Roman crossbow

[Koyuncu]

I read the sad story of Genoese Crossbowmen at Cercy with wet crossbow and how this severely reduced performance of weapons. While British archers treated with utmost care to their bows and bow strings to cover them from rain. If I remember correctly, composite bows are also sensitive to wet weather conditions so maybe this portative bow design was introduced for protecting the bow from air conditions.

As far as I know, ash and elm was used in case of lack of proper yew bodies. Such as in Finland, ash bows were typical choice since both yew is not available and also yew bows are not capable of working in frozen climate of Finland.