Experimental archaeology
Oct. 14th, 2010 03:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
essayelThere's nothing quite like it for sorting out visual images.
For instance I've been looking at pictures like these for years:
The bow is all over the place and seems far too short for the archer. Surely its distortion is exaggerated to fit it onto the plate. And this one:
That's a drawing of the image in the icon. Tiny bows in comparison with the rather brawny archers and yet the rest of the image [actually a little gold plaque made to be fixed to clothing] is rendered in a very naturalistic style. Is the size of the bows then an exaggeration? Does it matter?
Of course it does!
Some time ago![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yakalskovich was kind enough to get me some screen caps from a tv show about the excavation of a kurgan burial up in the Pazyryk region. She took lots of piccies of the bow that was found in the burial because bows aren't often found. usually they have rotted away and leave only a shadow in the soil or scraps of the bone used for the nocks. This bow wasn't symmetrical and seemed very spindly to me, but heck it was the real McCoy so i was happy with it.
I'm even happier today to see that a bowyer called Adam Karpowicz has copied it and has posted the pictures where can get at them. Isn't this FANTASTIC?
110lbs at 28 inches! The arrows found with it were 32 inches long so one might assume a weight of 120-130lbs at that draw length. It'll be interesting to see what this bow achieves when they move on to shooting trials.
Here's a video of it being drawn. It's rigid in the handle and the recurves at the ends of the limbs. In fact very little of it seems to bend at all. And at full draw it makes the shape Herodotus described, like a greek letter Σ, only with the serifs turned out.
So not just proof of the pictures but also proof yet again that Herodotus wasn't pulling our legs about the Scyths. He got the cannabis use right and the touching blood brotherhood ceremonies [I really need to scan the picture of it!] so I'm really happy he was right about Σ as well.
:)
For instance I've been looking at pictures like these for years:
The bow is all over the place and seems far too short for the archer. Surely its distortion is exaggerated to fit it onto the plate. And this one:
That's a drawing of the image in the icon. Tiny bows in comparison with the rather brawny archers and yet the rest of the image [actually a little gold plaque made to be fixed to clothing] is rendered in a very naturalistic style. Is the size of the bows then an exaggeration? Does it matter?
Of course it does!
Some time ago
yakalskovich was kind enough to get me some screen caps from a tv show about the excavation of a kurgan burial up in the Pazyryk region. She took lots of piccies of the bow that was found in the burial because bows aren't often found. usually they have rotted away and leave only a shadow in the soil or scraps of the bone used for the nocks. This bow wasn't symmetrical and seemed very spindly to me, but heck it was the real McCoy so i was happy with it.I'm even happier today to see that a bowyer called Adam Karpowicz has copied it and has posted the pictures where can get at them. Isn't this FANTASTIC?
110lbs at 28 inches! The arrows found with it were 32 inches long so one might assume a weight of 120-130lbs at that draw length. It'll be interesting to see what this bow achieves when they move on to shooting trials.
Here's a video of it being drawn. It's rigid in the handle and the recurves at the ends of the limbs. In fact very little of it seems to bend at all. And at full draw it makes the shape Herodotus described, like a greek letter Σ, only with the serifs turned out.
So not just proof of the pictures but also proof yet again that Herodotus wasn't pulling our legs about the Scyths. He got the cannabis use right and the touching blood brotherhood ceremonies [I really need to scan the picture of it!] so I'm really happy he was right about Σ as well.
:)