Reply To: Sources for historicals: where, who, what?

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If you want Ospreys that are dubious, Rome’s enemies 3, Parthians and Sassanids has a number of issues, but it is a very early Osprey. There’s been a lot of research since. The later Sasanian Elite Cavalry is also problematic, with multi-arrow crossbows and a great deal of claims that I haven’t been able to substantiate.

That’s two in an area I have some knowledge of. I can’t speak directly to others, but I understand that for example some of the colours for French musicians coats & headgear in the Napoleonic period are contested.

The reality is that most people won’t know if you get something wrong. And you can always tell the button counters to go away. It’s really up to you just how in depth you want to go. Remember of course that much of the historical stuff is ‘best guess’, we really don’t know exactly how Macedonian Hypaspists looked. But you have to paint them some colour. Just beware of spurious accuracy. If someone asserts something, ask them how they know.

(Some great examples are the ‘globe hat’ that was once ubiquitous for Sasanians, all based on a misinterpretation of a single rock carving, the ‘chained’ levy, where it was a misinterpretation of the Latin term cuneus,  the Later Roman ‘leather breastplates’ etc.)

100 years ago, our Vikings would have horns on their helmets, but modern scholarship keeps reassessing the evidence. There’s often no way to be definitive.