Ancient Warfare Magazine

Editor-in-chief: Jasper Oorthuys Assistant editor: Murray Dahm News editor: Lindsay Powell Image research: Lauren van Zoonen Design & Media: Christianne C. Beall Design © 2016-2021 Karwansaray Publishers Contributors: Jo Ball, Chris Buckham, Duncan B

To be honest, I probably would have titled this editorial in a slightly more expressive manner, but my better nature told me not to. Our schedule is fairly lenient, with an issue every two months, but it is still relentless. And sometimes the feces w

Conservators in Edinburgh, Scotland have painstakingly re-assembled a Roman arm guard from dozens of fragments. It is the most intact example of its kind and one of only three known from the entire area formerly under the sway of the Roman Empire. Th

Metal detectorists exploring the State Forests near Hrubieszów, Poland have found a cache of weapons, including iron spearheads and axes, suggesting a connection to warriors from ‘barbarian’ tribes during the Roman period. The cache includes a dozen

Despite a long history of intensive scientific research, the structured use of space within Iron Age hillforts across Europe remains poorly understood. The proto-urban hillfort of Pungrt, located some 10 km south of the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana

Two caches of slingstones have been found in Israel. Dating to the first part of the Chalcolithic period, ca. 5800–4500 BC, these caches provide the earliest evidence yet discovered for warfare in the southern Levant. In total, over 400 slingstones w

First released in 1999, editors John Carman and Anthony Harding’s Ancient Warfare: Archaeological Perspectives sought to establish a new understanding of human aggression and conflict in the distant past integrating archaeological and documentary res

The 1800-year-old Roman legionary fortress of Legio has survived the ages only now to be threatened by highway construction. The remains of the fortress established by Legio VI Ferrata (‘Ironsides’) were uncovered in a recent excavation carried out b

Some reconstructions and performance tests have been published since 2020. Tests have continued in recent years as well, with particular success in the field of artillery. By the end of February 2024, tests with our torsion engines were particularly

The principle of accelerating projectiles by means of torsion was invented by the Greeks at the beginning of the fourth century BC. It was used to hurl bolts and stones. Initially, the power for the acceleration seems to have been provided by two tor

Durises was a rider in the Ala Sulpicia, a cavalry unit known to be active from the AD 70s through to the late second century. The fact that Marcus Aemilius Durises had a tria nomina suggests that he may have been a Roman citizen, despite serving in

A recent book on the conquest of Roman Britain includes an imaginative painting of the emperor Claudius arriving in a British village at the head of a line of marching legionaries. The emperor and his legate, Aulus Plautius, is shown proudly standing

The death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC unleashed all the forces that only his powerful personality had kept in check. After twenty years of bitter conflict the vast empire of the great conqueror had been divided into warring kingdoms. At the same

The armies of the Hellenistic period were quite different from the earlier armies of the eastern Mediterranean. Initially, the various autonomous Greek cities continued to rely on hoplite phalanx militias, but the gradual dependence and, finally, the

After the defeat of the forces of Brennus at Delphi, the Aetolians, who thought themselves to be the main actors to repulse the Celts, built some monuments to celebrate their bitter victory. Among these there was a large bronze female statue depictin

"The” Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC is one of the most famous battles in history. The destruction of Leonidas has become a political lightning rod, an icon of stalwart resistance in the face of hopeless odds, and the primary basis for the cult of S

Pausanias does not name any of the tribes the Keltoi came from. According to Strabo, Brennus was a member of the (otherwise unknown) tribe of the Prausi, but he admits “I am unable to say where the Prausans formerly lived” (Geography 4.1.13). Strabo

The Celts ravaged Aetolia with a graphic ferocity that is so brutal we must again consider the sources with a healthy degree of scepticism, as we must also question the heroic tales of the Aetolian resistance, which includes revenge stories nearly as

This was a connected world, not closed in on itself, as we can infer from the rapid spread from the Atlantic to the Black Sea of elements such as La Tène art. In the ongoing debate about who the Celts were, or if we can even speak of Celts, I conside

The territorial competition between different Celtic groups from the late third century BC onwards led to processes of social cohesion and political integration, with the union of different groups, that Caesar called pagi (sing. pagus), which in turn

Our best source for the Celtic invasion of Greece in 279 BC is in the second century AD geographer Pausanias’ Description of Greece. In the final book, he describes Phocis, the region in which the oracle at Delphi was located. Much of the book is, th

During his description of the battle of Delphi, Pausanias records that “there were seen by them ghosts of the heroes Hyperochus, Laodocus and Pyrrhus; according to some a fourth appeared, Phylacus, a local hero of Delphi” (10.23.2). This echoes the l

Unlike the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, the column to Antoninus was not covered in reliefs, nor was it as tall. The almost two-metre-in-diameter red granite - sourced from Aswan in Egypt - column was undecorated and topped by a statue of An

Evidence for Samnite daily life and political structures is severely lacking. Evidence on Samnite warfare, however, particularly the characteristics of Samnite warriors, is much more plentiful. Consequently, we can conduct a detailed analysis of who

Our ‘typical’ Samnite warrior wears the ubiquitous feathered helmet and wields two javelins. For defence he carries a round aspis shield and wears a typical trilobate pectoral as well as a wide bronze belt. The unusual combination of seemingly both l

Whilst Sparta did not field the vast cavalry of Periclean Athens, nor had the renowned horsemen of the northern tribes in Thessaly or the mounted bowmen of Scythia, the cavalryman did have a place there. Its place and the transformations of Spartan c

By M.C. Bishop ISBN: 978-1472851703 Osprey Elite 252 (2023) - £14.99 www.ospreypublishing.com Following on from his excellent titles on Roman Shields (Elite 234) and Roman Plate Armour (Elite 247), Bishop here covers Roman mail (hamata) and scale (sq

By Adrienne Mayor ISBN: 978-0691211084 Princeton University Press (2022) - £16.99 www.press.princeton.edu It is rare to come across a work as intriguing and meticulously researched as this. Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs takes readers

By Peter Beresford Ellis Constable, 1997 ISBN: 978-0094755802 In this volume, Ellis explores the relationship of the Celts of Eastern Europe with the Hellenic states, starting in the 6th Century BC. It explores the eastward push of the Celtic peoples

When the various La Tène tribes began their south-eastwards trek in the early third century BC, no one in Greece would have ever suspected that such a movement would reach them more than 1500 kilometres away. True, the Celts had begun spreading south