I am currently reading M C Bishop's Osprey Weapon series title The Pilum (https://ospreypublishing.com/the-pilum) (2017). This is an excellent book; as I have said previously with regard to his Gladius and Spatha titles, it's a pleasure to read an acknowledged academic expert clearly setting out the current state of knowledge.
One thing puzzles me, though. Early in the book (p.9 and photo p.10), discussing the early history of the pilum and its ancestors, Dr Bishop cites the frieze of warriors (https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Situla-della-Certosa-In-the-upper-part-there-is-a-military-parade-after-Bosi-2004_fig7_303314544) on the Etruscan or Venetic Certosa Situla (http://www.museibologna.it/archeologicoen/percorsi/66288/id/74614/oggetto/74616/). Speaking specifically of the group of men with four-sided scuta, he says that they carry "pairs of spears, sometimes interpreted as pila".
Well, I can't see it. Previous interpretations of the Certosa situla (for example, the painting in Peter Connolly's Greece and Rome at War or the plate in Sekunda & Northwood's Osprey Early Roman Armies) interpret these men as carrying one spear each, and that's what it still looks like to me. The clearest photograph of this section of the frieze that I can find is the one found on this web-page (http://historandmor.blogspot.com/2016/06/800x600-normal-0-false-false-false-en.html) (which is an online posting of an article Robert Heiligers published in Slingshot in 2010); if you double-click on the photo of the situla it zooms to a very detailed view. The weapons still look like one spear each, to me. The third figure of the four does seem to have a thicker spearshaft with a central groove that might be an indication that it's actually a pair of spears, but even he clearly has only one spearhead and one decorated butt. The others look even more clearly like a single spearshaft, though there is a crack along the length of each one.
What do you think? Am I missing anything obvious?
Struggling to see two spears there. If you look at the men with the aspis (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Situla_della_certosa%2C_600-550_ac._ca%2C_da_tomba_68_necropoli_della_certosa_04.JPG)following behind, they seem to be armed identically. Several of them have the split running down the spear shaft with, again, a single broad spearhead.
I confess I've always thought they had one spear, (So sure that it never even occurred to me they might have two.) and now the more closely I look at it, the more convinced I am that they have one spear.
Yes I can see the groove that makes it look like you have two shafts, briefly, but still only one spearhead and one butt.
So is it worth somebody trying to contact him to ask?
http://dspace.unive.it/bitstream/handle/10579/8003/833720-1192476.pdf?sequence=2 has some illustrations from other friezes which do show two spears, such as this https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/media/pdf/books/978-88-6969-390-8/978-88-6969-390-8-ch-07.pdf
and
https://edizioniquasar.it/products/1737
These are shown in a paper on the Certosa Situla - some confusion perhaps?
Not that I would have called them even proto-pila.
EDIT: One of the examples is the Vace belt, so usually used for Illyrian rather than Italian evidence. Found in Slovenia though, so sort of the Veneti/Illyrian boundary and even slightly towards main Hallstatt culture.
Yes, there are certainly plenty of situlae and other art from the region which do show two spears - I think we've touched on some of them in previous threads on early Italy.
I do note that http://dspace.unive.it/bitstream/handle/10579/8003/833720-1192476.pdf?sequence=2 explicitly says that the Certosa figures with four-sided shields carry "
una lunga lancia", so another vote for the "traditional" viewing.
Quote from: Jim Webster on July 14, 2020, 09:04:11 AMSo is it worth somebody trying to contact him to ask?
Not sure I can be bothered, it's not that vital a question.
Thanks for all the responses so far.
The third figure is carrying 2 spears to me. They may not be the same kind of spear and it may be at odds with the rest of the figures but for me its clear he has 2
Quote from: Holly on July 14, 2020, 10:13:26 AM
The third figure is carrying 2 spears to me. They may not be the same kind of spear and it may be at odds with the rest of the figures but for me its clear he has 2
Agree this is the most equivocal. However, if he does have two, we have absolutely no detail of one of them, so it would take the eye of prior assumption to say it was a pilum.
definitely agree on the point that even assuming its 2 spears its impossible to say what type of spear it is
Do devotees of Western Way of War have to sign on to two spears?? Or is the singular spear proof that the Etruscans came from the East?
Roy
Quote from: aligern on July 15, 2020, 08:53:45 AM
Do devotees of Western Way of War have to sign on to two spears?? Or is the singular spear proof that the Etruscans came from the East?
Roy
What you have to remember is even the Western Way of War allows for spear armed troops. Triari for example. Also from some grave sets better armed and armoured warriors may not have bothered throwing stuff, but formed the solid core around which the more lightly armed troops moved.
Mind you given a date of 600 to 550BC it is from a period where there is debate as to whether the hoplite phalanx existed :-[
QuoteMind you given a date of 600 to 550BC it is from a period where there is debate as to whether the hoplite phalanx existed
Didn't hoplites of this period have two spears anyway? The Etruscans may have been influenced also by the Gauls, who had a fashion for large headed spears at this time. They fought the Gauls as much as the Italians and the Greek cities IIRC (though Etruscan chronology is not my strong point, so I could be wrong).
Quote from: Erpingham on July 15, 2020, 09:58:16 AM
QuoteMind you given a date of 600 to 550BC it is from a period where there is debate as to whether the hoplite phalanx existed
Didn't hoplites of this period have two spears anyway?
The Bologna museum site (http://www.museibologna.it/archeologicoen/percorsi/66288/id/74614/oggetto/74616/) and the thesis Peter cited (http://dspace.unive.it/bitstream/handle/10579/8003/833720-1192476.pdf?sequence=2) both date the situla to 500-475 (though I have seen earlier dates elsewhere), so contemporary with the Persian Wars and into the period when most hoplites are using a single spear.
QuoteThe Etruscans may have been influenced also by the Gauls, who had a fashion for large headed spears at this time. They fought the Gauls as much as the Italians and the Greek cities IIRC (though Etruscan chronology is not my strong point, so I could be wrong).
This is if the subject-matter of the illustration is Etruscan rather than Venetic, of course. If Venetic, they probably had contacts with Alpine Celts even before the Celts started to move into the Po plain.
Jim, the reductio ad absurdum if the Western Way was that that everyone in the West used javelins unless they had spears abd everybody in the East used spears unless they had javelins. You were only mildly put out because your Thracians should have migrated West rather than going to Bithynia. 😉
Roy
Quote from: aligern on July 15, 2020, 10:59:21 AM
Jim, the reductio ad absurdum if the Western Way was that that everyone in the West used javelins unless they had spears abd everybody in the East used spears unless they had javelins. You were only mildly put out because your Thracians should have migrated West rather than going to Bithynia. 😉
Roy
looks round nervously
"My Thracians?"
(What have the sneakly little beggars done now!)
Can i just say, for newer members, that the Western Mediterranean Way of War was a theory of the late Paul McDonnel-Staff. In simple terms, everybody at the Western end of the Med fought with two throwing or dual purpose spears and carried a robust oval or rectangular shield. People at the East end had a single thrusting spear and round shield. Everything was disrupted by the intrusion by the introduction of the thureos but generally the pattern remained. The split between the two "ways" ran down the Adriatic. The subject was fiercely debated many years ago on Ancmed and a series of Slingshot articles were written about it (by Roy). Paul himself never published the theory, AFAIK.
While it is interesting, therefore, to consider our current discussion in light of this, it isn't essential to know the details. It is important to know that when Roy uses it to differentiate Eastern and Western influences, his tongue is in his cheek :)
May we please have another WMWoW thread? Pretty please? Usual rules, once each participant has stated their position for the 10,000th time we freeze the thread no matter where are.
Thanks for that ;-)). most of our writing was actually by Mark Grindlay. A pity PMDS was not at the time a Society member, though we did invite him. It was quite a stimulating debate, but I fear it missed something by having been set as a theory without sufficient information gathering and analysis before trial conclusions were drawn. I wonder if there are three basic styles of operating with javelins:
1) Paired javelins, one to throw and one to thrust. Sometines this was a combination of javelins with a heavier spear such as early Anglo Saxons
2) Many javelins such as Moors or maybe Spanish Caetrati where there may be no intention of meleeing until the eneny are on the turn.
3) javelins preparatory to using a primary sword such as Romans or Gauls ( though its an interesting question as to how many in a Gallic army actually had those expensive swords.
If the Certosa Situla does indeed show warriors with single spears then it is highly inconvenient for tge vew that it shows a melding of a Greek style of using thrusting spears and an Italian style with a scutum shield and javelins..
Roy
For Tim . I think it was an interesting discussion, if sometimes ill-tempered. Paul really made bigger and more sweeping statements than the evidence he collected could carry and hadn't really parameterised properly. So sometimes Gauls were in, because they touched the Mediterranean, sometimes they were too far North and belonged to a different tradition, which intruded on the Mediterranean. Was the lonkhe really the equivalent of a pilum or is it more in Javelin/light spear category and did this matter to WMWW (sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't)? Illyrians, IIRC became an issue at one point. When the Carthaginians ditched the phalanx and adopted the proposed WMWW was another sticking point. There was lots, lots more - it produced the largest monthly totals of Ancmed posts. So, rather than an all embracing repeat, picking out parts of the debate and re-examining them might be worth it (as Roy is already doing) - it should give us ammunition for a long time ahead :)
Quote from: Erpingham on July 16, 2020, 09:18:38 AMPaul really made bigger and more sweeping statements than the evidence he collected could carry and hadn't really parameterised properly. So sometimes Gauls were in, because they touched the Mediterranean, sometimes they were too far North and belonged to a different tradition, which intruded on the Mediterranean.
I think, in retrospect, that sort of inconsistency was because Paul was in the course of working through the theory, not presenting one fully-developed comprehensive proposal. His ideas were sometimes more roughly handled than they deserved, but on the other hand he might have done better to present some of them more as questions than statements.
Quote from: Duncan Head on July 16, 2020, 10:44:47 AM
Quote from: Erpingham on July 16, 2020, 09:18:38 AMPaul really made bigger and more sweeping statements than the evidence he collected could carry and hadn't really parameterised properly. So sometimes Gauls were in, because they touched the Mediterranean, sometimes they were too far North and belonged to a different tradition, which intruded on the Mediterranean.
I think, in retrospect, that sort of inconsistency was because Paul was in the course of working through the theory, not presenting one fully-developed comprehensive proposal. His ideas were sometimes more roughly handled than they deserved, but on the other hand he might have done better to present some of them more as questions than statements.
Entirely agree Duncan. Though he didn't help his cause at times being being more assertive and less questioning than he should have been, which was bound to cause counter arguments.
Looking at the basics I think we got too caught up in details of armament
The 'WWOW' with the emphasis on javelin and sword or javelin and spear (because swords are expensive) was pointed out as having evolved differently to the East
But when you stop and look at it, the early Greek Hoplite with two spears may effectively have been a proponent of the WWOW.
After all there are scholars who question whether the hoplite phalanx 'proper' had evolved by the Persian War
From a wargamers point of view, we run into a problem of defining the 'same troop type' as Auxilia, Blade, or Warband, depending on geography and race.
The geographical emphasis perhaps didn't help. Perhaps seeing a European Mediterranean tradition, which would also encompass the two-spear hoplite, would have been better. There was also perhaps too little on how the styles contrasted in action, how they interacted and how much switching between "codes" there was. "These guys all had two spears, so they fought the same" was a bit too technologically determinist.
Let us imagine for a moment our early Greek settlers fetching up in Italy with their two-spear hoplites and maybe integral archers in a proto phalanx. They end up against some various local, who have body shields and a heavier javelin (proto-pilum). Traditionally, the phalanx is close order heavy and the locals are "heavy" skirmishers (LMI to WRG fans). Is that really how it was? Are they effectively the same?
Quote from: Erpingham on July 16, 2020, 01:00:50 PM
The geographical emphasis perhaps didn't help. Perhaps seeing a European Mediterranean tradition, which would also encompass the two-spear hoplite, would have been better. There was also perhaps too little on how the styles contrasted in action, how they interacted and how much switching between "codes" there was. "These guys all had two spears, so they fought the same" was a bit too technologically determinist.
Let us imagine for a moment our early Greek settlers fetching up in Italy with their two-spear hoplites and maybe integral archers in a proto phalanx. They end up against some various local, who have body shields and a heavier javelin (proto-pilum). Traditionally, the phalanx is close order heavy and the locals are "heavy" skirmishers (LMI to WRG fans). Is that really how it was? Are they effectively the same?
My guess is that they were much the same.
I picked up a copy of https://www.amazon.co.uk/Early-Roman-Warfare-Regal-Period/dp/1781592543 which I feel is well worth the £5 for a hardback
even better value as the Kindle version Jim :)
Quote from: Holly on July 16, 2020, 01:39:57 PM
even better value as the Kindle version Jim :)
I was talking about buying it rather than hiring it ;)
To be fair there aren't a lot of maps or illustrations so Kindle would work
duly bought ;D
Quote from: Erpingham on July 16, 2020, 01:00:50 PM
The geographical emphasis perhaps didn't help. Perhaps seeing a European Mediterranean tradition, which would also encompass the two-spear hoplite, would have been better. There was also perhaps too little on how the styles contrasted in action, how they interacted and how much switching between "codes" there was. "These guys all had two spears, so they fought the same" was a bit too technologically determinist.
Let us imagine for a moment our early Greek settlers fetching up in Italy with their two-spear hoplites and maybe integral archers in a proto phalanx. They end up against some various local, who have body shields and a heavier javelin (proto-pilum). Traditionally, the phalanx is close order heavy and the locals are "heavy" skirmishers (LMI to WRG fans). Is that really how it was? Are they effectively the same?
I did a screen shot of Ante bella punica:Western Mediterranean Military Development 350-264 BC By Alastair Richard Lumsden
Quesada Sanz's "cloud theory" of course was one of the key pieces of the WMWW evidence base. I recall one of the spinoffs was a discussion of Roman warfare and whether the Romans were "chuck and charge" or "pilum skirmishers" .
interesting and I missed the discussion first time around. The cloud theory is one that could make sense of the archaeology
Quote from: Erpingham on July 17, 2020, 12:28:39 PM
Quesada Sanz's "cloud theory" of course was one of the key pieces of the WMWW evidence base. I recall one of the spinoffs was a discussion of Roman warfare and whether the Romans were "chuck and charge" or "pilum skirmishers" .
Personally I suspect it would depend on what the enemy were doing. If they looked as if they were uncertain, chuck and charge is the tactic of choice. But along a battle line some units (on both sides) might fancy their chances, chuck and charge, and otehrs are doing the skirmishing
Zmodhikov's Roman Republican Heavy Infantrymen in Battle (IV-II Centuries B.C.) also featured. Not freely available to download but can be read online here (https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4436566.pdf?seq=1) Phil Sabin's Face of Roman Battle was also referenced but this doesn't seem to be freely available.
thanks for the link.......no I am not going to collect an early Roman army......
Quote from: Holly on July 17, 2020, 02:01:35 PM
thanks for the link.......no I am not going to collect an early Roman army......
I happen to have a pdf
I haven't a clue how. But here it is attached if you want it Holly
thanks Jim....appreciated
Dave, PM me if you need a copy of Sabin. I won't post here - as it is only available behind a paywall, SoA can't republish it. But sharing for personal study should be Ok (that's how I got it)
Quote from: Erpingham on July 17, 2020, 02:55:53 PM
Dave, PM me if you need a copy of Sabin. I won't post here - as it is only available behind a paywall, SoA can't republish it. But sharing for personal study should be Ok (that's how I got it)
:) :) :)
Quote from: Erpingham on July 17, 2020, 02:55:53 PM
Dave, PM me if you need a copy of Sabin. I won't post here - as it is only available behind a paywall, SoA can't republish it. But sharing for personal study should be Ok (that's how I got it)
gods alone know where I got my copy from because it's a word document that I was sent in 2005 and I've turned into a pdf
I think I have the same version. I think it was a draft that the author posted on ancmed - I'm sure he was active there for a while. So maybe not completely the same as the final Historia version, but close enough.
Quote from: Duncan Head on July 17, 2020, 04:27:29 PM
I think I have the same version. I think it was a draft that the author posted on ancmed - I'm sure he was active there for a while. So maybe not completely the same as the final Historia version, but close enough.
There are times when I'm surprised at what I find lurking in the corners of my hard drive ::)
Quote from: Jim Webster on July 17, 2020, 07:17:49 PM
There are times when I'm surprised at what I find lurking in the corners of my hard drive ::)
Plenty of times I've come across something on the web, gone to download it, and found I have got it already. Cheaper than buying duplicate books, of course.
I have a hard drive full of 2,3 or 4 copies of many articles....... :-[
Quote from: Holly on July 17, 2020, 11:34:38 PM
I have a hard drive full of 2,3 or 4 copies of many articles....... :-[
I resemble that remark
at some point I will go through the hard drive and remove the superfluous ones...should free up a bit of space :)
Quote from: Jim Webster on July 16, 2020, 01:19:00 PM
My guess is that they were much the same.
I picked up a copy of https://www.amazon.co.uk/Early-Roman-Warfare-Regal-Period/dp/1781592543 which I feel is well worth the £5 for a hardback
$26.95 CDN here :( (Roughly £15.75)
Quote from: davidb on July 20, 2020, 06:06:42 PM
Quote from: Jim Webster on July 16, 2020, 01:19:00 PM
My guess is that they were much the same.
I picked up a copy of https://www.amazon.co.uk/Early-Roman-Warfare-Regal-Period/dp/1781592543 which I feel is well worth the £5 for a hardback
$26.95 CDN here :( (Roughly £15.75)
Somebody is taking the mickey
Even with the kindle version with them all in £
Canada 7.6
USA 7.9
UK 3.19
ouch....