Article on Bulgarian Cataphractarius Armour

[Dangun]

Free article on academia describing armour, featuring a fantastic looking mask helmet.

https://www.academia.edu/36784279/Armour_of_the_Cataphractarius_from_the_Roshava_Dragana_Burial_Mound?email_work_card=view-paper

I know nothing much about this period. But the article's discussion of the dating seems very squiffy, basically undiscussed. It strikes me that if the burial is dated 100 years later, it reverses the identification of who was in the tomb.

[Duncan Head]

Already briefly discussed here , and of course it's the basis of one of the figures in D'Amato's and Negin's Osprey.

I'm not sure how secure the date-matching between the tamga and the Bosporan coins is, but I would be a bit surprised if that masked helmet were much later than the 1st century, honestly.

[Dangun]

I don't know this stuff well enough to tell. But was there anything in the tomb to convincingly label the soldier a Roman soldier?

I have nothing to add to the facts. But from memory, I got the impression, that the Roman employment was a conclusion drawn from the proximity of the tomb to other unquestionably Roman sites.

[Duncan Head]

Not really. You have a mixture of Roman and Sarmatian armour, in a high-status burial within a Roman province, in the vicinity of a Roman villa owned by people who are (at least  culturally) Romano-Thracian. But no inscription, and nothing actually in the burial, as far as I can see, decisively linking the deceased to the Thracian religious practices attested nearby. The gold oak wreath as corona civica is tempting,  but other gold wreathes appear to be purely funerary and I'm not sure that simply being oak is enough to rule that out.

It has to be most likely by far that someone buried with Roman weapons in a Roman province is a Roman soldier. It's too late a date to think in terms of "native Thracian chieftain" as a category apart from "ethnically Thracian auxiliary"; but "Sarmatian exile" or "rich Romano-Thracian who collects weapons" must be at least theoretical possibilities, however unlikely. And of course even if he is a Roman soldier, that doesn't mean he's a Roman cataphractarius; perhaps the Roman cavalry helmet was his and the Sarmatian gear was trophies.

[Dangun]

Not really. You have a mixture of Roman and Sarmatian armour, in a high-status burial within a Roman province, (1) in the vicinity of a Roman villa owned by people who are (at least  culturally) Romano-Thracian. But no inscription, and nothing actually in the burial, as far as I can see, decisively linking the deceased to the Thracian religious practices attested nearby. The gold oak wreath as corona civica is tempting,  but other gold wreathes appear to be purely funerary and I'm not sure that simply being oak is enough to rule that out.

It has to be most likely by far that someone buried with Roman weapons in a Roman province is a Roman soldier. It's too late a date to think in terms of "native Thracian chieftain" as a category apart from "ethnically Thracian auxiliary"; but "Sarmatian exile" or "rich Romano-Thracian who collects weapons" must be at least theoretical possibilities, however unlikely. And of course even if he is a Roman soldier, that doesn't mean he's a Roman cataphractarius; perhaps the (2) Roman cavalry helmet was his and the Sarmatian gear was trophies.

Thanks Duncan. Much appreciated.

I was quite interested in the buried-in-the-backyard argument (1) put forward by the article. Is this common? My impression is that it's not common to have large barrow's close to a related building. But its just an impression.

And because I am happily ignorant of most of the relevant facts, when I read the article's comment about a (2) Roman with Sarmatian trophies, I couldn't help but notice the asymmetry, and ask why isn't this a Sarmatian with Roman trophies? Particularly because the only fact I bring to the table is that the squiffy date only has to get to 230 CE and then this area is a highway for barbarian incursion.

Apologies for the rambling stream-of-consciousness.