Reproducing a Scutum

[Anonymous]

Hi All!

I am currently in the process of working with someone to have the most accurate Scutum made as possible based on written and archaeological evidence from the 1 AD – 100 AD time frame. I have searched as many places as I know of for evidence concerning its construction and the various components of it. I wanted to send out this note though to check with all of you who might have more knowledge and better resources to see if anyone could help clarify or add to anything. Currently this is what I have so far:

1. Birch wood construction. It will be made using three layers of 2.5mm strips of birch like the Dura shield. Does anyone know if for certain other wood was used?

2. Bronze Rim – not brass to be historically accurate. I have heard rawhide was used but was anything else used for the rim? What would be more accurate for a 1 AD-100 AD time frame?

3. Iron boss, 14 gauge – does anyone know how historically accurate iron is and if perhaps any other metal was used? Does anyone have any archaeological proof of what gauge it was or what was more common?

4. Casein paint – I have read that this is the most accurate paint to be using but I was wondering if there were possibly other methods of making paint that the Roman’s knew about and possibly used? Does anyone know how well casein paint may be damaged with water or sunlight etc? Does it hold up very well or is there another historically accurate stronger paint that could have been used?

5. Leather facing on the front – Does anyone know if rawhide was used instead of just regular leather? I have heard that rawhide is stronger than leather, though I am not sure for certain, but is there any proof that rawhide was ever used? What is more accurate, based on evidence we have found or what has been written, for the front of the shield? Leather, Rawhide, or linen? How thick should it be? Also, is there any proof that the back of the shield was covered in leather or rawhide? I would think that this would add an extra layer of protection, especially from throwing weapons and arrows etc, so I just wanted to make sure.

6. Shield design will be that of the XIIII Legion as I have been told that this legion has the most clear archaeological proof for its shield design. Is this true and is there any other Legion that has its shield design clearly shown? Also, does anyone have proof that the tabula ansata was used on the 14th legions shield? Those are the boxes with triangles at the ends placed on either side of the boss. If so, do we know for certain if there was anything written inside of it such as the Legion number?

That is what I have for it so far so I would greatly appreciate any comments that you all may have. I have further specific questions concerning its construction that I haven’t been able to look up.


1. What are the dimensions for the rivets that affix the boss to the shield? What should be the proper size of the head of the rivet based on evidence? What is the average amount of rivets used?

2. What would be the correct glue that the Roman’s used? Was there more than one type and was any one type stronger than the other?

3. What is the proof that the shields were painted red with yellow wings and lightning bolts? Do we have any proof that possibly other colors were used?

4. Do we know how detailed the painting was for the wings etc. or was it just a very basic and hasty paint job?

5. What is the proof for metal facings on the wings or lightning bolts? I have been told that there were some found at Kalkries but I haven’t seen any pictures myself and I cant seem to find any information for them.

6. What would be more authentic for the 14th Legion (or any legion) in the 1 AD – 100 AD timeframe? The curve sided “Augustanâ€ÂÂ

[Crispvs]

Just one or two here for a start.

Shield colouring. Virtually any colour scheme is conjectural. The only surviving coloured shields I know of come from the third century site at Dura. Of the three rectangular scuta found, one was red, I am led to believe that one was green and I do not know what colour the other was. I believe that about twenty oval shields were found at least two were red but apparently the majority were pink. I don't think there is much surviving evidence for first century shield colours. Just for good measure my shield is blue with white wings and yellow (outlined in red) tabulae and thunderbolts.

Shield harnesses - there is at present no secure evidence of what shield harnesses looked like. The Junkelmann harness has been tried by a number of other groups with varying degrees of success. Last year seventeen members of my group marched the length of Hadrian's wall, sixteen of us carrying shields (the seventeenth was an archer). Each man used a different harness design, partly because everyone made their own and there is no known accurate patttern, and partly to test the efficacy of different designs. Some worked well, some very well and some very badly. When I can twist the arms of a few more of my comilites to give me the details of their designs and the results they got with them I will write the whole thing up and probably post it up on our web site at www.romanarmy.net . Florentius has also done a lot of work on harnesses. Check out his site at www.florentius.com .

Crispvs

[LUCIUS ALFENUS AVITIANUS]

Brass is correct. Probably it's more correct than bronze. Usually we use the word "bronze" incorrectly to call all the copper alloy things. Romans use alloys between the pure copper, bronze, brass, copper with silver, copper silvered, copper gilded, etc, etc, etc.
And it was very usual to make alloys with recovered pieces that previously was made with diferent alloys, so the final result was alloys of a lot of variations.

[Peroni]

IIRC wasn't one of the layers of covering on the dura scutum a layer of felted wool? Maybe it was the inner face?

Also, for another shield design, there is a black and white photograph in
H R Robinson "Armour of Imperial Rome" P167 plate 470 of a soldier of the II Adiutrix legion showing a different variation on the lightning bolt theme, and a very ornate shield boss.

The gravestone can be viewed on the RAT imagebase here;

http://www.romanarmy.com/imb/imagebase- ... tum=&ID=65
Regards,

[Matthew Amt]

Ave!

Quite a project, keep us posted on how it goes! Been to the Legio XX site?

http://www.larp.com/legioxx/scutum.html

To add to the good answers so far, I think Bishop & Coulston say the Doncaster shield was oak and elder. While the wood of the best-preserved Dura Europas scutum seems to have been a uniform thickness (c. 1/4" or about 6mm), it may have been more common for earlier shields to be thicker in the middle than at the edges. If your wood strips are split rather than sawn, they probably won't be uniform in thickness. Simply use the thicker ones for the middle of each layer, with thinner ones towards the edges, and you'll get a naturally chamfered board. Otherwise--belt sander! For an idea of curvature, look at as much artwork as you can find.

I think Polybius mentions bull hide glue for shield construction. Fish glues and casein were also known.

There's another thread somewhere on RAT from last week, about iron bosses. The alternative is brass. Don't know if we came up with any hard data on thickness or not. There's an iron boss from Vindonissa with a domed rivet still in place, probably with a shank diameter of 3 to 5 mm. Artwork often shows larger rivet heads. Judging by all the evidence for shiny armor and things like tinned and gilded silver shield parts, I'd say it's a safe bet that shield bosses and rims were generally shiny.

Don't know if we solved the paint controversy, either. Casein seems to be what was used on the Dura shields, but at least one source says it was wax encaustic. My guess is casein with a wax coating for waterproofing. But again, there is practically no analysis that I've seen, so we don't really know if they used wax, oil, etc.

Sheet metal and even cast metal parts of shield emblems have been found, at least they seem to be from shields. The gilded silver lighting bolt is my favorite, though I don't know if I have a reference for that at hand.

Leather versus rawhide is also a debate with little or no hard evidence that I've seen. No idea if any real analysis has been done. Rawhide is stronger, but we don't know if that mattered to them. The Dura scutum had leather or hide on the front and back, with a layer of linen over the leather on the front, as I recall. The Fayum scutum had wool felt on the front and back, no indication of leather or hide at all.

Colors, as has been said, are mostly guesswork. There are some color illustrations of gladiators which include red shields (and other colors, too), so that and the Dura shields sends most of us to red backgrounds. I picked yellow for the wings because the legionary aquila was gold. Paint jobs that survive are surprisingly complex, but I expect they were done by accomplished artists who worked pretty fast.

Sure, wrap the handle if it's more comfortable for you. My wooden one is thick enough to be fine as is, but it depends on the grip and the hand. I just make a simple shoulder strap attached to rings at either end of the handle, but haven't done any long-distance marching. Can anyone tell me why that won't work? For combat, just the grip is used.

Best of luck, and Vale,

Matthew/Quintus

[Antonius Lucretius]

According to Simon James, who recently revisited all the evidence found at Dura and wrote an important book about it, the description of the Dura rectangular shield being faced with linen stems from a record mistake made during the excavations.
In fact, the wooden core of the shield is encased in linen glued with a mixture of glue and fibrous material of probable vegetal origin, and then faced with leather (goatskin?).
As for the decoration, S. James points out many similarities with oval shield blazons found on Trajan's Column, most notably the elaborate laurel wreaths around the boss, or the eagle on top.
The heart shaped designs found on the back of one of the Dura oval shields are also found --in simpler form-- on the front of TC's "auxiliary" shields.
As far as colors go, the rectangular scutum had a red background, the highly decorated "parade" shields have a pink backround, the heart shaped designs on the back of the shield are over a dark blue back and some fragments show dark green...
Take your pick..

[Matt Lukes]

Brass is correct. Probably it's more correct than bronze. Usually we use the word "bronze" incorrectly to call all the copper alloy things. Romans use alloys between the pure copper, bronze, brass, copper with silver, copper silvered, copper gilded, etc, etc, etc.
And it was very usual to make alloys with recovered pieces that previously was made with diferent alloys, so the final result was alloys of a lot of variations.

How do you figure Aviantus? Modern brass is strictly an alloy of copper and zinc, whereas 'bronze' is the term used for a wide variety of copper alloys, often with multiple constituent metals, meaning to me that brass isn't really very accurate at all. Not to mention that modern brass has a very low copper-content (roughly 65%), compared to that of bronze, which, as it apparently was in ancient times, is mostly copper- between 85 and 95%. Brass doesn't oxidze green either (probably because of its low copper-content), it turns black; bronze, however, with it's very high copper-content does turn green- the way artifacts described as being made of bronze do look.

Matt

[aitor iriarte]

Matt,
Brass, modern and ancient is one more kind of copper-alloy and I can assure you that, in the end, it oxidizes in green, like the rest of copper alloys... :wink:

Aitor

[Matt Lukes]

Ave Aitor,

I'm afraid you're mistaken- modern brass, by definition, is an alloy of copper in which the major alloying metal is zinc. Just check the UNS (Unified Numbering System) of Metals and you'll see this. Brasses might contain another metal like lead or tin as well, but those only present in very small amounts to affect machinability or other physical properties. Bronzes, on the other hand, are copper alloys with numerous alloying metals- silicon, tin, and aluminum are the major ones, and minor ones include lead and phosphorus.

The usual ratios of copper:zinc in yellow brass are between 65:35 and 70:30. Red brass is about 85:15 copper:zinc.

Any copper alloy that contains another metal in greater percentage than the zinc present, or if it contains little or no zinc, cannot be called brass. In these cases, it would be quite correctly called bronze.

So I think you fellows might have things backwards- bronze is the term for a multitude of copper alloys, but brass is quite specifically copper and zinc.

As for whether or not brass turns green, well I suppose I can't say that for sure- I've simply only ever seen old brass that is brown to black. I'm testing it by immersing a piece of 70:30 copper:zinc brass in 5.25% household bleach- a lovely strong oxidizing agent that should give me a nice answer before long.

So really the question is what are the usual constituent metals of ancient 'bronze' as used in military fittings, etc., and in what percentages do they appear? From that information we can determine which of the modern alloys is the most historically-accurate. Brass if they're predominantly copper and zinc, bronze if any other metal than zinc is in the second-highest percentage after copper.

Vale

Matt

[aitor iriarte]

Matt,
What I was meaning is that archaeologists use the term 'bronze' loosely to define any kind of 'green' oxidized metal. Unless proper analysis are carried out, the correct term to be used is 'copper alloy'. I was not meaning that brass or orichalcum is any kind of copper alloy but rather to convey the idea that the term 'copper alloy' includes brasses and bronzes or any alloy that has copper as its major component.
Analysis have showed that Romans used widely copper and zinc alloys, if I recall well...

Aitor

[Matt Lukes]

Ave Aitor,

Ah, well that's definitely right- 'bronze' is quite incorrectly used as a broad descriptor of any copper alloy. I haven't as yet seen the term 'copper alloy' used much, however, which is unfortunate as it most certainly IS a proper 'universal' term; bronze is a copper alloy, but not all copper alloys are bronze. I've actually just learned that from metallurgical analyses, all L. segmentata fittings thus far tested have been shown to actually be brass (Orichalcum), NOT bronze. This can apparently be said of most 'bronze' military objects from the 1st to 3rd centuries AD as testing has shown them to be alloys of 80-85% copper and 20-15%zinc- what we today would call red brass, 85:15, to almost yellow brass ,70:30, (%copper:%zinc).

I now see that this is what you were saying too Aviantus- the way you wrote it seemed to suggest that the metal used had to be brass because it was a very variable alloy, but I can now see that you meant that this was the reason 'bronze' was not a proper term.

Vale!

Matt

[Neuraleanus]

I understand that you're going to make the scutum from Birch wood strips (where to get?) and I would very much like to see your press. All of the scutum presses that I'm aware of are designed for modern plywood.

[Robert Vermaat]

I haven't as yet seen the term 'copper alloy' used much, however, which is unfortunate as it most certainly IS a proper 'universal' term

In modern archaeological publications, 'copper alloy' is the only word used for metallic object that in the past were called 'bronze'.