesopotamia. Work on such aspects is underway, and will appear elsewhere (e.g. James 1999).

Simon James

School of Archaeology & Ancient History,

University of Leicester,

Leicester,

LE17RH,

UK

Plate 1 The Terentius painting, after the colour interpretation published by Cumont (1926, pl. L).

Plate 2 Detail of Cumont’s rendering of the Terentius painting, showing the tribune Julius Terentius (left) and other soldiers of cohors XX Palmyrenorum, including the blond-haired junior officer (?) with swastika-decorated tunic (right).

Plate 3 The portrait of Heliodorus the actuarius, from the House of the Scribes.

Plate 4 Synagogue mural, battle of Eben-Ezer (copy painted by H. Gute).

Plate 5 Synagogue mural, Mordechai and Esther, panel WC2, 1 (copy painted by H. Gute).

Plate 6 Shield I(616), the ‘Homeric shield’ (copy painted by H. Gute).

Plate 7 Shield I I (617), the ‘Amazon shield’ (copy painted by H. Gute).

Plate 8 Shield II (617), back, showing reconstruction of the hitherto unpublished painted motif, with iron reinforcing/grip bar restored, and suspension loop in situ (copyright: author).

Plate 9 Shield III, the ‘Shield of the Warrior God’ (copy painted by H. Gute).

Plate 10 Semicylindrical plywood shield 629 as now (618), preserved at Yale.

Plate 11 A reconstruction of three Roman soldiers of the Dura garrison in ‘camp dress’, first half of the third century AD. Based primarily on representations and archaeological finds from Dura itself, they comprise a lesser officer (perhaps a centurion: left), a military clerk (centre), and a tribune (right). See p. 258 for discussion. Copyright: author.

Plate 12 A reconstruction of a Roman cavalryman, of the first half of the third century AD, based on archaeological finds from Dura and elsewhere in the empire, and contemporaneous visual representations. See pp. 258–9 for discussion. Copyright: author.

Plate 13 A reconstruction of a Roman cataphract (fully-armoured cavalryman) of the first half of the third century AD, based primarily on representations and archaeological finds from Dura. See p. 259 for discussion. Copyright: author.

Part 1

Discovery and context

Discovery and context

The assemblage and its potential

The excavations of Dura-Europos have provided an invaluable window on life in the Middle East from the third century BC to the third century AD, in Seleucid, Parthian, Roman and early Sasanian times. Among the most important of the surviving remains are portable artefacts belonging to the soldiers, especially the Roman soldiers, who lived, fought and, in some cases, died at Dura.

The value of studying military artefact assemblages

Many of the military finds from Dura would catch the attention of any viewer as spectacular artefacts in their own right. However, some scholars of the ancient world, not least historians, have been dismissive of the study of military equipment as of no significant potential for contributing to wider, supposedly more important issues in the study of the past. This situation still obtains, despite the development since 1960 of the small field of Roman military equipment studies, which owes its present flourishing state to the pioneering work of H. Russell Robinson (1975). This is partly the result of scholarly misunderstanding of the nature of archaeological evidence, which in turn is due to the relative youth and the theoretical underdevelopment of research into such material.

For example, the historian Adrian Goldsworthy rightly highlights the shortcomings of past archaeological work on arms, which has concentrated solely on the function of weapons to the exclusion of the key question of morale. In consequence, he is rather dismissive of the potential of archaeology, as opposed to documentary studies, for understanding Roman warfare (Goldsworthy 1996, 10, 173–4). Even David Kennedy, an archaeologist, is hardly more enthusiastic; in his survey of the evidence for the Roman army in the East, he does not mention military equipment or other artefacts at all. Clothing, fittings, horse harness, arms and armour are not listed as even potentially significant. The record consists of installations and texts (Kennedy 1996b).

There are a number of other reasons for the relegation of such studies to the periphery. Most military history has been written from the point of view of officers and commanders, and ‘grand’ themes such as military organization and structures, officers’ careers, strategy and tactics. This has been generally true of studies of the Roman army in Britain and elsewhere, and especially those of the Anglo-German tradition exemplified by the influential ‘Durham school’ founded by Prof. Eric Birley (e.g. Birley 1988a). Hardware such as weapons and the remains of military dress represent as directly as possible the soldiers in the ranks, an area with low status in Birley’s scheme of things (Birley 1988b, 3; James 2002).

Another discernible factor is academic prejudice against the practical – how people did things, made artefacts and used them. Such aspects are often implicitly devalued as ‘uncerebral’ and therefore trivial. Military equipment studies in particular have long involved the use of experiment through the construction of replicas in order to understand practical aspects of the use of weapons and armour. These are regarded by many scholars with a mixture of amusement, embarrassment or scorn, especially when produced and used, mostly for public display, by the historical re-enactment groups that are so numerous in Britain, such as the ‘Roman legionaries’ of the Ermine Street Guard, whose experiences actually provide enormously valuable feedback for understanding the artefacts in question. These activities also stir other deeply rooted suspicions. Since the First World War, Western culture has generally come to regard the study of war and violence as morally suspect and lacking in intellectual credibility. Such military history as is undertaken has long tended to avoid the realities of battle, interest in which is likely to be seen as psychologically dubious (Keegan 1988, 28–31, 48–59; Luttwak 1993, 5; James 2002).

More cogently, as was mentioned above, many of those who work with military artefacts have been open to charges of failure to move beyond crude and anachronistic functionalism in explaining and interpreting the material. Although this has started to change, much discussion of, for example, the design of dress and weapons still revolves solely around supposed enhancements of protective features in helmets and so on, as though the Roman army conducted modern-style experimental trials, and ‘must have’ improved armour during the early imperial period at least (assumptions underpinned by an expectation of progress under the ‘high’ empire, and of deterioration during Rome’s ‘decline’). The possibility that many changes occurred for other reasons, and that features may have been adopted for their symbolic meanings rather than any functional purpose, is only now beginning to be considered.

As long ago as 1970 Donald Dudley wrote that ‘in the last resort, the design of helmets counts for less than the morale of the men who wear them’ (Dudley 1970). I believe that new intellectual tools now available in archaeology for the study of such material can help us to address this valid criticism. Dura provides a striking instance of the potential of archaeology as a primary means of exploring the past, not as a mere ‘handmaiden of text based history’. It can act as a laboratory to demonstrate that archaeology, deployed on equal terms with textual sources, can make equally profound contributions to writing history in the most general sense. It will be argued that the study of Dura’s martial material culture in particular can go far beyond the merely functional, to deepening our understanding of military history, and not least of the social history of soldiers and the communities among which they lived.

The creation of a detailed narrative of the siege, and our understanding of the competing forces and their actions, methods and equipment, do not simply form an archaeologically-led project; they reveal a story almost entirely told by archaeology. Dura is about weapons and equipment in the context of a battlefield, in the absence of directly relevant texts. It challenges assumptions about the inherent potential of archaeology made by writers like Goldsworthy: for example, the material remains of the twisted bodies of the men who died in the countermine at Tower 19 bring us as close to the real experience of soldiers on the battlefield as any Latin text.

At a superficial level, Dudley was right to say that equipment design was less important than the morale of the wearer but, at a more subtle level, he was quite wrong. Dress and equipment are not just passive artefacts that are hung on soldiers; current understandings of human material culture show that the artefacts and environments that humans construct and inhabit have a much more active, indeed interactive, role in creating individuals, societies and identities (e.g. Schiffer 1999). In the case of Roman and Sasanian soldiers, clothing, armour and weapons did not simply encase the man; they did not simply enable him to live and, sometimes, to fight; nor did they just express his special status as a warrior in visual terms. Partly a matter of personal preference, partly determined by the group, they were actually a vital component in creating his identity, for himself and for others, by physically framing, enabling and obliging him to move, to behave and to appear in characteristic ways which marked him out as part of this community of soldiers, of this unit, and of no other. Then, as now, the design of helmets – and of tunics, of boots – is intimately and reflexively involved with the creation of the soldier’s self-identity, and so with those vital morale factors; they are a fundamental part of the literal embodiment of being a soldier (James 1999).

This identity may be intensified and welded to a remarkable degree on campaign, and especially in the heat of battle, but it is not born there. It is created in camp; during training, working and living together, in peacetime, among groups of soldiers more or less embedded in the world of civilians. Study of dress, equipment and appearance, then, is also about the wider question of soldiers in society, as well as contemporary craftsmanship, and the nuts and bolts of the soldier’s profession in peace and war. Such study also brings us close to the physical reality of the soldier’s own world, especially the relatively little-known world of the ranks; our knowledge from documentary sources of ordinary Roman milites, for example, consists mostly of terse epitaphs, or prose accounts largely written by unsympathetic, contemptuous, or even fearful aristocrats. It is the very personal remains of military dress and equipment, combined with the rich contemporary record of depictions of soldiers commissioned by soldiers, which allow us to approach their creation and perception of themselves (James 1999).

The military archaeology of Dura-Europos and its significance

The story of the rediscovery of