Genava55

Yep, clearly Eastern influence. But the animal heads are clearly Celtic, Thracian or Germanic.

Several Roman weapons have been found in Germanic territories, maybe the artist is drawing one of them or he is getting is inspiration from auxiliary weapons. Even gladii have been found in the Elbe region: There are some wooden helmets found in Denmark: And a Germanic helmet, badly recorded but dated to the 1st century AD:

The Cherusci Pikeman description comes from Tacitus, at my knowledge, there is no archeological records: The Harii Night-Ambusher is described again by Tacitus, as a part of the supra-group the Lugians/Lygians: The Lugians are associated to the Przeworsk culture with numerous offensive weapons found in burial: Both the Preworsk culture and the Balt Iron Age culture displayed burial of females with weapons. Here Przeworsk Female burials with weapons: Aestii female warrior (East-Baltic): West-Baltic+Pomerania and East-Baltic tribes description from Tacitus: West-Baltic swords: Germanic clubman:

@Nescio @Stan` @wowgetoffyourcellphone Maybe the solution for the Thracian temple is something different from the usual buildings, with inspiration from the tombs and the altars.

Subchapter about ritual space and religious practice: Subchapter about cult of the deceased and heroized mortals:

I understand totally, it is very difficult because the remains are scarce. I struggle myself on this matter. But the Dacians are not the perfect references for the Thracians: firstly because they were less influenced by the Hellenistic culture, the Getae were only a part of their union; secondly because the city of Sarmizegetusa is situated in the Western part of their territory, far from the Getae; thirdly the region around Sarmizegetusa is mainly composed of micaschistes unsuitable for construction. Everything was imported. For the big rectangular temple in Sarmizegetusa there is a first phase where it was built with wooden pillars on stone blocks and a second phase where the pillars were made in andesite and the architrave (the thing horizontal above that link the columns together) were made in andesite too. It is probable that the roof was made in wooden tiles. But there is a huge problem in assuming the temple is really Hellenistic because it is a lacking a cella/naos (and is lacking walls in general). Which is maybe meaning their design is not that much copying the Greeks. This is something I realized myself only yesterday by finding a document in French about Sarmizegetusa's temples. I agree with the author, it looks like these temples were for military cult. Personally, I see similarities with the Gallic open sanctuary with timbers, a roof and no walls found in the Treves which is often interpreted as the place for military assemblies. Dacians are very interesting because they are sharing common ancestry with the Thracians but the link is older. It is coming from Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (1300 - 700 BC) developments. Contrary to the Dacians, Thracians have a better mastery in rock cutting techniques thanks to their Phrygian and Hellenistic influences. In the countryside, the Thracians were more rustic but close to the center of aristocratic fortified residences and Greek emporion it seems they were using brick and stones, at least for the foundation. That could be an option.

I don't want to be that guy, but if the only originality in the core design of the Thracians (or even Illyrians, Dacians etc.) is basically "Hellenistic... but in wood", I don't think it will be remarkable. For the moment I understand it is only a mod for the game, but if in the future it will be incorporated, I do not think it will fit within the others for quality.

Ok, so there is nothing left missing ( @Altrine will do the names). Only work to do.

So I think what need to be done is first of all to find a concept for the texture and the design of the building. To find something that is not too much Hellenistic and not too much barbarians. And finally, something that can be reused for the possible Illyrians and Dacians addition in other mods. Thankfully, the Illyrians are very Hellenized in the South and the Dacians are close to the Thracians thanks to their genetic relationship with the Getae. Civic-center: For the civic-center, I see three directions, something like a small fortress as Xenophon said about the Thracian princes, living in small fortified position with a "tower". It could be similar to the Dacian small fortresses: The other possibility should be something inspired from Seuthopolis and the Royal Palace: And finally it could be something centered around the Royal Tombs and tumuli because they were associated to settlements in general:

Odrysian Cavalry Arms, Equipment, and Tactics (20 pages) https://www.iianthropology.org/ChristopherWebber.pdf

The only difficulty is to have something a bit different from the Gauls while not being totally made up... maybe Biskupin can be used as an inspiration even if this is not in the right period and in the right place.

Overview of the Thracians (I will edit this post through time to update the thing when I have the time): The Thracians are a mysterious group of different tribes, often mentioned in ancient sources and commonly known for their mercenaries but it is difficult to get a proper picture of what was the Thracian culture and how they lived. First, what are the Thracians? This is in fact an important issue because there are contradictory definitions depending on the point of view adopted. The most common definition is administrative, the limits of Thrace is based on the Roman divisions of their territories and the Thracians are simply the tribes living in this region (see the map below). This is good enough because most of the historical tribes are indeed in this region. But if we look from the point of view of the languages, there are connections between the Thracians and the Dacians and between the Thracians and the Illyrians. It seems that the case was ambiguous enough for Herodotos to conclude they are one of the most numerous population and most of the barbarian tribes north of Greece were belonging to the Thracians. Even up to the Crimea in other accounts, notably including the Getai/Getae. However, there is indeed a sharper linguistic group in the South of Thrace related to the historical Thracians and to their material culture. This group correspond to the tribes in front of the Aegean Sea, like the Bessi and the Odrysai. To sum it up, the concept of “Thracians” was very wide in the oldest accounts and became narrower through time to become restricted only to the Southern Thrace. This follows the historical interactions of the Thracians with the Hellenistic world. Prehistory The beginning between the Greek, the Scythians and the Persians The Odrysian kingdom The remnants invaded Buildings and architecture Housing Xenophon (Anabasis 7.4) describes fighting in Thracian villages near Perinthus in 399. His comments on the settlements are vague, but are certainly consistent with the remains of small villages found at Vinitsa, Brestak, and Devnja. Vinitsa was a fourth-century hamlet of twenty or twenty-five one-roomed rectangular wattle-and-daub huts. The roofs would have been pitched and made of thatch. The huts ranged from 3×3 m to 4.5×4.5 m, and most were “Halberdhütten,” in which the floor level inside the hut had been dug out some 30–90 cm deeper than the ground level outside, to give more headroom. Most huts had a small internal hearth in or near one corner, and an oven built against an outside wall, often under a simple lean-to. There were numerous round pits, some for garbage, but most for grain storage. These villages would have had 100–200 inhabitants. There were also some bigger and longer-lived sites, such as Shoumen, which was partly protected by double stone walls; and recent work at Adjiyska Vodenitsa (an emporion called Pistiros) has revealed houses built from monumental stone blocks. This site was bigger than Shoumen, and may have been a princely seat within the Odrysian kingdom (while being as well a commercial center for the Greeks). There had been Greek cities on the Black Sea coast at Apollonia, Mesembria, Odessos, and Histria since Archaic times, but most Thracians went on living in tiny villages. As with the handmade pottery, it was only in Hellenistic times that traditional ways changed significantly. Philip II founded cities at Beroe, Kabyle, and Philippopolis in 342/1, and Aegean-style urban life began to penetrate Thrace. Late in the fourth century, the Thracian rebel Seuthes established Seuthopolis. This small town was filled with very Greek-looking large courtyard houses, but they were organized around a distinctively Thracian palace complex. The houses had mudbrick walls on low stone foundations, faced with plaster on lath, and tile roofs. In the third and second centuries, the kind of villages Xenophon had seen became less common in southern Thrace. Cannot find any sketch of these huts described above so here some random Iron Age examples of pit-house and wattle-and-daub houses (up to 3D artist to do whatever he wants from the description): Pistiros - Adjiyska Vodenitsa "Seuthopolis provides a good example of a manifest regularity, repeated in many settlements that become prominent political centers and seats of members of the high aristocracy; developed quickly, often without continuity with earlier settlements in the same locality, within a short time they become central in the settlement hierarchy. Many such sites, however, lose their importance equally quickly or come to an end, as their livelihood was evidently closely bound to that of their founders and the political structures created by them. The duration of settlement occupation at Vasil Levski, Krastevich, Seuthopolis, and Sboryanovo was brief, ranging from a few decades to slightly more than a century. In the last decade, in fact, the issue of whether or not some of the settlement forms widely distributed throughout Thrace ca. second half of the 1st millennium bce were in fact royal residences has undergone an important development. Various ancient authors mention fortified small places, “thyrseis,” that have been interpreted by modern scholars as towers or residences which served as “permanent homes of the Thracian aristocracy” or a “typical kernel of urbanization in Thracian settlement life” (Fol 1970, 166–168, with summary of the ancient sources). For a long time, this specific element of the Thracian settlement structure has had no convincing archaeological counterpart or, alternatively, the architectural complex excavated on the shores of Mandrensko Lake near Burgas was cited as a unique example (Dimitrov 1958; Balabanov 1984). The recent discovery of the residences near Kozi Gramadi (Khristov 2011, and earlier publications cited), Smilovene (Agre and Dichev 2010а, 214–217), Sinemorets (Agre and Dichev 2010b, 217–219), and Knyazhevo (Agre and Dichev 2013, 143–145) have revised this picture and confirmed the ancient sources. These compact architectural complexes are characterized by monumental architecture and often fortification; Knyazhevo is at present the only exception. On the other hand, the investigations at Sinemorets demonstrate that this settlement form, specific to Thrace, was in use not only in the heyday of early Thracian states, between the fifth and the first half of the third century bce, but also during the later stages of the Hellenistic period. [...] Undoubtedly the most prominent manifestation of centralization processes and stratification in the settlement system of Thrace arrives with the emergence of political capitals – the leading urban centers of various Thracian political formations. If southern Thrace has yielded the example of Seuthopolis, for northeastern Thrace such a role is played by the Getic city research has enabled some investigators to identify the Thracian settlement in Sboryanovo with Helis, the capital of the Getic ruler Dromichaetes – a political opponent of Lysimachus (Delev 1990; Stoyanov 2000b; Stoyanov in press, cf. Chapter 5). The image that the city boasted during the end of the fourth and the beginning of the third century bce corresponds to its leading position within the strong Getic state developed on both sides of Danube. In the fortified area of the settlement both residential and artisanal neighborhoods existed. Recent archaeological data show that, in the southwestern part of the fortified section of the city, the remains of a basileia – an internal quarter in which the ruling aristocratic elite resided (Stoyanov in press) – can be identified. Numerous residential neighborhoods and other urban areas of commercial and manufacturing character were located outside the city walls, with the total area of the city exceeding 30 ha. Archaeology shows that the city was destroyed by an earthquake in the middle of the third century bce. Attempts to resurrect it failed to restore its previous role. The site at Sboryanovo does not seem to have followed in its development the main trends outlined on the basis of the settlements of higher rank located in southern Thrace. The site’s excavator rightly notes that, in its development of the individual elements of its urban character, architectural forms, and construction techniques, the settlement diverges from the rules of Greek and Hellenistic architectural features, which had been directly imported in some centers south of Stara Planina, but rather shows a regional variation of local development (Stoyanov 2006; Stoyanov in press)." Sinemorets For the fortress of Shumen, this is a place occupied for a very long time and most of the construction are actually medieval I think. A picture of the site is not useful in our case. I starting to understand why there are so little information about these fortresses: here, here and here. Nationalist fantasy everywhere Sboryanovo: Royal tombs (possible civic center or temple): Greek temples in Thracian towns (possible use as a temple?): Royal palace of Seuthopolis (inhabited between 325 to 281 BC): Walls and fortifications: Getae sanctuary: Dacian sanctuaries (actually they are not similar to the Getae and Thracians): Rock-cut monument: Roster: Early Peltast/Akontistai or Highlander Thracians (Triballi, Dii, Serdi, etc.) as described by Xenophon: Archers: Dii swordsmen/machairaphoroi (highlander Thracians): Noble spearman or Noble spear cavalryman: Light cavalry: Light noble cavalry: Getae Horse archer: Celtic influenced Noble Thracians: Armor: Artillery and fortifications: rhomphaia infantryman: "They were tall men armed with white shining shields and greaves, underneath dressed with black chitons, swaying on their right shoulders raised upwards heavy iron rhomphaias." - Plutarchus "And the Thracians could not even use their rumpias here, which, being too long, intertwined with the stretching from everywhere tree branches." - Livy

I am more in favor of a leather or linen cuirass with a disc (cardiophylax) for the interpretation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monunius_I

Example of influence of the Celtic mercenaries in the Illyrian art, right in Gostilj (Srebrenica): The Getae were a threat before the Gallic invasion, as seen by the Getic wars with Lysimachus. After that, it seems to me they were mainly busy in the Northern coast of the Black Sea with the Scythians, the Sarmatians, the Bastarnae and the Scirii. Seems correct. As a general rule, the Illyrians in the south close to their homeland got heavily influenced by the Greeks and the Macedonians. In the North, the Iapodes and Liburnians got mixed and influenced by the Venetian and Hallstatt cultures. Although for the language, I cannot help at all.

Bardylis is not celtic. The Celtic influence in the Balkan was mostly on the east with the kingdom of Tylis and the Triballi and on the north with the Scordisci. The Dardanians were beaten but not that much Celticized, most of the Celticized Illyrians and Thracians joined the Scordisci and the Triballi. But it is true that it changed the warfare in the area for a long time, as seen by the Celtic - like weapons used by the Getae and Dacians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_sworn_virgins

Other decorated helmets for high ranking units or heroes (the bird bronze helmet is actually imperial roman):

I think the best should be to create a common architecture for the Illyrians and the Thracians, mixing Greek and Iron Age traditions. I will see to do a summary of the Thracians for the vanilla as a proposal. @Lion.Kanzen Beware of something about the Illyrians, there are a lot of BS around this cultural group. This is because the Balkans are still very nationalists and the war between the Serbians and the Albanians is not that old. Typically this map is the kind of excessive extension commonly seen on the Illyrians. The Pannonians are not Illyrians, the Veneti neither. The Messapians connection is indeed real but it is probably old (end of the Bronze Age), it could justify some mercenaries and regional units however.

The Chalcidian helmet is the "ancestor" of the Attic helmet. The difference is mainly the nose guard present in most of the Chalcidian helmets and not in the Attic version.

I think it is based on this reproduction:

I support both. And I support Parthia strongly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avdat https://books.openedition.org/ifpo/4896 It is possible to create an only faction with multiples branches. A Greek faction with branches for Spartans, Athenians, Corinthians, Thebeans, etc.

Interesting idea. Could be used as well for the Galatians units. Last idea, the Attic and pseudo-Attic helmets can be completed by a metallic mask: