A horse warrior’s armament based on studies of the Przeworsk culture cemeteries from the Roman Period

The known burials of the deceased equipped with spurs from the heavily militarised Przeworsk culture are interpreted as burials of horse warriors. This theory is partially contradicted by the fact that there are no weapons in the inventory of some of them and the frequently performed anthropological analyses often prove that they are burials of women or children. Nonetheless, most graves with spurs contain more or less complex sets of weapons, which allows us to assume that they are indeed burials of deceased warriors. The subject of this article is the variety of weapon sets in graves containing spurs. The author inquires how the equipment of a horse warrior differs from that of a foot soldier, and how diverse is the armament within the layer of the horse warriors. The research was carried out taking into account several variables, such as time, the size and the number of “riders’ burials” discovered in the cemetery and space, which is understood here as the distinctiveness of each community depending on the site investigated.