Use of the Longbow in Ancient Europe?

[rrgg]

Ever since learning that the Otzal mummy (c. 3300 BC) was actually found with a 1.8 m yew longbow I have vainly tried to find any sources that might hint at the weapon's use during the Greco-Roman period.

Has anyone else seen accounts describing the use of very large bows?

[Sean Manning]

Books like Jim Bradbury's The Medieval Archer and Hardy and Strickland's The Great Warbow have summaries of the archaeological evidence, but they focus on the medieval period. I haven't studied the ancient evidence in detail, but I'd always expected that Gaulish archers in Caesar's day were probably using longbows with a deer-hunting draw weight. I've always wondered why Iron Age Spain and Italy didn't have much of a military archery tradition.

[morhathol]

The bows from Nydam Mose were not longbows? I'm not saying they were, because I can't remember, just thinking.
There could be some information in H. Eckhardt 1996: Pfeil und Bogen, though it's focused on Bronze and Early Iron Age. I'll try to look for it tomorrow in our library, but last time I checked it was loaned.

[Sean Manning]

The bows from Nydam Mose were not longbows? I'm not saying they were, because I can't remember, just thinking.
There could be some information in H. Eckhardt 1996: Pfeil und Bogen, though it's focused on Bronze and Early Iron Age. I'll try to look for it tomorrow in our library, but last time I checked it was loaned.

The Nydam and Vimose bows usually are considered longbows (See Hardy and Strickland Ch. 2), but the Neolithic ones are important too because they show that the technology was a very old one and was not originally confined to the far north.

You are lucky to know German already, because there's some snazzy German scholarship on bows which I can't read yet.