when were the Danum shields used??

[mcbishop]

I know that the tombstone of ‘Annaius Daverzus’ of Cohors IIII Delmatarum (CIL 13, 07507) shows a very large rectangular shield, but it's difficult to see how wide it is on the stone. But from extrapolating the dimension from the boss to the front edge and applying it to mirror the unseen half of the board it still seems to be narrower than three feet!
http://www.romanarmy.com/cms/component/ ... Itemid,94/

So IMHO it makes sense to reconstruct using a vertical positioning, and use dimensions typically seen on sculptural reperesentations and from the tegimen fragments from Valkenburg and Roomberg.

Annaius' tombstone cannot really be used to give accurate dimensions for that sort of thing (the sculptor didn't even bother putting on a rear edge), not least because of the problems the Romans had depicting perspective and foreshortening (the Rhineland tombstones are very good but they are still not 'photographically' accurate). When all the other excavated evidence and all but the dodgiest representational evidence indicates the use of horizontal handgrips, I would disagree that it 'makes sense' to use a vertical handgrip when the archaeological rationale for it is, in this case, so equivocal ;-)

Mike Bishop