Gothic wagons

[Jim Webster]

In 334 there is an interesting article about Gothic Wagon Laagers
I don't disagree with the article but it raised a question for me, where did they get the wagons from? Did the Romans ferry them across the Danube for them? Even if the tribes brought them across themselves it would have been an interesting problem to tackle.

Indeed if these are the people who were selling their children into slavery for food, buying dog meat etc, it is probably they'd have eaten their own draught animals first?

Obviously after a year of so being semi-settled their own craftsmen would have been able to get their act together and build genuine 'Gothic' wagons, but were these laagers just composed of Roman farm carts?

[aligern]

It would be interesting to know what sort of wheeled transport Roman farms had.  The Goths had looted widely before Adrianople and would have had many opportunities to acquire carts and draught aninals. The article is good,, but I felt that  once again we ran into the marshy ground of tge credibility of Ancient numbers and  guesswork as to how many people were allocated to each wagon. Jim makes a good point, if the wagons are two wheeled then the size of  the  circle can be much less.
What would be in a wagon?  Food, water,  tools, both  agricultural and of a trade a plough in some, weapons, particularly arrows and javelins, bedding, spare clothing., cooking utensils and plates, platters, looted items. I'd have thought a large four wheeled wagonbwoukd be good for 20 people
Roy

[Duncan Head]

It would be interesting to know what sort of wheeled transport Roman farms had.

Perhaps Roman Traction Systems is a good place to start.

[Jim Webster]

It would be interesting to know what sort of wheeled transport Roman farms had.

Perhaps Roman Traction Systems is a good place to start.

He seems to concentrate entirely on equid drawn and doesn't mention oxen?

[Duncan Head]

True, she does - it's partly a response to and commentary on Lefebvre des Noëttes, who was writing mostly about horses. I did do a quick search for Roman Thrace and oxen without turning up much.

[Jim Webster]

True, she does - it's partly a response to and commentary on Lefebvre des Noëttes, who was writing mostly about horses. I did do a quick search for Roman Thrace and oxen without turning up much.

I've found pictures of ox carts from other parts of the Roman world, the Villa Romana del Casale is Sicilian and has a nice one in the mosaics

[Erpingham]

Here's another with a similar low ladder side and 8 spoked wheel as the one illustrated crewed by Dacians in the article.



It suggests to me that illustration shows a Roman-style transport vehicle.  Whether such wagons would be used by Goths, or how different Goth wagons might be to Roman ones, I don't know.

[Erpingham]

What would be in a wagon?  Food, water,  tools, both  agricultural and of a trade a plough in some, weapons, particularly arrows and javelins, bedding, spare clothing., cooking utensils and plates, platters, looted items. I'd have thought a large four wheeled wagonbwoukd be good for 20 people

Much depends on the use of the wagons but, if we are to assume they are part of a folk migration, as opposed to army logistics, I suspect the contents Roy lists are sound (though I'd probably add some sort of tentage).  Where I think I'd disagree would be the number of people per wagon.  20 is a good rule of thumb for a medieval army supply wagon but these were bigger and also dedicated to military supplies, not settlers implements.  We might be better to use a model of a prairie schooner which tended to be a family group (6-12?).

[Jim Webster]

What would be in a wagon?  Food, water,  tools, both  agricultural and of a trade a plough in some, weapons, particularly arrows and javelins, bedding, spare clothing., cooking utensils and plates, platters, looted items. I'd have thought a large four wheeled wagonbwoukd be good for 20 people

Much depends on the use of the wagons but, if we are to assume they are part of a folk migration, as opposed to army logistics, I suspect the contents Roy lists are sound (though I'd probably add some sort of tentage).  Where I think I'd disagree would be the number of people per wagon.  20 is a good rule of thumb for a medieval army supply wagon but these were bigger and also dedicated to military supplies, not settlers implements.  We might be better to use a model of a prairie schooner which tended to be a family group (6-12?).

That's why I queried the source of the wagons.

Also the amount of 'wagon' a family had would probably relate to their wealth, and the amount of wagon they had would tend to increase their wealth. So if you were wealthy enough to have horses, your family horsemen would be more likely to come across a farm with a wagon than if your family were all on foot. Similarly once you had a wagon you could carry more stuff of more value. Not merely tools and seed but food and stuff you could sell.

[aligern]

Interesting Anthony. We might have to factor in the loss of wagons when crossing the  Danube and replacement by looted farm wagons which might be smaller than the wagons that would be constructed forca mass movement of the population .
If the waggons are nn a 6-12 basis ( let us say 10 for simplicity?) then a  group of 100,000 Goths and others will need 10,000 carriages. At ten yards for each wagon that's  100,000 yards which is  56 miles . With 4 columns it is 14 miles per column . If the column moves at 3 miles per hour ( more like 2)  then for the head of the column to go 14 miles would take 5 hours and then another 5 hours for the tail to catch the head.  Of course we are playing with the figures here, but we won't get much in the way of hard data from the sources. 
As to there being 100,000 Goths, well there are a lot of them. Its a very large tribe ( the Tervingi) and this is the largest part of them. My reading of Ammianus is not that the Romans found that the Goths had the number of nen their scouts expected and then therevwere cavalry on top, but that the Goths had a lot more men in the leaguer than they had allowed for
Roy

[Erpingham]

I was instantly reminded of that classic passage in G. Perjes Army Provisioning, Logistics and Strategy in the Second Half of the 17th Century

To keep a train of such magnitude moving would have been impossible as well. Calculating a length of 12 metres for one cart with horses, and a distance of 6 metres between carts, the overall length of a train made up of 11 000 carts would have been 198 kilometres. What the moving of such a monster would have meant with respect to command and marching technique may be seen from the following data: given a marching performance of 25 kilometres per day, the rear of the column would have followed the head at a distance of eight marching-days. The commanding officer could only have been informed of events at the rear — e.g. a raid by the enemy — in no less than two days even with excellent dispatch-riders.

He is over egging the pudding somewhat but the parallel is clear. 

I do think there are some interesting things to discuss in Jens Kunz's article around getting the figures to connect up.  For example, what was the role of the women and children in the wagon's defence (women and children participated in American West wagon train defence and among the Boer trekkers because attack it was an existential threat.  Would the Goths have been any different?

[Mark G]

I guess potentially some wagons could have beef buoyant enough to float over too.

Cossacks used to do that apparently, so it's not impossible.

[Erpingham]

I guess potentially some wagons could have beef buoyant enough to float over too.

Cossacks used to do that apparently, so it's not impossible.

It was also a design feature of the Conestoga wagon.

It in part depends on how the population crossed the river.  There are pictures from the Old West of prairie schooners with wheels removed strapped to rafts to cross rivers. 

[DBS]

I realise I am nine months late to the party, but I do have a copy of Pisani Sartorio's Mezzi di trasporto e traffico which covers Roman imperial transport, as well as Crouwel's book on pre- Roman chariots, carts and wagons in Italy.  The impression one gets is that there is probably an artistic bias towards horse-drawn vehicles in the surviving evidence, given this tends to be funerary or high status vehicles; high society wants to be seen being driven to their villa or to their funeral behind some nice looking horses, not mules or oxen.  However, very clear that all three are options that were used.  There are some four wheeled wagons, drawn by oxen, in Alpine rock art tentatively dated to as early as the third millennium, and by the imperial period, depiction of tilts on some types of wagons, such as those in which the passenger(s) might be expected to have a kip.

A few pics I have nicked from Pisani Sartorio's work show a pretty good range, and whilst not Danubian specific, would seem to show that one could imagine a wide variety being available to light fingered Goths once they turned predatory.  The rheda, for example, may have been designed as the high speed courier vehicle for the imperial post, but if acquired from an overrun mansio, could doubtless provide a first class ride for Mrs Goth and the children (assuming they had not been sold off previously) through Thrace.

[Duncan Head]

In the discussion of where the wagons came from, I don't recall anyone mentioning Ammianus XXXI.4.5; at the initial Gothic crossing of the Danube:

In this expectation various officials were sent with vehicles to transport the savage horde, and diligent care was taken that no future destroyer of the Roman state should be left behind, even if he were smitten by a fatal disease. Accordingly, having by the emperor's permission obtained the privilege of crossing the Danube and settling in parts of Thrace, they were ferried over for some nights and days embarked by companies in boats, on rafts, and in hollowed tree-trunks;

So were the "Gothic" wagons actually Roman vehicles from the start?