"Visigoth 'coffin' shields. A dead issue?" Topic

We've all seen the illustrations and the minis. The shields look awkward and improbable, albeit cool in a clunky, funky kind of way.

link Warband foot warriors, coffin shields

link

Does anyone know of any primary evidence for these, and if they existed, what time frame?

I am about to conclude they are a fiction.

TIA

I'm also curious to know the source for the 'coffin shield'. If it did exist I would guess that it was 3rd Century and replaced by round and oval shields by the 4th.

Except for wargames secondary sources I can't find anything on them. They also look unwieldy and inefficient.

A wall of them would _look_ great, but I am skeptical about their existence. The scutum preceded them and the oval and kite shields came after . . . But I am not sure those dots can be connected.

I don't know anything about Visigoth shields, but I will say this:

It is unlikely that the figure designers just made this up out of the blue. It's quite likely that they copied it from an illustration, perhaps from one of the old WRG books. Now those books weren't perfect, but they weren't shear fantasy either, and usually were based soundly on the (limited) original sources that were available. I bet somewhere there is a carving or something of someone carrying a shield that could at least be interpreted as this coffin shape. That doesn't mean the interpretation was correct, nor does it mean that such shields were common.

Konkurur, where have you looked so far? It might be worthwhile to post this question over on the DBM yahoo group or something.

Also, I don't see what's so unwieldy about this shield. Its basically just a rectangular shield with a couple corners missing. What's so bad about that?

I have searched and the only reference I have ever found is in Phil Barker's Armies and Enemies of Imperial Rome. In typical fashion he does not reveal his sources.

@ smacdowall: Same. That is the only source where I find it.

@ Ivan DBA: I agree that it is unlikely someone just pulled the concept out of the air, but where did it come from? Some Victorian source? A literary description? If there is some bas relief with what looks like one I would be happy to go forward with them, but I can find nothing on the internet or in a number of publications focused on Dark Ages and Folk Wandering period warfare and archaeology.

The shield looks wretchedly unwieldy to me. A tendency to be top heavy, eccentric areas of protection whenever taken out of a straight vertical position, not long enough to cover knees and ankles like a scutum, tower shield or kite shield, and the incut angles and horizontal edges along the top would catch any slashing blows instead of shed them. Like Viking horned helmets, they look cool, but they don't make any practical sense and don't seem to have any basis in fact – just a lot of modern imagery.

So scant is the evidence, that I am trying to figure out how they would work from various miniatures based on one 30 year old line drawing.

I would like to be wrong but I am finding nothing to support this.

I really don't know, I just doubt that Phil Barker would have followed some Victorian drawing or whatever. I'm probably being naive, but I've got more confidence in him than that.

The Han Chinese had a shield that is vaguely similar. Just because a shield seems inefficient to us doesn't mean it's a modern fantasy.

I'm not trying to belittle your points, which are all good and well reasoned. Rather, I'm just trying to give the benefit of the doubt.

I found this comment in a review of HaT's Visigoth 1/72nd scale plastics. Sometimes they give a reference at the bottom of their review, but no such luck for this one.

"As with their near neighbours, round or oval shields were the main protection, but two of these men carry coffin-like examples. As usual there is little clear evidence, and there is some doubt as to whether such shields were used, so no one can say for certain if these are correct or not. Also the shield bosses in this set have spikes, which does not appear to be supported by the evidence. "

"Also the shield bosses in this set have spikes, which does not appear to be supported by the evidence."

Metropolitan Museum of Art has a display of large shield bosses from Dark Ages that at first glance look like small pointy helmets. Those shield bosses were obviously used as offensive weapons. HaT Visigoth shields look very similar. Unfortunately, PSR is often plain wrong on ancient and medieval period.

The shield bosses raise an interesting point (no pun intended). Some scholars reason that the raised shield bosses – some so pronounced that they look like spindles – indicate a more individualized, duelling style of combat. This is based on the concept (formally adopted by the Romans), of smashing a shield boss into the opponent, thus using the shield offensively as well as defensively. This would also seem useful for a warrior who fought mounted at least part of the time.

The raised shield bosses are a more common feature of the Migration Period and early Dark Ages.

Later, flatter, blunter shield bosses become the norm, as the shieldwall becomes the common infantry formation in the later Dark Ages. Obviously these flatter bosses were easier on the kidneys and backbones of the front rankers in a tight, mass formation.

This brings me back to the coffin shield. Depending upon proportions of the shields and the numbers in use, such a design would be optimal for a more static and coherent shieldwall type of formation – such as the Han used. Also in common with the Han, this would probably serve better as a defense from heavy missile fire. The odd raised section could serve like a merlon, as a handy place to duck one's head and face behind.

This raises the possibility of a very different style of infantry doctrine and tradition than contemporaries such as the Franks.

It is also all sheer conjecture absent some hard evidence.

If I find anything I will let you guys know. This has become one of those odd obssessions at this point.

Clearly, I do not have enough to do.

A suggestion – and only a suggestion.

The Goths were newly christian during the period of the later roman empire. It was this sharing of the same faith that saved Rome as long as it did – it being a revered Christian site for both Romans and Goths. Was this "coffin" shield actually a nod to their new found faith? If you take another look the top of these shields you might perceive as I do, that they appear to resemble the cross more than a coffin. Was it the Gothic equivalent of Constantine's painted Chi-ro?

Assuming, of course, that these shields ever really existed at all.

One could be gravely concerned about the theme of this thread but so far the responses undertaken have not buried it in flippancy.

Ah, graveyard humour. You gotta dig it.

Anyone thought to email Phil Barker about it?

Its based on an illustration in the Funcken book on Ancient warriors. Back in the sixties I wrote to the Funckens and asked their source. I got a reply that it was based on archaeological evidence, but nothing more specific. The likelihood is that it is a reconstruction of a shield from the Crimea, that is a hexagonal shield and that itvwas originally reconstructed wrongly into the coffin shield that has become associated with the Visigoths.
The reconstruction error would be because only the metalwork of the boss and the rimm reinforcement survived and the rim was damaged.

Now what do I do with my old V-Goths?

I could imagine it was based on a carving of a figure with a hexagonal shield where the top two corners have been broken off.

Appropriate that this is a resurrected thread. Since the original question was posed, W&E have produced a nice range of figures with the coffin shield, despite the doubts about its veracity.

There's the Halberstadt diptych –

– which shows what are probably hexagonal shields, visible in the background in the lower registers of both halves. The left-hand one in particular might have been interpreted as an (upside-down?) "coffin" shape by some early researcher.

I don't think I have seen anything definite earlier than the 1960s Funcken book that Roy cited, but I'd suspect that it goes back to some earlier 19th-century reconstruction.