Greek half-kneeling archers

[Stephen Lalor]

Why do some half-kneeling ancient Greek archers not place their knee on the ground. One can see it on the vases (and on a few cylinder seals) but it is unambiguous on statues which have supports under the shin to keep the knee above the ground. My attempts to copy the technique were agonising. The issue is not huge but it does appear to have escaped notice before.

I can think of two possibilities.
1. the body and leg position was the result of the need of the archer for balance, stability or mobility in the specific moment of the battle.
2. the position might have been adopted for rapid shooting to the rear, as with some depictions of archers standing, but one picture shows an archer who has had time to hang his cloak on a nearby branch, which I thought not something that would happen in the heat of battle and wonder if the fact that he is nude might imply that he is taking part in some organised games, although archers could definitely be naked on the battlefield and there is no evidence of official archery contests on Archaic or Classical Greece. (the only surviving reference of an organised archery-game comes from Iliad.)

Neither possibility seems compelling.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how I might take it from here?

Stephen Lalor

ps. My thanks to Spyros Bakas and Karl Randall for their most informed comments on this issue.