Bell Beaker Shields?

The image of a Bell Beakers holding shields is not something that immediately comes to mind when we think of the classic personal inventory of the warrior.  But did they have them?


Origin of Hardened-Leather, Wood-Backed Shields?

"Clonbrin Shield"  800 B.C. Irish National Museum

The Kilmahamogue shield remains the oldest European example with the radiocarbon date slightly post-dating the Amesbury Archer,  1,950-1,540 B.C. (AF Harding, 2000) The wooden frame dates to the first part of the second millennium, putting it within the tail end of the Beaker period of County Antrim, Ireland.

Early shields, like the much later Clonbrin to the right,  were made of thick, hardened leather and formed over a wooden backer.  The impregnation and conditioning of the leather with wax and other materials hardened it to a Kevlar-like state which would have provided considerable protection against arrows and tanged daggers.

In fact, most of early (tentatively dated) Middle Bronze Age shields (below) were either non-functional or not-very-functional and merely mimicked "real shields" although growing more useful with time.  We shouldn't assume the Kilmahamogue represents the very first shield ever made which was subsequently thrown into a bog, and then more subsequently tripped over by an archaeologist.  Uckelmann and Mödlinger give a good overview with maps on known European shields to the Middle Bronze Age (Bronze Age Warfare: Manufacture and Use of Weaponry)

Bronze Shield, Found in River Thames, c. 1200 B.C.
(British Museum, 1856,0701.1350)

It is an easier leap to suggest that shielding was common in the Early Bronze Age of the Northwest facade, however it is much more difficult to suggest that shields were used over the entire Beaker world.  But, I think there are some important indicators within the arms inventories of Beaker graves that tell us a little about how they were equipped.

All of this stemming from a deeper look into the Beaker Bow which I should have named "Estimating the Draw Weight of a Beaker Bow" instead of "Calculating" but in any case..it's a blog.

Did the Palmela Point evolve because of shields?

Every design has a hierarchy in what it needs to do functionally. 

A wheel is round because it needs to roll.  A long rifle is long in order to be accurate at distance.

The copper Palmela Point used by Beakerfolk presents a design problem to me because it doesn't do most everyday arrow jobs better or cheaper, but instead presents several drawbacks to everyday Chalcolithic use despite being positively identified with archery.

Palmela Point

Palmela Points were:

-  too heavy for small game (grain + shaft)
-  too valuable to lose on long shots
-  too valuable to bury on a short shot (lose in ground)
-  too valuable to bury in a tree
-  too valuable to lose in the underbrush
-  not barbed, so not really a good arrowhead to have run off in an animal
-  not barbed, so not the torturous, un-removable murder weapon of the Late Neolithic

And if you did hunt large game with a Palmela Point, despite not being barbed, there's always a chance that the animal will take off with the arrow in its hindquarter never to be seen again.  Rarely do animals just drop in place, even with a fatal shot.

We do know however, the average grain of the points and the size of the tangs.  Therefore, we know the approximate diameter of the arrowshaft.  Taken together, we can guess the Palemela Point was delivered with sizable force.  Also, we can look at similar points of the Bronze Age, Iron Age and through the Medieval Period to gain a better understanding of its usage.  As iron and steel body armor reaches increasing hardness in the Medieval period, armor-piercing arrowheads also continue evolving into narrower, nippled blunts.

Looking at Palmela Points, it would appear that their purpose in life was to punch holes in things; like shields.  Of course, copper may have been too soft to do this effectively.  The simple explanation is the current one, that it is just a high status item.

Tanged daggers and close combat, another view

Tanged Dagger, Beaker grave, British Museum

Metal allowed knives to get longer and wider.  In hand to hand combat, reach is half the battle, which is why knives progressively grow to about four feet long in the Middle Ages.

A single punch from a tanged dagger anywhere on the body would have been followed by a quick bleed-out.  There were no second chances for the individual being assaulted.  At some point though, a Beaker man was forced to throw down his bow when the assailant came within close range and fight mano to mano.

Because all early shields on Earth were organic, it's hard to know when or where they came from, but they seem to be of enough antiquity to have been familiar to Late Neolithic Europeans.  The length of tanged daggers seems to grow through the Beaker Age, and I will guess that with it the instinctive desire to protect an increasingly shrinking and vulnerable footing.

Of course this is all speculative on my part, but I would be interested to know if there are any representations of shields from rock art of Neolithic Europe. (?)  Perhaps depictions of ditched enclosures may in fact be depictions of the leather shields??


>>> I'll be adding page three to the Beaker Blog soon.  (Thirty random Bell Beaker burials!)<<<




*  I'll add from my own archery experience in the woods:  I've buried a few aluminum arrows in the woods that archaeologists might find a thousand years from now.

(1) Osgood, Richard; Monks, Sarah (2011) "Bronze Age Warfare" ISBN-13: 9780752476025

(2) Modlinger, Marianne; Uckelmann, Marion (2011)  "Bronze Age Warfare:  Manufacture and Use of Weaponry"  [link in text]

Calculating the draw weight of a Beaker bow (Part 2)

This is the second part of several pieces I'll do on the Beaker bow.

In the first part, I tyrannically cast away all doubt with regards to Beaker wrist-guard functionality.

But we still are not done with wrist-guards...


Broadly speaking, there have been proposed three rough shape classes of wrist-guards associated with Beakers (most recently by Folkens et al, 2008)

This is important because this could yield three major bow-classes used by Beaker archers.  We may be able to infer the size of the bow and the weight of the bow depending on how the bracer was worn.  So I will modify some of the previous classifications from papers dealing with the subject to how I view wear of the wrist-guard and with which bow size & weight is most appropriate.

Radial bone guard #1

This bracer was worn to protect the radial bone on the inside of the weak forearm.  One end is widened to allow for wrist movement, the other end for the increase in forearm. 

2200 - 2000 BC, Kellythorpe Barrow, British Museum

It may suggests that the wearer of the guard fired his bow vertically with a locked wrist, as in the picture below, and not like a longbow.

 The depth of the bow would be a mid-size, vertically-held bow because the right arm draws the string across the upper body and the left radial bone is exposed due to the required midcarpal supination locking required from a heavy bow.  Locking the wrist allows us to project great force with our hands, such as when using tools like a hammer.  Modern compound bows alleviate the force on the locked wrist because the breaking weight in draw is reduced but with the benefit of substantial acceleration on release.  

Fig. 19 (Van der Vaart, 2009)

You can see how the archer draws the bow with his right arm and the left arm and wrist are locked.  The bow used in the picture is probably between 30-40 lbs and may inflict a painful lash, but not a dangerous one for the occasional sport shooter.  

 Modified Fig. 19 (Van der Vaart, 2009)

I added a red circle to the second picture where the radial bone is located and where the radial bracer would need to be placed for a substantially more powerful bow.  A combination of the stone core and the leather outer cuff may have also provided rigidity for higher tension forces on the forearm.

Large Longbow guard #2

By "Longbow" I'm referring bows generally taller than the archer and much more powerful.  (The definition seems to vary)  Given the width of this bracer and where it would need to be placed, I'd suggest that the wearer of this bracer fired his bow in a canted manner, such as many of the larger longbows.

2280 - 2030 BC, from Barnack, British Museum

Simple wrist guard #3

I would guess without knowing actual numbers, that the very vast majority of Beaker bracers fall into this simple group with varying size and quality.  Unlike the two cuffed versions above, this one was probably worn exactly like Jayne's wonderful illustration of the Amesbury Archer below:

"Amesbury Archer" thanks to Jane Brayne

The coloration of these Class #3 wrist-guards seems to have had some special significance.  Some natural red or greens were sought out and transported widely (1) and some were colored red with ocher in slate Dutch examples (3).

Conclusion!

The Bracer's tell us very broadly about three major types of Beaker bows.  We can tell from the bracer how each bow was held and with the robustness of the bracer, have a general idea of the size of the bow it supported.



Refs.

(Fokkens, Achterkamp, Kuijpers, 2008) "Bracers or Bracelets? About the Functionality and Meaning of Bell Beaker Wrist-guard"

Smith, Jonathan (2006) "Early Bronze Age Stone Wrist-Guards in Britain: archer's bracer or social symbol?"

Van der Vaart, Saaja (May 2009)  "Bell Beaker Wrist Guards Reconsidered:  A Research into their Functionality and Possible Uses"

*When yew is cut right, it makes a natural composite with inner heart and outer sapwood forming the 'perfect bow'.  So its hard to imagine any kind of composite laminating being required at any point in European bow history.

**Google 'Mary Rose archers' and you'll find reference to an on-going study on the skeletal adaptations and large forearms of heavy medieval archers.