Arm protection plate
Arm protection plates ( English Bracer or Archers Wrist Guard ) are devices that protect the arm of an archer from the rebounding bowstring . They were mostly worn on the left forearm. By incorrect posture of the bow arm, the vorschnellende bowstring sustained painful injuries (can bruise ) and burns cause second degree.
Modern arm protection plates usually consist of reinforced leather or plastic and are attached with Velcro or hook fasteners.
prehistory
materials
Arm protection plates were mostly made of tanned or cooked leather, which has not been preserved in an archaeological context. The use of stone, usually slate or sandstone, is typical of the bell beaker culture . In Great Britain there is also evidence of andesite , which was also used for stone axes ( Great Langdale , Group VI). Other versions were made of metal, bone, wood (see Burmese armguard ), ivory, silver, or other materials.
Neolithic arm protection plates made of horn are known from the Schussenried culture . The find from Dragsholm (Denmark) is similarly old. Two meters away from a double grave of two late Mesolithic women, who had been given plenty of animal teeth, an early Neolithic flat grave of the funnel cup culture (TBK) was found. In addition to 60 amber beads, nine arrowheads, a green stone ax and lots of ceramics, the man was given an arm protection plate made of bone. Specimens made of bones, slate , fine sandstone and other materials also come from the Aunjetitz culture and the bell-cup culture , where they are typical grave goods in rich men's graves. The plates have straight, concave or convex long sides and are often decorated with geometric patterns and can have two, four or six through-holes.
In Spain, the plates have been common since the Chalcolithic . Arm protection plates are occasionally known from the early Bronze Age , in the British Wessex culture they were occasionally decorated with gold "rivets". In the graves, the arm protection plates are mostly on the left forearm, but others were worn on the belt or the dead were placed in cups (Thanet, see web link). A plate found in Kleinpaschleben , in the Anhalt-Bitterfeld district, was ergonomically unusable, unused and was probably made especially for the burial.
The polished stone arm protection plate from East England (ID: MAIS-B40E87) is rectangular in plan (81 mm long, 27 mm wide, 8 mm thick) and lenticular in section; with three transverse holes at both ends for attachment to the arm. The species is assigned to type B3 within the Atkinson typology. The arm protection plate is made of gray-green, very fine-grained, metamorphic, hard rock. Rare examples - three in Great Britain (Driffield, Barnack and Culduthel Mains in Scotland) - are made from imported greenstone and decorated with gold-covered rivets or foils that clearly represent an elite shape.
use
Originally it was believed that they were protective plates used by archers. Recent research has shown that (e.g. in the UK) they are not found in graves associated with arrowheads, nor are they found on the side of the arm in need of protection (in a right-handed archer, the inner left wrist). They are usually found on the outside of the arm. Many only have two holes that make it difficult to attach securely to the arm. Some have protruding rivets that the bowstring caught making them unsuitable for use as arm guards. In British burial mounds they always appear in the main grave, the place reserved for important people. Many show great skill in stone processing and few can be found in areas from which their stone material comes. It is therefore likely that the objects were used as status symbols. One plate (from Barnack, Cambridgeshire ) had foil caps pressed into each of its 18 holes. These prevented an attachment. A few prehistoric arm protection plates were made of gold or amber .
literature
- David Bukach, John Hunter, Ann Woodward, Fiona Roe: An Examination of Prehistoric Stone Bracers From Britain , Oxbow Books, Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-1-84217-438-8
- Wilhelm Gebers: The end neolithic in the Middle Rhine area. Typological and chronological studies. (= Saarbrücken contributions to archeology ). Bonn publishing house? 1984
- Harry Fokkens: Yvonne Achterkamp, Maikel Kuijper: Bracers or Bracelets? About the Functionality and Meaning of Bell Beaker Wrist-guards. In: Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 74, 2008, 109–140 ( full text )
- Jörn Jacobs: The individual grave culture in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern , Archaeological State Museum Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Schwerin 1991
- Edward Sangmeister : Two new discoveries of the bell beaker culture in Baden-Württemberg. A contribution to the classification of arm protection plates in Central Europe. In: Find reports from Baden-Württemberg 1, 1974, 103–156, doi: 10.11588 / fbbw.1974.0.22685 .
- Jan Turek: Nátepni desticky z obdobi zvoncovitych poháru, jejich suroviny, technologie a spolecensky vyznam (Bell Beaker wristguards, their raw-materials, technology and social significance) . In: Editor? Festschrift for Vladimir Podborsky . Brno, publisher? 2004, pp. 207-226.
- Ann Woodward, John Hunter, Rob Ixer, Fiona Roe, Philip J. Potts, Peter C. Webb, John S. Watson and Michael C. Jones, Beaker age bracers in England: sources, function and use. Antiquity 80 (309), 2006, 530-543.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archeology in Germany Issue 2/2012, p. 55.
