Dark Ages Shoe Patterns?

[anhurset]

While the York type III is a nice shoe it's a bit late period for Anglo-Saxon reenactment and has little to nothing in common with the Roman calcei style shoes in use just before the Anglo-Saxon invasion. In reenacting, when period correct designs are unavailable, the use of an earlier period design is always preferred over that from a later period.

[Thornale]

Calcei is almost too early given its last use was in third century AD (and in roman context). So it is not good either for Saxon Invasion. 400-750 is a huge time-frame and 750 is closer to the time of York Type III than the time of roman calcei (NB : the opposite is also true). I have re-checked about Stepping Through Time. The last part of the book is about the shoes worn in Roman and Germanic context and in the north of the roman empire from 200 to 500. So you'll find there some interesting resources. And I found another article from a UK late roman re-enactment group you might find worth a look : http://comitatus.net/Documents/ComitatusIntheirShoesweb.pdf .

[anhurset]

OP stated that the time period is 400-600CE, which is early to mid Anglo-Saxon. While I agree that full blown Roman boot style calcei are too early, shoes resembling civilian style calcei shoes (refered to as net style shoes at times) were fairly wide spread leading up to the Anglo-Saxon era. The shoes in the attached image date to 400BCE-400CE (while that's a huge swath of time it's about average for carbon dating on bog finds), they were found in Denmark and are a very good example of how wide spread the net style shoe was leading up to the Anglo-Saxon era.

In the end think about it like this, if you wouldn't wear Converse All Stars when reenacting the early 19th century then you shouldn't wear York type IIIs when doing early Anglo-Saxon.

[Thornale]

Sorry I didn't know that net shoes was considered as calcei, I only thought about the type of footwear that have been found in Dura Europos.

[anhurset]

The confusion name wise comes from the use and the actual meaning of the word 'calcei'. For reenactors and some historians and archaeologist the term calcei refers to a specific type of boot like footwear worn by the late iron age Roman military, but in Latin calcei simply means shoe. Roman authors and historians, both in period and modern, tended to label anything not obviously a caligae as calcei, including barbarian net style shoes (which I would argue are in reality a moccasins and not a true shoes). The barbarian net shoe went on to influence the civilian calcei, which in turn influenced the net shoe, by the end of the Western Roman empire it becomes almost pointless to attempt to class them as differing types.