"Early Saxons: Large shields or small bucklers?" Topic

Is there a consensus on this topic?

Small bucklers would be light and nimble and useful duelling another single dude with a hand weapon.

OTOH, if I was going up against any type of missile troops – i.e. half decent archers – I'd want the biggest shield I could lift. Ditto if I was I was going into a close-in free for all melee.

Are Goths, Franks and other Germanic barbarian types also supposed to have used the small bucklers?

Larger shields. Probably some small mixed in.

I always thought they were small bucklers as they were acting as quick raiders.

I am also in the small buckler camp on the Early Saxons – I thought the larger shields were a later development that lead to the shieldwall tactic

tricky question

Saxons generally fought with smaller shields at first. They fought in a more man-to-man style. Not bucklers but small shields. Around 24-32ish". They later fought in a more line or shieldwall type formation at used larger shields. 36ish" plus or minus.

where is the evidence for this SD?

The evidence is based upon shields found in graves and it is not conclusive. The Sutton Hoo shield is reconstructed with a diameter of about 3 FT. Shields found in Danish bog deposits were large. It may be that Vth century Saxons had a looser style of fighting , but it might be that fitting a bigger shield in a grave is just more difficult.
There is also a suggestion that the buttons on early shield bosses are for offensive use and for gripping an opponent's blad, whereas a static shield would not need this adornment.

32 ish is big shield.

No Saxon ever used a 'small buckler'.

Some – not all – of the 'Migration era' round shields were slightly smaller than the round shields of the 'Viking era', that's all.

And as Saxondog points out, the difference might only be a few inches.

I don't think it points to a radically different set of tactics.
The smaller shields were not universal – there were plenty of larger examples from the same time, suitable for shieldwall use.
Remember, the Saxons developed their shieldwall tactics using the late Roman & sub-Roman oval scutum anyway.
It was already a well established tactic long before the large round shield became widely adopted.

One thought: Migration-era round shields were often of dished construction – more costly and complicated to build.
Whereas the smaller round shields were flat in cross-section.
So they may have been used by lower-status warriors, who were not expected to make up the front rank of the shieldwall.
Later, when flat construction becomes the norm for all Saxon shields, any size difference disappears altogether.

I reckon this is a case of figure manufacturers exaggerating a minor difference to make their ranges more distinctive.
(Note, though, that I do not have any objection to that!)

The case for smnaller shields is put in SEarly Anglo Saxon Shields' by Dickinson and Harke London 1992. They found that there were several indications of shield size in graves that came in around halfa meter 19-20 inches. Their most conclusive back up for this is two artistic representations, one the Franks casket and the other the Repton Stone.
I have my doubts about the Franks casket. The design of the representation of the shielded figures rather dictates the size of the shields and the figure crouching to hide from an arrow storm is using a rather bigger shield that=n the much larger men behind him. These chaps are in shield wall with one crouching and the rest standing behind with shields raised. The human figures vary in scale so I wouldn't take it as good evidence for shield size.
The repton stone shows a mounted warrior and he carries a raised buckler the size of his head. Again the layout of the piece dictates the size of the shield and that the horse has a very short body so it might be a buckler, but it might be a matter of fitting a shield in a frame and not having the shield obscure the body.
Their archaeological evidence permits an interesting conclusion. This does have more smaller shields earlier and crucially a tendency for smaller shields to be with younger men.
Swanson writing on Early English spears tentatively concluded that younger men had shorter and lighter spears and older men had often a pair of spears, one heavy and one light, the heavy one clearly for close fighting.
Now the evidence from graves should not be taken as some sort of survey, because we don't understand the motives, rituals and circumstances of such burials and they might well change over time. However, I offer you this attractive and sweeping generalisation.
Older wealthier men fought in the front rank with heavy spears (plus a chucking weapon. spear or francisca or both) and a large shield.
Younger men fought either deployed as skirmishers or packed in as back rankers throwing their spears in support of the front rank fighters. They had smaller shields because they needed mobility and were engaged in throwing, even from back rank positions.
Older, richer men provided a base of support and were around the leader protecting him and seeking out the opposing commander and his group of worthies.

Roy

Warhammer Ancient Battles had different rules for small and large Saxon shields. They made a few decisions based on some reasonable historical hypotheses like those mentioned above. When the 'Age of Arthur' rules came out manufacturers like GB and Musketeer offered little round shields to accommodate these rules.

Saxons with small shields prior to 600 BCE. Saxons with bucklers would be very indicative of a raider style force. The Saxons during the early period were highly mobile and fast moving. I have to second the 'Age if Arthur' comment which does give some very reasonable hypotheses on the subject.

early saxons so what era are we talking about ie after late roman,arthurian,
or around the same time

I don't think you can state definitively that Saxons prior to 600 BC had small shields that indicated a raiding force. There are examples of other raiding forces with larger shields such as Vikings

I assume the references to BC / BCE refer to AD? I don't think talking about "Saxons" in the context 600BC is helpful.

The Sheffield's Hill shield suggests that relatively smaller shields were made, supporting Dickinson and Härke's hypothesis.

At the end of the day, we have very little physical evidence (as opposed to artistic representations) of the organic parts of the shields of that period. Reconstructions (if you want to go that way) from finds at Mill Hill, Sheffield's Hill, Spong Hill and Sutton Hoo give diameters varying by nearly a factor of 2, certainly sufficient to be thought of as "small" and "large" shields, all within a 6th to early 7th century context.

I suspect that the only concensus is "we don't really know".

In Wulfingas 500 AD reenactment group we used all sorts, from big Romano-Brit types to little bucklers. But most favoured a medium one… depended on chosen weapon, to some degree

thank you…

You can tell I put my post on late at night when I was getting sleepy!
For BC read AD.
Derr!

For what it's worth, most of the Saxons in my collection carry mid-sized round shields. A few have small Bucklers and a few have large shields of various shapes and styles.

This allows me to split the difference. I can field a unit with small and mid-sized shields and call them "Saxon Bucklers" or field a unit with mid- to large sized shields and call them a shieldwall.

I think Age of Arthur made a good summary of the current evidence both ways.

I'm with Dave here. Variety spices up the thing and obviously no- one is going to be able to tell me I've got the wrong shield sizes.
True, the majority of my – Early- Saxons have bucklers, but that has more to do with the beautiful LBMS decals tan anything else.

On a similar note, when do you guys think the Romano British oval shields started to give way to the more common round shields? My guess is that by the late 5th C there wasn't much to distinguish Saxons from Britons, but any help will be much appreciated.

Do Romano Britons have oval shields??
It would be good to hear evidence of shield shape one way or another?
Roy

Early Saxon shield bosses have 5 rivets.

In my games I consider that most of the "early" Saxon warriors (= the Saxons who fight vs the Romano-British "Arthurians") have middle-sized shields.

I only give large-sized shields to one unit of noble/guards who protect the chief. The tactical difference is that the warriors with large shields are trained to form a shield-wall and I suppose that in this early period most Saxons warriors did not do it.

But if you have other evidence, I'm interested. The exact size of shields is not very interesting for me! What I want to know is which tactical formations they can do with it (and how I recognize them quickly on the gaming table).

Very small bucklers are out of question, they belong to the 15th and early 16th century.

Try the Repton stone. If it is an accurate portrayal then it is only about one foot in diameter. The problem with 'very small buckler' is that has no definition attached.
Roy

Lewisgunner,

look at the proportions of horse to rider on the Repton stone. He could be modelled from life riding an eighth century analogue of a Shetland pony. In which case the shield is authentically tiny. However, on the other hand it might be artistic licence for the horse and by extension the shield.

There are a lot of animal bones in the archaeological record and none suggest as far as I'm aware that these kind of miniature breeds were extant at the time.

It's like the interpretation of the Pictish "pike blocks" and war crossbows, or the Standard of Ur and the Stellae of the Vultures for Sumerians. Do the nine shield bosses represented there indicate nine spearman in a block, or one shield with nine bosses?

Illustrations are subject to artistic license and convention. Archeological remains are great, but depend heavily on context. Grave goods may or may not represent what was typical. Reenactments and reconstructions can give us a sense of what may have been possible or practical.

The bottom line is we may never be able to say with 100% certainty.

Not that this should keep us from trying to puzzle out what we can.

Exactly. And whilst it might be heretical to say so, does it actually matter very much?

Yeah it's fun to think and find out and being as accurate as possible is a great thing, but it's a game…

Well, I suppose it matters to us to have accurate figures, well to some of us. It also matters if weaponry is any indication of tactical use. So if we see a representation of a hop lite with two spears we can be fairly certain that he is likely to throw at least one of them.
So , if we correlate large shields and heavy spears with wealthier and small shields and lighter spears with less rich graves then a conclusion that has possible implications for tactical roles and thus how these chaps fight. Let's face it, we have precious little tactical insight from literary sources on the early A/S

BTW the shield on the Repton stone is smaller than the head of the figure that wields it.. If it isn't a scale representation then it is small.
What the graves show is soil markings that delimit the edge of the shield so there is a reasonable basis to Dickinson and Harke's hypothesis.

Lewisgunner, the beauty of the archaeology is that it is almost infinitely arguable. However you have little gems like small children being buried with spears, that make interpreting the military role of the owner from what he was buried with a bit hairy! It's never going to be totally clear and unequivocal (or not in our lifetime anyway) so whilst accuracy is important it is most unlikely to ever be something that can be defined as tightly as say a modern British Army uniform. Personally I'm happy if the figures follow human proportions.

Regarding the Repton stone and the head / shield comparison, the horse's head is very nearly the same size as the rider's. Whilst my knowledge is not exhaustive I would be more than surprised to find a horse large enough to carry an armoured warrior with a head this size.

I am with you on the horse and originally suggested that it might be reduced. Let's face it the standard of carving is not high. To me it is more likely that the horse is reduced to fit than that it represents some tiny breed.
Even XVIIth century generals horses are reduced in scale on portraits so I don't see why VIIthcentury ones shouldn't be. Of course there is the case of Rolf the ganger, a tall man on a small horse/pony.
As to boys in graves with small spears, they are not uncommon and thus can be allowed for. I doubt anyone is going to think that they attended the battle with their small weapons.
Regarding the weapon sets in male adult graves we could assume that they are representative of weapon sets used by that individual in life and thus correlate the weapons with the age, condition and indication of material wealth of the individual. That's conventional and it is what D&H and Swanson assume because it makes the evidence susceptible to sensible conclusions. Otherwise we can discover some other logic to the deposition of weapons. I am up for that if you can explain it and the logic that drives it.
Frankly there is so little evidence for fighting style for armies not in contact with a literate Roman or Greek society that we have to use all the evidence.
There are authors on the period who happily. Debunk the possible meaning of the evidence,but then they too might end up writing books on
Arthur .

In the recent Shanzer and Mathisen book on the battle of Vouille there is a good article on archaeological traces of the Visigoths. In Southern Gaul. At bottom it is very hard to find any trace of them. Danube military style women's accoutrements are found in North central France. They might be Goths who join the Visigoths from Pannonia, or they might be a group of Danubian Germans who remain in Gaul after the Attilanic intervention. I'm happy for the archaeologists to keep on refining interpretations as long as we get something meaningful and useful each time. Just casting doubt and providing nothing in place of the original interpretation doesn't add much.

There are authors on the period who happily. Debunk the possible meaning of the evidence,but then they too might end up writing books on
Arthur .

Touche! I accept exactly what you say about the artistic licence on the horse, but given an artist who was prepared to do that, I wouldn't necessarily rely on him to the reproduce the rest of the picture any differently!

But aside from this the evidence of a shield that small from the archaeological records is slender. Harte and Dickinson give a range of sizes based on a maximum / minimum derived from the context, and there is nothing that small in there. OK you can apply some statistics and say this guy is the 99.99th percentile user, but is that a more meaningful interpretation?

Dickinson and Harke (page 45) give the minimum diameter as 0.34 of a meter. That's in buckler territory and could well be a realistic representation of what is on the stone.( about 1ft in old money) . I think I,m with you (and incidentally D&H in seeing most shields as mid sized. I don't get any sense from their book that shield size is at all relevant to 'nationality' , only to possible indicators of wealth. They also see shields as getting bigger over time. We could elaborate that into various throes (a pity we cannot meet in a bar to elaborate them). The smaller shields/ throwing spears could be younger men performing taskin looser order , it could be that from the back of the formation having a larger shield was just pointless and you were better off having something to throw, It could be that the smaller shield represents a British strand and drops out of use as the population assimilates to robust A/S methods with metre diameter shields.
What you are absolutely right about is that grave finds are not a systematic survey and to get in any representative number involves holding a theory of consistency across time and geography that is fraught with potential error.
There is an Irish manuscript that shows a chap with a small shield. perhaps the influence is Irish (they penetrated deeply into post Roman Britain.

Roy

D&H (and H especially in more recent publications) gives a lot of shields as having a minimum possible diameter around this figure. None are less than 30cm, and go up to about 45cm iirc. However, the ratio of minimum to maximum averages a factor of just over 2, and up to about 2.5. Personally I'm happier to take these values, based on the archaeology, over the Repton stone.

Basically, there is no way to positively exclude a buckler-sized shield of around 35-40 cm, or to exclude a full sized shield of nearly a metre across. Or anything between.

Harte has tried to correlate weapon sizes with both age at death (and hence possible status) and physical size (related to whether the owner was Saxon / British). I'm not fully convinced by these arguments, and hence I tend to the view that we are attempting to place a pattern on an essentially random data set. Or, to quote Winnie the Pooh, "they might or they might not, you never can tell…"

Mitch 'I tend to the view that we are attempting to place a pattern on an essentially random data set. '

Yes that might be so, but there is a consistency to the finds, for example that some warriors have heavy spears, some a pair of light spears. There does seem to be pattern that would fit an interpretation that itself makes sense in a war-games framework.
Of course the number of finds is not statistically significant given the variances i.e. we don't have throwing spears consistently with smaller shields. and also as you said earlier we don't know the rationale of burial. Maybe small shields were for domestic use (hunting, police work, guard duty attending things that you needed to show you were a free man at) ) and big ones for battle and maybe only richer families would get a big enough grave dug to put a big shield in it, poorer guys had narrower graves and so a small shield was put in.

But overall I'd be happy to stick with poorer men in loose order chucking and then moving to the back of a phalanx of better off men with bigger shields. helmets etc. because the initiator of this thread has to put some figures on the table.

Roy