The Roman Empire (27 BCE–476 CE) and the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) overlapped in time as the great empires of Eurasia. Both had to deal with mounted, often pastoralist, and frequently aggressive steppe peoples on their northern borders. Horse-riding equipment and iron armor styles were transmitted among these northerners from west to east all the way into the Korean Peninsula and Japanese Islands (Fig. 1). These latter areas will be collectively referred to below as the Pen/Insulae (following Barnes, 1999). The time period under discussion is between the second half of the first millennium BCE and the fifth century CE, within the Samhan or Proto-Three Kingdoms (300 BCE–300 CE) and Three Kingdoms (300–668 CE) periods on the Peninsula (Barnes, 2001) and the Yayoi (800 BCE–250 CE) and Kofun (250–710 CE) periods in the Japanese archipelago (Barnes, 2007).
Map of sites mentioned in the text and figures
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Ryan, J., Barnes, G. (2016). Armor in Japan and Korea. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7747-7_10234
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