Question about aspis/hoplon shield

[D B Campbell]

Paul, do you have any references to secondary literature on an archaic wicker aspis?

I'm not sure that there's any actual evidence.

Apparently, Georg Lippold (Die griechische Schilde, in: Münchener Archäologische Studien dem Andenken Adolf Furtwängler gewidmet, München: C.H. Beck, 1909) thought that the round shape of the aspis indicated a wicker ancestry. Although that reasoning is faulty -- you can make pretty much any shape out of wicker --, Henry Blyth thought that the common guilloche pattern around the shield rim may be a reminiscence of a woven rim. Similarly, the common vertical extension of the arm-band (porpax) seems to fulfil no particular purpose, unless it was intended to brace a wicker shield.