Bronze Shields Research Articles

Votive Dedication of the Spartans for the Battle of Tanagra

Three fragments of a marble stele recomposed and integrated by K. Purgold in 1881 thanks to the Periegesis of Pausanias (5.10.4). It is an inscription of six lines. The first four lines, reported by Pausanias, form an epigram related to a gilded bronze shield placed on the eastern pediment of the temple of Olympian Zeus and dedicated by the Spartans for the victory in the battle of Tanagra (457 BC) over the Athenians and their allies. The last two lines, not recorded in the Periegesis, were to be in prose, and probably contained a list of Spartan allies. The inscription uses the archaic alphabet of Corinth that is evolving in the fifth century BC.

Three-Dimensionally Printed On-Skin Radiation Shields Using High-Density Filament

PurposeCustom-fabricated lead shields are often used for superficial radiation treatments to reduce radiation doses to adjacent healthy tissue. However, the process for fabricating these lead shields is time consuming, labor intensive, and uncomfortable for patients. Alternatively, patient-specific shields can be 3-dimensionally (3D) printed from a high-density bronze-based filament to address these concerns. This study was performed to assess the shielding characteristics of 3D-printed bronze (3DPB) shields, demonstrate their clinical viability, and report the first ever published case of a patient treated with a 3DPB shield. Methods and MaterialsThe transmission of 6 and 9 MeV electron beams through varying thicknesses of 3DPB was first measured. Percent depth doses and beam profiles were measured with flat 3DPB shields and equivalent lead shields to determine surface dose enhancement, output factors, and field widths. Two 3DPB shields were designed and fabricated for an anthropomorphic phantom, and phantom measurements were performed using optically stimulated luminescence dosimeters and film. Finally, 3DPB shields were used during the treatment of 7 patients’ skin lesions. ResultsTen and 15 mm of 3DPB were sufficient to shield 6 and 9 MeV electrons, respectively, by 95%. The 3DPB and lead shields had nearly identical beam widths (within 1%). Output factors were on average within 0.8% for bronze shields and 1.2% for lead shields relative to an unshielded field. The skin enhancement for bronze was higher than for lead by an average of 6.3%. Phantom measurements using 3DPB shields generally showed less than 3% transmission of the primary beam under the 3DPB shield. The patients’ shields fit as designed and were all deemed clinically acceptable by their physicians. ConclusionsThe 3DPB shields fit better than lead shields, are easier to design and manufacture, and have similar dosimetric properties. 3DPB shields are a viable clinical option for patient-specific superficial shielding.

Palaepaphos-Skales Tomb 277. More prestigious burials. With an appendix by Maria A. Socratous

Tomb 277 in the Skales cemetery at Palaepaphos, excavated by the Cyprus Department of Antiquities, is among the richest ever found in the south-west of the island. It dates to the Cypro-Geometric III period (c. 900–750 BC) and was used for multiple burials of important members of the Palaepaphian society, namely warriors and important women (priestesses of the Great Goddess?) judging from the abundant offerings of arms and armour as well as gold jewellery respectively (including gold plaques embossed with the head of the Egyptian goddess Hathor). Notable among the offerings are two bronze basins, six small hemispherical bronze bowls, two bronze mace-heads (symbols of authority), a bronze shield of a rare type, and two richly decorated belts of oriental type. We also mention two iron swords and a bronze spearhead. Among the pottery we note the high percentage of Phoenician imports. Both inhumations and a cremation burial were observed in the tomb.

European Bronze Age Symbols in Prehistoric Greece? Reconsidering Bronze Shields and Spears from Delphi in Their Wider Context

Enigmatic objects from various sites in the eastern Mediterranean are modeled after shields that have a V-notch symbol, which are found widely across Europe. While the pieces from Greece are conventionally dated to the 8th to 7th century B.C., a recent reanalysis of one such shield from Delphi indicates that it was manufactured in the final centuries of the Bronze Age. This redating calls into question the cultural milieu in which this European-type object and the V-notch symbolism were adopted and given meaning in the Mediterranean. It is argued that Bronze Age shields were items of display that either remained visible or were rediscovered in the Iron Age, and, along with offensive weapons to be discussed, some served as models for copies designed for display and votive deposition.

Skjoldbuler – offer og symbol Ritualer, kosmologi og magt i skandinavisk jernalder

Shield bosses – offerings and symbols – Rituals, cosmology and power in Iron Age ScandinaviaThe South Scandinavian war booty offerings, which date from the Roman and Germanic Iron Ages, contain thousands of weapons and other military objects. Many of these have been intentionally damaged using remarkable force and in strange ways. The focus of this article is on the destruction of weapons and the aim is to reach an understanding of this phenomenon in the light of the social structure in the Iron Age.Of the 32 bronze shield bosses recovered from Illerup Ådal, eight have been broken using the butt of an axe head (figs. 2-4). The axes from Illerup are also quite damaged and it appears as if they have been used to destroy many hundreds of objects. Some of the imprints seen on the bronze shield bosses even match the dimensions of the axe butts (figs. 1 and 5). There appears to be some consistency in the manner in which the shield bosses were damaged even though they belong to two different stages of the offering site. This could result from a fixed ritual method of destroying shield bosses. It is also possible that only a few individuals participated in the destruction of these objects, because the ways in which the shield bosses have been broken are very similar.It is remarkable that the implements used to destroy shield bosses and weapons in the war booty offerings were other weapons. This could be due to a belief in personification of weapons/objects, such that they represented the warriors to whom they had belonged.There is also a peculiar absence of items in the finds from the Illerup site. Many of the axes that must have been used to destroy the shield bosses have not been recovered. In only six instances out of 12 has it been possible to find an axe that matches the dimensions of the distinct square impressions seen on the shield bosses. Other items and fragments are also missing. It is concluded here that the missing objects could have been taken to other locations or given as gifts to princes or warlords, possibly in connection with the creation of alliances.The Early Roman Iron Age was a period of great unrest as new and old elites fought for power. This is why the alliances were so important. As a consequence of this new social and economic organisation, warriors were now employed full time by the elite. It is therefore only natural that war, warrior identity and weapons were also dominant concepts in religious life. This can be seen in the finds recovered from war booty offerings, graves, central places etc. Central places appear to take over the role of religious centres after the war booty offerings ended. Votive activity appears to have become more institutionalised during the period when the war booty sacrifices flourished. Subsequently, this became particularly pronounced and participation may have been reserved for the select few. This reflects the fact that the elite had now established their right to the power and had no longer a need to compete openly.Anni Pind NielsenHedensted

A Parade Shield from the Przeworsk Culture Cemetery in Czersk, near Warsaw, Poland: An International Sign of Status in the Early Roman Period

A shield boss and a shield grip with silver decoration were recently found in the Przeworsk culture cemetery at Czersk in the Piaseczno district in central Poland. The shield boss, type J.7, has three times three bronze thimble-headed rivets, covered with silver. The bronze shield grip has silvered rivet plates with thimble-headed rivets, decorative filigree studs, and openwork decoration. The technique that was used to produce this specimen is not clear, despite metallographic analysis. The shield has analogies in Scandinavia (Hunn, Radved, Brostorp) and the northern Elbian circle (Hamfelde). It was probably a parade shield, an international sign of the warrior elite in the Early Roman Period in the barbaricum. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.15181/ab.v18i0.67 Key words: Roman Period, elite graves, parade weaponry, Przeworsk culture.

Study of the atypical formations in the corrosion bulks of an ancient bronze shield, by optical and electron microscopy

This article presents the atypical formations in the structure of the corrosion crust and in the partially mineralized metallic core, which resulted during the underground stay of a bronze shield, dated between the 1st century B.C. and the 1st century A.D. For our study, we choose a representative fragment from the rim of the shield, which was analyzed by optical microscopy and by electron microscopy coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, to study its morphology, its composition, and the location of chemical compounds on the surface and inside the bulk formed during the underground stay, by processes of chemical and physical alteration, assisted by contamination with structural elements from the site. Those processes, by monolithization and mineralization formed a series of structures consisting of congruent elements and phases with a complex composition. Those formations, defined as surface effects generated by exogenous factors and endogenous factors inside the bulk, are frequently found in ancient bronze objects (such as the exterior flat mole formations and the Liesegang effect in the stratigraphic structure of the bulk). Some of those structures have atypical characteristics as regards their structure, composition, and formation mechanism, which may be used in archeometry. Moreover, that includes the object in the category of special cases, in terms of artifact evolution during underground stay and of the atypical formations resulted from the action of pedological and environmental factors.

Como Perseu se defendeu de Medusa?

Na psicanálise francesa, principalmente com Lacan, o conceito de falta passou a ser de grande importância. Ao que, então, perguntamos: o que é a falta? E quando esta falta? O que acontece? O que acontece quando o não especularizável não está excluído, se fazendo, assim, especular? Quando Perseu vai ao encontro de Medusa, guiando-se por sua imagem refletida em um espelho de bronze polido, segurado por Atena, como pôde este herói defender-se de Medusa? Qual foi a forma encontrada por ele para se defender da presença do objeto que introduz a dimensão do real nu?

Tailored analytical strategies for the investigation of metallic artefacts from the Ayanis Fortress in Turkey

AbstractA noteworthy number of metallic artefacts dating back to 673–645 BC have been found during excavations in the Ayanis Fortress, near the lake of Van. They are large bronze shields, quivers, helmets, arrows and plates, some of which are decorated with cuneiform inscriptions, and demonstrate a high‐level quality of technological competence reached by the ancient craftsmen of Ayanis during the reign of King Rusa II. The artefacts have been studied from a microchemical, micromorphological and microstructural point of view by means of different techniques, from optical microscopy to scanning electron microscopy (SEM), to X‐ray diffraction.Microchemical and microstructural investigations showed metallurgical features of the bronze artefacts and of the corrosion products' layered structures that can be explained in terms of manufacturing processes (repeated cycles of mechanical work and annealing thermal treatments) and environmental context (presence of high amounts of chlorides in the soil that preferentially attack the bronze along the grain boundaries). In particular, the repeated cycles of mechanical work and annealing thermal treatments were carried out to restore the ductility and the malleability of the alloy, thus inducing the crystallisation and the growth of flattened grains as well as impurities segregation phenomena along grain boundaries. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The bronze shields found at the Ayanis fortress (Van region, Turkey): manufacturing techniques and corrosion phenomena

The manufacturing techniques, chemical composition and corrosion products grown on archaeological bronze shields found during the excavation of the Ayanis fortress (Lake Van region, Eastern Anatolia, Turkey) were studied by means of the combined use of scanning electron microscopy combined with energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and optical microscopy (OM) techniques. The shields are dated back to 673–645 BC and in some cases are decorated with cuneiform inscriptions and ornaments representing various animals, such as lions and bulls.

The Shield of Argive Abas at Aeneid 3.286

Aeneas' stopover at Actium has struck most readers as an Augustan interlude in the odyssey of Aeneid 3. The scene is conspicuous among the other episodes in the trip for its brevity and for the fact that it does not advance the action toward the Trojan exiles' Italian goal. Instead the accent falls on prefiguring actions of Aeneas' distinguished descendant, Octavian, after he achieved victory over Antony at the same site in 31 B.C. Where the future Augustus dedicated spoils from the battle to Actian Apollo and instituted a festival called the Actian Games, the Trojans celebrate athletic games at Actium and their leader affixes an enemy trophy to the temple of Apollo there. This last act, however, Aeneas' dedicatio, points allusively to the mythical past as well as to the Augustan future. To appreciate the full force of that complex reference, which enriches the thematics of the entire scene, hinges on our recognition of a mythological figure whose identity has been long in doubt. The narrator Aeneas reports that he hung up on Apollo's shrine ‘the bronze shield worn by great Abas’ (3.286 ‘aere cavo clipeum, magni gestamen Abantis’). Who is this Abas, and why is his mention here significant?

Two Recent British Shield Finds and their Continental Parallels

In the course of research on Bronze Age metalwork from Surrey 1972–4, the writer's attention was drawn to an unpublished bronze shield in Chertsey Museum found locally at Mixnam's Pit several years earlier. The find obviously did not fall into any known British type, and closer parallels evident amongst the continentalNipperweiseclass made this, potentially, the first recognised import of a Bronze Age shield to Britain. With the aid of theSir Cyril Fox Memorial Awardfor 1974, it was possible to study continental bronze shields in West Germany and Denmark, in particular three of the five known examples ofNipperweisetype. Subsequently, in June 1977, by curious chance, a second BritishNipperweise-likeshield was recovered at Long Wittenham, and this has amplified the need for a detailed consideration of relationships within the class. First, however, it is necessary to describe the two British shields and their find circumstances, and to give descriptions of the relevant continental examples.

Barbarian Europe and Early Iron Age Greece

This paper is concerned with the nature of the relationship that existed between Central Europe and the Aegean area in the early 1st millennium B.C. Interest in Aegean-continental connections has been strong for a considerable time, but has been intensified, particularly from the continental standpoint, in the past fifteen years. Although some of these studies have been concerned with the contacts between 2nd millennium (Late Bronze Age) Greece and the north, others have examined in detail the evidence for the links between the Urnfield culture and Greece during the 10th, 9th and 8th centuries. For Greece, this is an utterly different period from the preceding one; the evidence for foreign contacts suddenly becomes scarce and that for military disasters is virtually non-existent. Yet some scholars have reached very similar conclusions, involving the transmission of objects and of the people who carried them from Central Europe into Greece, for this period as for the preceding Late Bronze Age. Such arguments have a recent exponent in Professor W. Kimmig, whose paper Seevölkerbewegung und Urnenfelderkultur ranges over the whole period from about 1200 to 700. His list of objects and practices in this period, which he considers to have been donated by the Danube-Balkan peoples to the Mediterranean world, is comprehensive indeed: it would include bronze shields and body armour, the equipment of Goliath, the knobbed ware of Troy VII B, the practice of cremation in the Iron Age, the ritual spoliation of weapons in graves, iron swords, spears, knives, bits, lugged axes, spits, fire-dogs, bronze personal objects generally, clay idols, the maeander pattern and the swans of Apollo.

Accessions to the British Museum (Bloomsbury)

INTERESTING additions to the collections of British antiquities of the British Museum (Bloomsbury) were announced at the December meeting of the Trustees. Among these the most important is an iron sword of the second century B.C., with its bronze scabbard mount, which has been lent for temporary exhibition by the Duke of Northumberland. It was found in the River Witham below Lincoln in 1826, probably at the same time as the famous bronze shield of the iron age, which, with its characteristic Celtic ornament combining the use of metal and enamel, has long been one of the Museum's most striking exhibits among British antiquities. The decoration of the scabbard mount is an example of the earliest Celtic art of Britain, and shows the La Tene curvilinear style of ornamentation in the form in which it reached Britain. Other accessions, also of great interest, come from a round barrow at Riffley Wood, near King's Lynn, which has been excavated by Mr. I. J. Thatcher and Mr. P. L. K. Scbwabe. Among these are a segmented bead and a ring pendant of bluish-green faience, which were associated with nine or ten cremated urn burials of the Middle Bronze Age found on top of the mound. They belong to a class of ornament which has been found in bronze age burials in Britain and on the Continent; and they agree in all respects with examples found at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt, dating from about 1400 B.C. The grave pit of the mound below the level at which the urn burials were found, contained no remains; but the whole of the surface-level below the barrow was covered with pottery fragments, representing hundreds of vessels. These sherds were of beaker pottery of the Early Bronze Age, of the approximate dating of 1800 B.C. It seems clear that this was not a habitation site, and the sherds are thought to be either the debris of the floor of the dead man's hut, which was brought here entire, or, perhaps more probably, the result of a ritual, which involved the scattering of a large number of potsherds.

A Bronze Shield from Sutton, Norfolk

The account given by Mr. Burroughs in 1880 of the discovery of the Sutton shield is illustrated by a rather inferior drawing, and is somewhat misleading in some respects. It seems to me, therefore, advisable that a photograph of the shield should be published and the facts of its discovery placed on record. I am greatly indebted to Dr. Francis Clowes, the present owner of the shield, for the following information and for the photographs (Plate XVIII.) which are here reproduced with his permission. Dr. Clowes was with Mr. Burroughs when he visited the place where the shield was found, so that the facts given here may be accepted as correct.The discovery was made on June 7th, 1875, by two men digging a main drain to the mill which stands at the edge of the “Hand Marsh” south-east of Sutton Broad, but I am unable to say exactly which is the drain in question. The shield was found beneath about 7 feet of peat, lying on, and partly covered by, bright white sand, while in its vicinity were pieces of oak three or four feet long, much charred by fire.

The Palaikastro Hymn of the Kouretes

The inscribed fragments here published were discovered in the third season of the excavations at Palaikastro. We knew already that a Hellenic temple had stood on the site of the Minoan town. The building itself had been destroyed, but architectural terracottas, bronze shields, and other votive offerings were found near the surface in sufficient numbers to indicate its position, while a bed of ashes fixed that of the altar. The finding among its scattered débris of a Hymn addressed to Zeus of Dikte furnished a welcome identification. It left no doubt that our temple was the temple of Diktaean Zeus which is several times mentioned in the famous award of the Magnesian Arbitrators in the frontier dispute between Itanos and Hierapytna, and that the plain of Palaikastro was the Heleia which both cities claimed.

Notes Respecting Two Bronze Shields recently purchased for the Museum of the Society

Two bronze shields found in the Scottish Borders are described by the author. The article also discusses similar bronze shields that were found across the UK and Europe, as well as the depictions of this kind of shield that are found on carved stones in Scotland.