Making Scythian boots, part III

The leg lining, attached with a double running stitch.  Tests show that the lining will stiffen the entire area that it's stitched into, so for flexibility and the option of tightening the boot around the ankle, the lining had to be cut off.  Extra rows of quilting within the lined area don't appear to be necessary, but could be added in the future even after the boot is constructed.

Putting stitch holes in the leather layers with just a hobby awl was much easier and faster than with the latigo sole.

Along complex curves or where clamping isn't possible, it's much easier to temporarily pin the leather pieces than to glue them, although this should be avoided when possible.

The foot is attached with two rows of double running stitches, then the leg is slid over the edge of a table to glue up the welt.

Laying the glued pieces out to dry.  Possibly just placing a large book, a plank or other heavy, flat object on the boot while it's still over the table would work best, but it's not that difficult to just arrange it so that the welt sits flush against the leg while drying.

Since the welt is likely to be a high-wear area, I attached it again with two rows of stitching.  The second edge had to be glued up by pinning at roughly two-inch intervals and squeezing glue between the pins (this photo is taken halfway through the process).

It's harder to stitch the second row because it's often hard to see the holes by looking down the boot leg.  As an alternative, one can poke the awl back into the holes and feel where it protrudes, then slide the needle down to where the awl is protruding through the leather.

The toughest part was trying to close the gap at the heel.  Because the welt is attached entirely on the outside, there's a hole where the back end of the sole, the back corners of the foot and the bottom of the welt come together.  I tried to ameliorate this by whipstitching the welt to the sole using the preexisting holes that attach the sole to the foot.  However, perhaps it would be better to put the welt between the sole and foot when they're first being stitched together, before the foot is turned rightside-out.

The finished first boot.  Although it looks okay at first glance, there are several things I don't like about it:

Firstly, the middle of the instep just before it meets the leg is too low and pinches the top of my foot painfully.  This may be the result of my tailoring in part II where I wanted to get rid of excess material around the arch.  I don't think that a softer leather would help, because the linen thread wouldn't stretch (something that must not have been apparent when the felt pattern was loosely basted together) and in any case this foot is already made from the relatively elastic part from the hide's belly.  Only a fuller cut would really help.  Possibly the curved stitch where the instep meets the leg should be cut higher.

Second, the toe is too low.  That angle in the profile is my toenail pressing against the inside.  Again, this may be because I cut away the "excess" length back in part II.  If so, it may indicate that the original Missouri River patterns were, as I first suspect, too small.  It's a very good thing that while I did mark the felt pattern with the revised lines, I didn't trim it, so it still has the pre-tailored shape.  I will have to go through the entire bootmaking process again without the extra trimming and see if I can confirm these suspicions.

Lastly, aesthetically, the brown color is too dark and the "natural" linen thread too light, making for a very odd look with the bright line cutting across the leg just above the ankle.  To achieve this kind of very dark brown, a hide would either have to be heavily dyed or smoked for an excessive amount of time.  I think that a more natural smoked color (buff, goldenrod or golden brown) would make these boots much more plausible for portraying a person of middling economic status.  Many buckskinners say that white leather was historically preferred for special occasions and that most leather would have been smoked - perhaps the Chärchän Man's white boots and red jacket were the equivalent of being buried in a formal suit today.  The fil au chinois "natural" is off-white, whereas unbleached linen and hemp are beige - however, I'm not sure where to find truly unbleached linen thread at this time.  Regular brown may be another acceptable option not because it's necessarily more correct but because it would stand out less.

In conclusion, while I have the basic steps down, it's clear that more experimentation is needed to turn out a pair of wearable boots.

Making Scythian boots, part II

The patterns are taped to the flesh side of the leather at multiple points and traced with a pen (I prefer a red rollerball pen of the kind used for proofreading).  The tape does cause slight degradation of the pattern each time it's used by pulling off some of the felt fibers, but unless you're making large numbers of boots all of the same size, this shouldn't be a problem.

I cut out both sets of uppers at once because I wanted to put the hide away and vacuum my floor, but this isn't necessarily the best order to do it in, for the following reason:

Once one vamp and its matching sole have been cut out, it's time for a final fitting.  Although felt is probably the best commonly-available material for simulating leather in test fittings, it's not perfect, and in particular it doesn't really simulate the thick leather of the sole.  When the sole approaches 1/4 inch (over 6mm) in thickness, the stitch holes are put in at an angle, emerging from the edge rather than the other side as with a thin felt sole.  Therefore when the finished shoe is turned rightside-out, the upper wraps around the sole and fits in a slightly different manner.  I soon discovered, by basting the upper and sole together, that I'd cut the felt patterns rather too long.  This is, of course, not as bad as if they'd been too short, but refitting is a pain.  I traced the excess while the shoe was still on my foot and took it apart to re-cut.

Everyone's feet are slightly different shapes.  Mine are narrow in the heel and wide across the ball.  A good fitting requires a rather odd shape.  I re-traced the altered upper onto the pattern so that the correction will be permanently incorporated into it.

Finally, it's time to sew up.  I'm using Crazy Crow's five-ply waxed linen cord in "natural," but waxed hemp would probably be more correct for Central Asia, and real sinew is ideal (.  White linen cord from a major craft chain like Michael's would probably be okay since no one will see it - it's certainly no less correct than the latigo, which will be visible.  Artificial sinew and other synthetic materials should be considered a last resort.

Speaking of latigo, it's a very tough material and difficult to pierce with the kind of awl I'm using here.  This is a hobby awl made for light applications.  I am informed by Nadeem Ahmad and Jax Reeder that an awl with a diamond cross section and mushroom handle will make putting holes in the sole much easier.

The finished foot.  Once stitching is completed, the toe is pushed inward and the entire shoe slowly inverted so that the stitching faces inward.  The insole will keep the stitching from touching your foot.  I re-cut the upper perhaps a bit too short, while the sole is still a bit too long and wide, making for an odd fit, but it doesn't yet appear so bad as to be unusable.  Luckily, a single cowhide split should yield enough material for a second pair if the first one doesn't work out.

Making Scythian boots, part I

Background and considerations
Central Asian peoples from at least around 1000 BCE through recent times frequently wore tall pull-on boots.  With modifications to height and toe shape, these were used by Arians, Drangians, Parthians, Black Sea Scythians, possibly Bactrians, and others at least as far east as the Altai.  Kuz'mina ascribes tall boots to the Bronze Age people of the Andronovo culture, widely believed to include the early Indo-Iranians, so it is possible that the ancestors of the Medes and Persians also wore them.

Artwork is scant on construction details, which, of course, probably varied a lot over such a wide expanse of space and time.  Black Sea Scythian boots on several artefacts from Kul Oba are shown with a strap that appears to gather the boot leg tight around the ankle.  The women's decorated boots from Pazyryk have wide bands of woolen braiding in the same location, but these don't appear to fasten or make the boot leg tighter and instead seem to be appliqued into place (strictly, the Kul Oba ankle straps aren't shown with any obvious method of fastening either).  Otherwise boots appear to have no fastening, like wellington or cowboy boots, which are a modern iteration of the same equestrian concept.  The Chärchän Man's surviving boot doesn't appear to have an ankle strap, but is seamed between the foot and leg.  On balance, I would call the evidence inconclusive.

Since I have thin heels and wide toes, my heels tend to lift out of any pull-on boots that are wide enough to fit my toes into.  I'm making some felt mock-ups and plan to tie straps around the ankles to see if they can be left as separate pieces or need to be partly stitched down.  On Medo-Persian low shoes, the strap has to be attached, since if it rides up even a little, it will be above the top edge of the shoe, and thus fail to serve its purpose of tightening the shoe around the ankle so it stays on the foot.  It doesn't seem to me that tall pull-on boots would have such a strict requirement.  On the other hand, as noted above, stitching the strap down all the way around would make it impossible to adjust, which could well result in a worst-of-both-worlds setup in which the strap impedes putting on and taking off the boot but isn't tight enough to provide good fit around the ankle.

Sergei Rudenko states that the Pazyryk women's boots are seamed at the back, which makes them sound similar to Plains moccasins.  Some Plains boot moccasin patterns may be ideal, but the ones most readily available to me are laced and in such case, I figure I might as well wing it when it comes to fitting the leg, since lace-up shafts won't fit in the same manner as pull-on ones.  The Pazyryk boot legs were open in back, but artwork seems to show that most Scythian boot legs were closed.

The commercial cowhide split I'm using is an inexpensive substitute for a fat-cured leather, but both it and the German-tanned buckskin I used for my gorytos are quite lightweight and floppy.  I expect that leather boots had linings to stiffen the legs and prevent too much sagging, and luckily, I have some lining leather on-hand.  A double layer of the outer material or a felt lining would also work.  Whatever the material, a few rows of stitching to add a little bit of quilting effect should increase stiffness, ensuring that the lining and upper behave as one piece of material.  For cold regions and seasons, a dense shearling hide might get by without an added liner or could even be the liner for a de-grained leather outer.

Soles might have been a single or double layer of soft leather, thick felt, or rawhide.  Rudenko describes one of the Pazyryk soles as "chamois" (which may mean chamois goat or just soft suede - I don't know what the original Russian word was) and another as having "a heel of thick (2mm.) rigid leather."  However, one look at the ornamented Pazyryk soles shows that they weren't made for a great deal of walking, and were likely intended just to show off while sitting or while riding side-saddle.

I'd prefer rawhide, but it works best with special processing such as de-stretching, and most of it on the market tends to be either very thin (goat hide, drumheads), too stiff (most bleached sides and boiled chew toys) or sold in costly whole sides (heavy cowhide, bison, etc.).  There are apparently rawhide soles commercially available, but I failed to find any before just ordering some latigo pieces.  Better luck next time!  Latigo is heavy wax-stuffed leather used for saddlery and other weather-resistant outdoor equipment, and the most common material for modern "hardsole" moccasins.  White latigo looks like bleached rawhide but is much more flexible.  Moccasin-makers around the Web have opined on the pros and cons of rawhide versus latigo with regards to durability, ease of sewing, comfort, traction and so on.  But either one should be acceptable for occasional reenactment use; rawhide simply has the edge as being more historical.  I wouldn't blame anyone for sticking with soft soles, though; they would be less protective, but far easier to stitch and more flexible if you prefer that.

Hemp and wool thread (used in Pazyryk felt stockings), sinew (used to attach the Pazyryk boot soles) and linen would all be appropriate stitching materials.  Artificial sinew and other synthetics would work as well.  For the final construction, I'm currently planning to use all waxed linen, since it's the only historical material I have on hand:  heavy cord for the soles, and light cord or multiple rows of thread to assemble the uppers.

Making the pattern

Assembled materials ready for measuring and cutting, including felt for the mock-up.  The spool of artificial sinew, next to the scissors, was my initial choice for assembly before I obtained some linen cord.

The first step is to find the correct size.  I normally wear a men's size 9 wide, so this is what I initially went for in measuring and cutting.  The Missouri River pattern is unfolded, laid out, and pieces of tracing paper are laid over the desired sections and weighted with various objects.  Trace with a pencil or ballpoint pen so the ink won't bleed through the tracing paper onto the original patterns.

In Plains moccasins, the topline is not a hole but just a T-shaped cut; the moccasin extends to the ankle and has a lace running through slits, and a tongue is sewn into the front.  Here, I'll be cutting away material from the topline to make that swooping seam seen in the Chärchän and Pazyryk boots.  No tongue is needed because the foot will be protected by the boot leg.

The paper copies of the original patterns are pinned to the felt, traced in ink and cut.  The felt pattern should become the permanent pattern cut for my own feet if everything goes well.

As recommended, I added a welt between the sole and upper for the first attempt, but have since decided that this made things needlessly complicated, especially since I'm going to be using insoles.  After cutting out a nicely rounded topline, I attempted to measure its perimeter with a tape measure and then cut a big rectangle for the leg.  Then I stitched it all up loosely with dental floss.

It turns out the size 9 fit FAR too small on me, being too short, too narrow, and too flat in the toe.  It may be partly that these moccasins are designed to be worn without socks or insoles, or they may just run smaller than they should, I don't know.  Add to that, a true fat-cured leather would stretch with wear.

After two more attempts, I now have a pattern that will accommodate my stocking foot and an orthotic insole comfortably, made by combining the back half of a size 10 with the front of a size 11.  In fact, it's a bit too wide now, though a good length.  I don't know if the welt running up the back was used in period, but it's one way to accomplish a flat seam without overlapping the edges and causing a raised edge that could chafe the achilles tendon.  Of course, the welt itself could prove irritating due to being an extra-thick, less flexible part, and any kind of raised seam would be.

The next step will be to cut all the stitches I've just done, do some slight final adjustments to the foot and sole pieces, and then start tracing onto leather.

Tiara felting instructional at A Magyar Jurta

Thanks Giannis Kadoglou for this link. Scythian-inspired Felt Hat It should be useable with the Persian tiara pattern.

Peoples of the empire: The Scythians

Geographical definition and nomenclature
The term Scythian (O.P. Sakâ, also Gk. Sakai, Lat. Sacae) broadly glosses a number of ancient peoples who shared the culture of the Great Steppe such as it was in Classical antiquity and may have spoken closely-related languages.  They were spread over a very wide area:

• The Amyrgian Scythians or Sakâ haumavargâ ("haoma-drinking Scythians") lived in or about modern Uzbekistan. • The Orthocorybantians or Sakâ tigrakhaudâ ("pointed-hat Scythians") were north of Parthia in present Turkmenistan
• The Pausikoi or Apâ Sakâ ("water Scythians") appear to have been somewhat northeast of the Sakâ tigrakhaudâ.
• The Sakâ paradrayâ ("Scythians across the sea") lived north of the Black Sea in the modern Ukraine and part of Romania.  They were not part of the Persian empire.  These are the folk whom the Greeks referred to simply as Scythians (Skythoi), without qualification.

The Dahae (Dahâ) and Massagetae (*Mâh Sakâ?), who lived in what is now south-central Kazakhstan, are sometimes glossed as Scythian peoples, but for brevity's sake, I won't cover them here.  This history will attempt to treat the first four peoples.

Linguist Oswald Szemerényi regarded Skythoi and Sakâ as coming from different roots.  The former, he said, derived from an Indo-European root meaning "shoot" and reconstructed in the original Scythian as *Skuda, "archer" (to which he also related the name of Sogdia).  In the language of the Sakâ paradrayâ, this became *Skula, accounting for Herodotus' statement that the Royal Scythians (the chief tribe of the Sakâ paradrayâ) called themselves Skolotoi.  Szemerényi believed Sakâ came from an Iranian root meaning "roam," and was therefore an exonym given to them by the Persians.

History
There are two popular theories regarding Scythian origins:  One states that they branched off from the second-millennium BC Andronovo culture in the area of Central Asia northeast of modern Iran; the other has them develop from the Srubna culture, which occupied the land to the north of and between the Black and Caspian seas during the same period.

A competing - not so much theory as way of assessing the situation - states that the literate Greeks and Persians applied "Skythoi" and "Sakâ" so broadly to distinct Steppe peoples as to make trying to pin down a singular origin for them futile by nature.  It is true that Europeans would continue to apply the term "Scythian" to people who came out of the same regions as the Classical Scythians many centuries later, and such indiscriminate use may have already occurred in our period.

Archaeologically speaking, the Scythians we discuss belong to what is called the Scytho-Siberian culture, a very widespread set of material cultural practices (almost certainly shared by completely unrelated peoples) that include such things as a highly equestrian way of life, kurgan tombs, the B-shaped composite bow, the akinakes sword, styles of artwork and so on.

The Scythians along the Black Sea had as their immediate northerly neighbors farming people whom Herodotus lumps with the Scythians; these may be the Chernoles culture, a possibly proto-Slavic archaeological group who appear to have come under Scythian domination.  Herodotus devotes much of book IV to the customs of the Black Sea Scythians.  He says that they blinded those whom they took as slaves and forced them to churn butter.

The Royal Scythians seem to have enjoyed a period of power in West Asia.  Herodotus reports that their king Madyes son of Protothyes defeated Cyaxares in battle (probably in the mid-seventh century) and subjected the Medes for 28 years, plundering many other lands besides, until Cyaxares hosted some of their nobles, got them drunk and, well, things didn't turn out so well for them.  They also took part in the coalition that destroyed the Assyrian empire at the end of the century.

According to Herodotus, Darius the Great attempted to conquer the Black Sea Scythians, an event dated to around 512.  He crossed the Bosphorus with a pontoon bridge, turned east and found nothing.  The Scythians waged a scorched earth campaign, fleeing before his army, destroying pastures and attacking his supply lines.  Darius wrote to their king Idanthyrsus a challenge to either fight or submit; Idanthyrsus replied that, as his people were nomads, he had no reason to do either, and only if Darius could find and try to destroy their fathers' kurgans could he expect a pitched battle.  With his men exhausted from the endless pursuit, Darius stopped at the Volga River, built some frontier fortresses and then left unsatisfied.

He had long since pacified the Sakâ tigrakhaudâ, who were apparently already subjects at the time of his ascension.  In his Behistun inscription, he states that they revolted along with the other provinces, probably around 520-519.  They had two chiefs, one of whom was killed and the other, named Skunkha, captured; Darius then appointed a new chief.  The pointed-hat Scythians are illustrated at Persepolis bearing clothing and a horse.  They are among the few people other than the Persians, Elamites and Medes who are armed, and some writers believe this fact indicates a degree of privilege in the imperial system.  Herodotus states that they made up the 10th tax district, together with the Medes and Paricanians, paying 450 talents yearly.

The Pausikoi or Apâ Sakâ enter into Classical history very rarely, but are mentioned as part of the 11th tax district, together with the Caspians, Pantimathi and Daritae, paying 200 talents.  They are probably the same people who appear in Hellenistic history as the Apasiakai (Lat. Apasiacae).

Ctesias attributed the conquest of the Amyrgian Scythians to Cyrus.  He believed that the Amyrgians were named for their king Amorges.  Personally I think the Persian etymology of "haoma-drinking" is more likely, but I'm only an amateur.  Ctesias said that Cyrus captured Amorges, whose wife Sparethra waged war and captured several high-ranking Persians.  The prisoners were exchanged and the Amyrgians allied with the Persians, fighting alongside them in Lydia.  Iranologist Alireza Shahbazi regarded Ctesias' overall narrative as containing so many errors "that it borders on fiction."  The name Amorges is not an invention, but it was a Persian name, that of a son of Pissuthnes the satrap of Lydia.

Scythians fought in both the 490 and 480 Persian invasions of Greece.  At Marathon, they were posted in the center of the battle line next to the Persians, and were able to withstand the hoplite charge (which was weakest at the center on this occasion).  In Xerxes' invasion, the Amyrgians served under the king's half-brother Hystaspes.  They fought both on land and as marines, thus were presumably present at Artemision and Salamis, and some were retained by Mardonius to fight at Plataia.  Herodotus calls the Scythians the best cavalry in the Persian army at the last battle.

The Black Sea Scythians grew wealthier during the fifth century in large part due to the slave trade from Central Asia to Europe.  Around the turn of the fourth century, King Ateas ascended to the throne of the Royal Scythians.  During the first half of the century, he centralized royal authority all along the north coast of the Black Sea.  In the 340s, he had a snippy diplomatic relationship with Philip of Macedon, which resulted in a battle and Ateas' death at modern Dobruja in 339.


Eastern Scythians fought at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 as part of Bessus' cavalry.  In the same year, Alexander's governor of Thrace or Pontus (sources differ on this), Zopyrion, invaded the kingdom of Scythia for want of something better to do, laid a failed siege to Olbia and was killed while retreating.  In 329, an army from Scythia invaded Alexander's empire from the north, but was defeated at the Battle of Jaxartes near modern Tashkent.

The post-Classical history of the Scythian peoples is too complex to cover here.  In east and west, Scythian peoples continued on their various ways, but mostly disappeared over the centuries.  In the third century BC Scythia collapsed under pressure from Thracians, Celts and Sarmatians.  Eastern Scythians settled in Drangiana, creating Sakastan (modern Sīstān) during the early Arsacid period, while others settled in India to create the Indo-Scythian kingdom - all for naught; both have long since disappeared into the native populations.

One last note:  The Scythians are often said to have been the inspiration for the Amazons in Greek mythology.  This is an oversimplification of things.  There is evidence that Amazons were established in Greek myth well before contact with the Scythians.  It is true both that many Scythian women have been found buried with weapons and the Greeks have spoken of Scythian female warriors, and that late Archaic and Classical art often shows Amazons in Asiatic clothing.  On the other hand, other Greek art shows the Amazons in Greek men's tunics.  Herodotus regarded the Amazons and Scythians as separate peoples and believed the Sauromatians were a tribe of mixed Scythian and Amazon ancestry.  Most likely, the Greeks during the Archaic concluded that the Amazons were a Steppe people, or used the Scythians as models for later portrayals of their Amazons, because few other peoples in the world had such numbers of female warriors.

Language
The Scythian language or languages are scarcely-attested from a handful of proper names of people and tribes and possibly a seventh-century inscription from Saqqez, Iran, recording what may be a reference to King Protothyes (as "Partitava"), a Scythian who married an Assyrian princess.  Most Western scholars regard Scythian as being Eastern Iranian, and part of a Scytho-Sarmatian group which gave rise to the language of the Alans and, in turn, modern Ossetian.  The better-attested Eastern Iranian languages of the later kingdoms of Khotan and Tumshuq in what is now western China are thought to be derived from Scythian as well, and are termed "Sakan."

Religion
Scythians were polytheists whom Herodotus says worshipped a seven-member pantheon:  Tabiti (whom he regards as the same as the Greek Hestia), Papaios (Zeus), Apia (Gaia), Goitosyros (Apollo), Argimpasa (Uranian Aphrodite), someone whom he calls Heracles, Agin (Ares) and, among the Royal Scythians, Thagimasadas (Poseidon).  The vagaries of interpretatio graeca must be kept in mind:  It's unlikely that these gods derive from the same sources as those whom Herodotus considers their Greek equivalents.

Tabiti, he says, was most important, but only Agin had temples (of a sort) dedicated to him:  In each district, bundles of sticks would be formed into a vast platform three eighths of a mile long and wide, with an akinakes in the middle representing the god himself; new wood was stacked on top as the older wood settled or broke down.

Animal sacrifices, mainly horses, were offered to various gods.  Animals were ritually strangled, the meat carved and boiled and part of it then cast on the ground (which reminds me somewhat of the Magian rite).  At the temples of Agin, a yearly sacrifice of sheep, goats, horses and enemy prisoners was performed.

The historian also states that a priestly caste of transvestites existed called the Enarei, blessed by Argimpasa to divine the future with strips of linden bark.  The name of the Sakâ haumavargâ suggests that they borrowed or retained the ancient Indo-Iranian practice of drinking haoma/soma at religious ceremonies.

Clothing
Most Scythians wore a variant of the cavalry costume, featuring loose-fitting trousers rather than Medo-Persian tights, and a coat held closed by a belt.  Most art (with the exception of the Naqš-e Rostam reliefs) shows the coat as overlapping somewhat in the front.  At Pazyryk in Siberia, a Scytho-Siberian jacket was found made out of felt rather than woven cloth, and other sites have yielded felt stockings.  An abundance of sheep and goat wool, and the relative simplicity of making and working with felt, may have increased its appeal to the Steppe nomads.  These nomads, Asiatic Scythians included, also obtained and traded silk on the Silk Road of which they were a part.

The Sakâ tigrakhaudâ wore tiaras with very tall tapering peaks, probably treated felt or leather, or having an internal reinforcement.  At Persepolis and Behistun, they otherwise wear Medo-Persian costume, but at Naqš-e Rostam the one present is shown in normal Scythian garb, albeit with a tall hat.  Other Scythians wore less spectacular styles of tiara, though they were still usually more pointed than those worn by other peoples.

In most art, Scythians wear low shoes (which I would guess to be similar to Medo-Persian ones), but some pieces from the Black Sea area show pull-on boots that come up to above the ankle.

Weapons
Use of the classic Central Asian recurved composite bow and the attendant gorytos is well-documented.  Arrowheads in the same trilobate style as the Persians and Greeks were used, as were leaf-shaped ones with extended sockets; these latter sometimes had a single recurved barb sticking off the socket.  Greek and Roman writers said that when going to war, Scythians dipped their arrows in a noxious substance composed of rotting viper corpses, blood and animal dung, the result of which was that even minor wounds would result in simultaneous poisoning and infection.

The Black Sea Scythians' iron swords could be larger than Achaemenid ones, some examples reaching up to two feet overall (almost as big as a Roman gladius) and often featuring loosely-curled antennae or horns on the pommel, though I confess I don't know the time period during which this sub-style evolved.  Otherwise, the small akinakes with the T-shaped pommel was common.  Swords and knives were still sometimes made of bronze.

Another distinctive Scythian weapon was the sagaris, a small-headed, tomahawk-like battleaxe.  The sagaris could be bronze or iron, and had a flared cutting edge, usually a long back spike and a thin straight handle.  Scythians also used spears and javelins which were much like those found elsewhere in the ancient world, with socketed, leaf-shaped iron points.

Scythian shields seem to have been commonly made of thin hide (I unfortunately have yet to find analyses of whether rawhide or tanned leather was used) densely woven through with sticks while wet; essentially like smaller versions of Achaemenid shields.  Various shapes were known from Pazyryk, and the famous Solokha comb shows one crescent and one which is a sideways rectangle.  The crescent seems to have been a very common shape from the Balkans through the Iranian plateau.

Body armor was usually made of scale.  Corslets were either of a simple tunic shape or modeled after the Greek tube-and-yoke thorax, and the Scytho-Siberians seem to have pioneered the use of scale neck guards.  Shields were also sometimes covered in scale.  In the fifth century, pointed leather caps covered with scale began to replace the earlier Kuban-type helmet, which was of solid bronze and fitted close to the head with a low browline (but no nasal guard).  Imported Greek helmets (in the Corinthian and derivative styles) also became popular at this time.

Peoples of the empire: The Chorasmians

I'm skipping the Caspians because too little is known about them, in my estimation, to put on an effective historical impression.  They're not even attested in Old Persian, even though they are (in Western languages) the namesake of the Caspian Sea.

The next people on my list are the Chorasmians, the subjects of this week's installment.

Geographic definition
Chorasmia (O.P. Uvârazmiya, known in later periods as Khwarezm) lay far to the north and slightly east of Persia, just south of the Aral Sea in modern Uzbekistan, and watered by the Amu Darya, which flows north from the mountains of Afghanistan.  Owing to this, Chorasmia was a fertile land, even more so in antiquity than today because the Amu Darya is believed to have carried more water then.

History
The country first appears in the Behistun inscription (520 BC) among Darius the Great's list of countries of which he was king.  He does not mention it among the rebellious nations and it may have already been part of the empire when he ascended the throne.  A fortress at the modern site of Kyuzeli-gyr was burned down in this period and may represent an incident during the Persian conquest.  At this time, the historical Chorasmian culture was entering its formative "archaic" phase with the construction of large canals and mud-brick buildings and the use of pottery wheels.

Herodotus states that the Chorasmians were grouped with the Parthians, Sogdians and Arians as the sixteenth tax district of the empire, which paid a yearly tribute of 300 talents.  For this reason, Jona Lendering suggests that Chorasmia was governed by the satrap of Parthia.  They appear in his list of infantry units in Xerxes' invasion of Greece together with the Parthians under the command of Artabazus son of Pharnaces, later to become satrap of Phrygia.

After the defeat at Salamis, Artabazus escorted Xerxes back to Asia in 479, then killed the Thracian Bottiaeans who ruled Olynthus on suspicious of plotting revolt.  He also besieged the rebellious city of Potidaea, but a large part of his army died when attempting to cross the exposed seabed just before what appears to have been a tsunami.  The survivors rejoined Mardonius in Thessaly.  Following the Battle of Plataea, Artabazus led the remaining Persian army home by way of Thessaly.  I can find no word on whether his Chorasmian or Parthian troops took part in most of these deeds, though Dandamaev and Lukonin (Kul’tyra i èkonomika drevnego Irana) claim that they did not fight in the Battle of Plataea.

It appears that in the early 4th century, the Persians lost control over Chorasmia.  While a Chorasmian still appears on the table of nations on Artaxerxes II's tomb, the grand Achaemenid palace at Kalaly-gur was left unfinished and seemingly abandoned in this period.  No Chorasmians fought for Darius III against Alexander the Great, and though they supported the satrap Bessus during his bid for kingship, the country concluded an independent peace treaty with Alexander under a King Phrataphernes (or, per Arrian, Pharasmanes, whom Yuri Aleksandrovich Rapoport concludes was a son sent by Phrataphernes) in the winter of 328-27.

Chorasmia remained independent of the Seleucid and Arsacid dynasties.  A native dynasty, the Afrighids, emerged in the 4th century and ruled as clients of the Sassanids and the Arab Ummayads, but it was under a series of rulers of Turkic mamluk origin that the Khwarezmian empire would come to rule all of Greater Iran by the turn of the 13th century, only to fall spectacularly after Shah Muhammed II provoked Genghis Khan to war.  Predictably, Khwarezm thereafter ceased to exist as a distinct culture, though the name lingers, and today the region is a complex mixture of various Turkic peoples and Persians.

Language
Chorasmian was an Eastern Iranian language and thus related most closely to Avestan, Bactrian, Pashto and Sogdian.  It is not attested from the Achaemenid period (and not all that well-attested after, though the Iranica has some analysis of its morphology as it stood during the Islamic period), but I surmise if we could see Achaemenid Avestan we would recognize it as bearing some resemblance to Avestan.  During early Islamic period, it began to be overtaken by Persian and Turkic languages, and ceased to be spoken around the High Middle Ages.

Religion

Certain Zoroastrian traditions link Chorasmia with Airyanəm Vaējah, the homeland of Zarathuštra.  The Bundahišn, a post-Sassanid compendium of Zoroastrian cosmology, states that the sacred fire of Yima (Jamshid) was located at Chorasmia.  Legend identifies the kingdom of Vištâspa, Zarathuštra's patron in the Avesta, as either Chorasmia or Aria.  While these much later traditions don't necessarily tell us anything reliable about the state of Chorasmian religion more than a thousand years earlier, it is likely that early forms of Mazdaism were at least as well-established in the Eastern Iranian cultural region where Zoroastrianism originated as it was in Persia by the Achaemenid period.  Another clue is the lack of graves in the archaic period, which would fit with the Zoroastrian tradition of not burying corpses.

Clothing
Chorasmian male clothing is well-illustrated at Naqš-e Rostam and a bit less clearly but in general agreement at Persepolis as consisting of a slightly wrapped-around, belted coat with bordered edges, loose-fitting trousers, ankle shoes and a tiara or kidaris with a low peak.

It is identical to the clothing of the Scythians and Sogdians in Persian art, being a variant of the "cavalry costume" or equestrian clothing worn by most Iranian peoples, related to but markedly different from the "Median costume," and might be analogously termed "Scythian costume."

Weapons
Herodotus states that Chorasmian weapons were like those of the Bactrians, which raises the same issues in reconstruction with regards to the reed bows.  Chorasmians at Persepolis and Naqš-e Rostam are equipped with an akinakes.