There have, unfortunately, been no new major discoveries. We have one (1) complete Roman Scuta, the so-called "Dura Europos Shield", which is more or less intact. S
Some Roman historians believe that it (Dura Europos) represents a more common pattern than Phil Barker, who alleges that the pattern is "Far too complex for anything more than parade ground usage". I had a prof in undergrad who said that Mr. Barker was obviously "completely unfamiliar with the artistic styles of the Ancient World if he thinks this is too 'complex' for field use", so I tend to agree with the former, rather than the latter.
This was definitely an Imperial shield, circa third century AD, but it may well have been recycled and used several times over the decades.
There was also, supposedly, the remnant of a cavalry shield found in Germany. I believe that it was either pink with green edging, or green with pink edging. Barker makes this claim in "Armies and Enemies of Imperial Rome", but I have been unable to confirm this independently. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just haven't been able to track down any references to it.
There is a claim that a "stack of shields" was found in Pompey, their decorated facings burned off, but the rear of the shield painted a dark brick red color. It circulates a lot in ancient wargaming circles. Again, can find no evidence of this, and have even spoken to some of the folks at Pompey and Herculaneum that I've been lucky enough to correspond with. "It would be a cool find," my advisor told me, "but I've never heard of it."
We do have several wooden shield fragments, including fragments of Republican era shields, but none of them have any trace of paint, unfortunately. Same with the various victory arches and monuments. There is one particularly famous mosaic which depicts soldiers and gladiators; one of the figures is carrying a yellow shield with a brown or black scorpion motif painted onto its surface, but it appears to be a gallic pattern shield. I'm afraid I don't have any good references before me (maybe Allen Curtis might know where it is?)
The sad truth is that we know more about Roman military clothing (more archaeology coming to light every day) than we do about shield patterns. Indeed, we know more about Assyrian shield colors than we do Roman shield colors, because some of those Assyrian motifs survived! For some reason, the Romans just don't discuss them. I suspect, and this is completely my opinion granted, that shield colors were so common to the Roman mindset that they weren't really considered important. It's not as if modern historians of the Gulf War, for example, spend a great deal of time discussing the colors of the uniforms worn by US Troops or their Iraqi opponents, and I suspect it's a similar situation with the Romans. Too pedestrian a detail to deal with.
Hopefully, I'll be proven wrong one of these days.
Interestingly enough, there was a victory monument, to Antoninus Pius (or maybe it's Septimius Severus.. I'm a bit sick, and therefore, muddled, today) if memory serves, which was recorded as having some paint fragments in the eighteenth century. However, nobody seems to have bothered to written these things down, or the information is lost, and so far as I know, the monument no longer exists.
I have a friend, a well read young woman who also wargames, who has theorized, again completely "unsourced" that Roman shield patterns were probably not at all dissimilar from those in the Notitia Dignatum five hundred years before that document. She suggests that the complexity of the designs may have simplified somewhat, or that the colors may have altered, but she thinks that the Romans essentially stuck with certain repeating themes over and over again. Interesting idea, of course, the patterns on the Arch of Titus and Trajan's various works don't seem to repeat those "later Imperial" patterns in earlier forms. But, who knows?
Keep in mind that we have yet to discover even the scattered remains of even one of the Imperial armories from the post-Republican era, despite the fact that we are very confident they existed. So, it's all very theoretical here.
-A.
paints a legend from the Trojan Wars.
