The Boiotian Shield

[Paullus Scipio]

Nikolaos/Cole wrote:

In the abscence of artifacts, we can either assume depicted objects did or did not exist. Two arguments weigh strongly against the position of their not existing. First is that depictions do tend to be representative of surviving artifacts, and second the sample set of surviving shields is not statistically significant.

...as has been pointed out, it is likely that archaic 'Boeotian' shields hung as dedications in temples from hundreds of years before ( or maybe not if their materials were purely organic - wood frame and oxhide face - but there are precedents for organic materials surviving hundreds of years....). Therefore, 'surviving artifacts' need not be contemporary, or in current use. An old partially decomposed shield hanging in a temple, and attributed to a mythic hero, is exactly what one might expect to be used as a model by an artist ( remembering that to a Greek, the mythic Hero and his Ancestors were one and the same....if anyone doubted, say, Theseus' existence, why there was his shield, hanging in the temple....)

A survey of the Beazely depictions of boeotian shields by date shows the the depiction of the shape of the boeotian is very consistent until 500 BCE. It appears that only in pottery of the period of 500-450 BCE that the Boeotian "rounds out". A number of different conclusions can be drawn from this for this late period, but prior to 500BCE consistent representation would seem to negate this argument.
First, a chronology of Boeotian depictions versus all depictions of warriors from the Beazely archive:

625-575: 1 of 2
600-550: 15 of 41
575-525: 160 of 442
550-500: 518 of 1204
525-475: 247 of 1209
500-450: 23 of 548

Sorry Cole, but I don't find this argument at all persuasive. Firstly if dozens of 'aspides' finds at Olympia over a several hundred year period, but not a single 'Boeotian' ,can be dismissed as "not statistically significant" (from among tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds, then surely hundreds, or even a couple of thousand survivors of pottery from among millions of artifacts may not be"statistically significant" either ?

Even allowing statistical significance,worse still for your argument, raw statistics alone does not tell a story - you have overlooked other significant factors.
To take but one example, the subject matter of Athenian Red Figure Ware changes rapidly following the Persian Wars and Marathon, as I have noted several times here on RAT. Whereas previously, warrior depictions had been exclusively of Gods and Heroes - mythological subjects, and hence depicted with known 'archaic' weapons, such as Boeotian shields; after Marathon, for the first time, Contemporary 'Heroes' are seen as fit to depict.....and amazonarchy scenes give way to depictions of 'Greeks v Persians'. ( see e.g. works by the Triptolemos painter c. 480's). With the decline in archaic Heroes as subjects, there is a natural decline in the depiction of Boeotian shields.This is not new, it was noted by Boardman and others such as Beazley long ago. Thus your statistics merely record the decline of the fashion for exclusively mythological scenes, and a rise in Historical scenes. Indeed as Boardman pointed out; "the vase painters were as quick to put Persians fighting greeks on their vases as Aeschylus was to put Persians on the stage after the Persian Wars.The dead of Marathon were treated as Heroes and near contemporaries or recent events had to have a Heroic status before Greeks would admit them to their art, at least at this date."

Again, as I have pointed out elsewhere, our evidence in such matters is always going to be scanty, especially if taken in isolation. But where a holistic approach shows various scanty evidence to be consistent, we ignore that fact at our peril.
Here, neither the archaeology, nor the iconography, provide any evidence for the existence of the Boeotian shield c. 500 BC. Taken together, the weight of evidence is clear........