I've been looking over the evidence relating to the various finds of "Andronicos sarissa" parts lately, and firstly I would just point to this post I made on the Ancient Warfare forums in which I go over some of the basic evidence pertaining to finds which have been claimed as sarissae.
http://www.ancient-warfare.com/cms/foru ... .html#1021
If any serious discussion of these finds is going to be made, it must firstly be established that we do not know at all what sarissa parts look like, and we can't do anything more than make a guess. Almost all claims to identifying finds from the tombs at Vergina and elsewhere as sarissae are flawed in some respect, and so we have to keep that in mind.
As far as I am aware from combing through Macedonian archaeology, while multiple flanged butts and spearheads similar to those claimed by Andronicos as beloning to sarissae have been found, only a single coupler has been. This was found outside a small tomb in Vergina alongside the aforementioned butt and large spearhead, as well as with a much smaller and lighter spearhead. Chances are that the large head and butt went together, while the smaller head went with the "coupler," considering that the diameters of the sockets of the large head and butt are 36 and 34 mm in diameter, respectively, while the smaller head and "coupler" are 19 and 28 mm in diameter.
What purpose did it serve? One very basic answer is that it was slipped over the end of the shaft of a spear lacking a butt in order to keep it in better shape and prevent it from splitting. The two guard figures painted outside the entrance of the late 4th c. BC Agios Athanasios tomb carry long spears about 12 feet long, and on one on which the end of the shaft is visible, it has just such an iron "cap" on it. As you also note, Scott, this probably provided a nice counterbalance as well.
Quote:I have been told that more of these have been found, in context with other Sarissa items.
Can you elucidate this? Like I said, I've done some extensive research, but I've never found any other examples.
Quote:A point he made about pikes, is that trees have to be especially grown to make the shaft. You can't use any old tree. This throws up some interesting points.
One: how tall do the trees in Macedonia grow.
Two: how long would the tree need to be grown in advance before a pike could be made from it?
Given the relatively short time that the Philip revolutionised the phalanx, would the resources be in place already for him to have them constructed? would a new forest of trees have been grown to maturity and cut in time for Alexander’s invasion?
Now, trees were obviously already grown for the construction of Spears, could it be that two 'spear' trees were used for the construction of a Sarissa and joined with the sleeve (and glued with pitch?) to enable an army to be equipped very quickly and using resources already at hand?
Sekunda thankfully addresses these issues quite clearly. Firstly, ash, the tree most popular in early modern Europe for making pike shafts, grew abundantly in Macedonia (Theophrastus, History of Plants, 3.11.3-4); Pliny says that "in Macedonia there is a very large ash making a very flexible timber" (Natural History 16.24.63), and while this flexibility may seem like it would rule out the use of such wood for a long pike, Pliny also states that this flexibility can be lessened if the trees are left standing and are dried by ringing around the trunk (16.79.219). Statius furthermore writes that Macedonians "by custom shake ash sarissae" (Theb. 7.269), so it is all but certain that sarissae were made from ash.
Diocletian's code of prices records the
standard length of timbers as being 21 feet long, and during the First World War ash timbers up to
32 feet in length "with straight and even grain throughout the whole length, and free from the slightest defect" were regularly grown for use in constructing aircraft. Furthermore, it is recorded in early modern Europe that if large numbers of ash trees were planted in close proximity to one another at the same time, it would force rapid and straight growth. However, it still took trees decades to grow to that length, and so it can be speculated that Philip established royal groves in which ash was planted on a large scale that could provide enough material for thousands of pikes in later years. For his first phalangites, he may simply have relied on what suitable trees could be found in Macedonia's natural forests.
Quote:If a sarissa was broken, only one end would need to be replaced, with a shaft from a shorter tree.. and not the entire shaft from an older, taller tree. Presumably across Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Iran, and so on, trees were being grown for the construction of short spears. These could be used to supply the army on campaign. It would not be easy to source the wood for a full size sarissa shaft, unless massive amounts were bought on route from Macedonia.
Another thing to think about is whether the two halves could facilitate the multi role phalangite that seem to have existed. Simply, the end with the head could be 'un-glued' used as a spear and re-joined when it needed to be.
Last of all, it is worth reading about how pikes are managed in wooded areas. Troops often cut them short so they could march through forested areas (normally against orders). This is well documented in later periods. I like to wonder, how did they march across the Indian jungle with them?
These are good questions, but I see serious problems in using such couplers. The primary problem I see is that with a coupler only 17 cm long (which is the length of the Andronicos example), the integrity of the sarissa's shaft would be greatly compromised, and such a short piece of metal surely could not prevent a 20+ foot pike from sagging. What is more, it would probably be very difficult and time consuming to "unglue" and "reglue" the two portions together, considering that the Andronicos coupler has no nail holes or any visible means of securing it to a shaft. As a phalangite, why would any soldier do that rather than simply carrying an extra fighting spear?