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Hi, it's been a long time since I've been on here.
I'm looking for credible evidence of the figure 8 shields. I've searched here and can't find cited sources, only the occasional reference to them. I've found several images of vases with figure 8 shields on them but almost none of them can be linked back to a credible source.
Thanks for any help
Charles
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Do you mean the "boeotian" or "dipylon" shield? Both are very well represented in art. There are perhaps thousands of boeotian shield depictions occurring on pottery in museum and private collections, so often are they depicted that it is hard to accept they are simply a persistent artistic convention as some believe due to the lack of hard artifactual evidence.
Joe Balmos
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The figure-8 shield predates the dipylon and seems to have been constructed differently, though we only have illustrations to go by. The latter had a hand grip while the former was wielded by means of a shoulder strap. If you define "credible evidence" as archaeological remains then there aren't any.
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Charles,
By "credible source" are you looking for original archaeological reports, museum catalogues, etc.?
Dan D'Silva
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I ride the winds of fate
Prepared to go where my heart belongs,
Back to the past again.
-- Gamma Ray
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To pick myself up from under this table...
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Hey Dan, I just quoted what Andrea Salimbeti wrote. Still, I can't imagine with all their other achievements they did not see the need for a hand grip of some sort to better control such a large shield. As you can guess I like the idea that Salimbeti thinks the layers of protective material were glued together...where else did I hear something like that....
I see on his website that the last update was just a few months ago so he's still searching for answers.
But seriously, the lack of much hard evidence regarding the various types of shields we observe in Greek art makes definitive statements problematic.
Joe Balmos
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Todd! Why not wicker as a base for the shield? It's plentiful and reasonably sturdy. Lack of hard evidence?
Joe Balmos
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I knew once D'Amato's name was linked to the page someone would say something lol.
Still, it's a good resource.
Homer says a lot of things and there are what, a dozen versions, and countless translations (some scholar has a website that lists all the known versions)...so what do we take as gospel and what do we scratch our heads over? A lot of folks we both know, and we probably do it as well, find the passages in the version and translation of Homer they like because it supports our pov and ignore anything that seems to not agree with us. There's not even a consensus that a person named 'Homer" actually existed and if he/they were describing warfare in their own period, or a much earlier time.
Joe Balmos