Dan wrote on Oct 17
th, 2012 at 9:23am:
jlasud wrote on Oct 17
th, 2012 at 1:53am:
Sarmatian women were fighting alongside with men.What's known,they were mostly cavalry,and horse archers.
In earlier times they might have used slings also..
I guess many times,women were more likely to roll clay balls with the children and men were slinging the dried\fired clay ammo.Also they might have more often supply their man with baskets of stones,clay,then do actual slinging.
That's what i would imagine. During a fight there are less active activities,besides fighting,that needs to be done,women and children often took up those,during history.
That's kind what I was picturing too. In todays U.S. army there's somethinglike 10 support personal for every 1 soldier. I'd imagine you'd need similar ratios back then.
Actually, in the book, "War Before Civilization" by Lawrence Keeley, a professor of anthropology/archaeology, he addresses the support personnel aspect of things. In truly prehistoric warfare, IE before major civilizations developed, the level of support personnel is practically non-existent. Every warrior is a self-sufficient entity and the armies have no supply trains or ways of maintaining themselves in the field beyond short raids, due to their lack of economic sophistication. Only later, as we start to see civilizations growing, do we get supply trains and the ability to carry on extended campaigns.
Even so, earlier warfare required far fewer logistics and support personnel than does modern warfare. It's a figure that has been consistently increasing as the technological complexity of our weapons systems and transportation systems have gone up. The closest thing I can find to a support system in prehistoric warfare is the use of women on the frontlines of some Papua New Guinean battles. They would wander around the battlefield picking up arrows that had been shot to resupply their warriors who were doing the shooting. For whatever reason, the men didn't shoot them. I guess it was against the rules in that context, though sparing women and children is by no means a typical feature of warfare there or elsewhere.
Anyway, it's helpful to think of it as a continuum. The more economically organized a society is, and the greater their technological complexity, the more support staff you can expect. This is a cool way of looking at it too, as it isn't necessarily chronological. The armies of Rome, for example, under such a rubric, would be expected to have a greater proportion of support staff than those of the Norse, or of Early and even High Medieval Europe. Since this is what we in fact see, I think the model holds.