The Pazyryk Shield

I recently had the opportunity to visit St. Petersburg and see some things which I had wanted to see for very many years. One of these was the shield excavated by S.I. Rudenko from the barrows at Pazyryk in the Russian part of the Altai mountains where Russia, Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Kazakhistan come together. The structure of the barrows and the local climate caused permafrost to develop beneath them, preserving some of their contents despite the intrusion of grave-robbers. Shields made in a similar way appear in Greek paintings of Persian soldiers from just over another border of the Achaemenid empire. The barrows (Russian singular kurgan) at Pazyryk are usually attributed to the fourth or third centuries BCE, but many of the objects found in them are older. To the best of my knowledge, the next surviving examples come from the siege of Dura Europos at least 500 years later (a photo is available in Nicholas Sekunda, The Persian Army, p. 21).

The shield from Pazyryk kurgan 1 is about the size of an A4 or US letter sheet of paper. The body is 35 sticks stripped of their bark, thrust through slits in a sheet of leather, and laced together in a row. Its grip is a flexible leather strap. Duncan Head says that it was found at the left rear of one of the saddled horses in the barrow (The Persian Army, p. 47). I wonder how it was supposed to be used. The small shields which I have wielded have a boss and a solid central grip, so they can protect the sword hand or push firmly with the edge against the opponent’s body or weapons. This shield would not protect the fist so well, and the flexible grip would not be so good at transferring force from the wielder to a target, while it is too small to be very helpful against arrows. Small shields with flexible grips of leather, rope, or chain are common in the history of arms and armour, so they must have been a good solution to some martial problem.
While it is wonderful to have this shield, it is good to remember that it does not represent the only kind of shield made from sticks. I already mentioned that this shield is only about a foot tall, a quarter the size of the Persian shields in pictures which it is sometimes used to reconstruct. It is also made from twigs, a material which might have been more available in the Altai highlands than some parts of the Achaemenid empire.
There are shields made from bundles of reeds attached side by side. These must have been very effective at stopping missiles, but heavy, so they often appear in Mesopotamian carvings of troops besieging a city with one end resting on the ground.
There are also shields made from basketwork, often round or oblong with a reinforced boss at the centre to protect the hand and arm where they rest closest to the face of the shield. These were popular in India, China, and the Ottoman Empire in recent times, so many survive in museums. Round shields about half as tall as their wielder and a foot deep which seem to be made in this way appear in the hands of tribute-bearers on the reliefs on the Apadana at Persepolis. Because I am sick, I can’t spare the time and energy to find, copy, and paste photos of them.

Even worse, almost any shield covered with hide or cloth could have wickerwork under the cover to give structure and provide another layer of defense. The “violin-shaped” shields in the reliefs at Persepolis might have been made in this way, as might their cousins in Late Bronze Age Anatolia and Archaic Greece. Unless a source shows the back of such a shield with a pattern indicating that it is rough, it is impossible to show that there is wicker inside. Frustratingly, no Greek source which I have read specifies both a wicker shield’s shape and its material, and all of the references to γέρρα (“wicker things”) could refer to a variety of types of shield made from sticks or reeds depicted in contemporary art.
Two earlier shields from the kurgans at Tuekta, a site in the same general region as Pazyryk, show another danger. On the left we have a shield made the same way as the Pazyryk shield but about 50% larger and with a different pattern of slits:

At first glance, a second shield appears similar, although it has retained its colours better through the long centuries of darkness and ice.

A closer look reveals an important difference between this and the first two shields.

This shield is solid wood, carved and painted to imitate branches thrust through slits in a sheet of leather or rawhide. There are fundamental limitations to what can be learned about military equipment by studying pictures of it, because ancient craftsmen often worked one material to look like another. What is obvious in person can be impossible to tell from a distance or through a painting or carving. So I am very grateful that I had the opportunity to gaze upon the shield from Pazyryk.
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Further Reading:
- S.I. Rudenko, tr. M.W. Thompson, Frozen Tombs of Siberia: The Pazyryk Burials of Iron-Age Horsemen (Bookfinder link; this is an academic book so good that it was translated from Russian in the US in the 1950s).
- Duncan Head, The Achaemenid Persian Army (Montvert, 1992) (Bookfinder link- warning, usually costs $150-300).
- Nicholas Sekunda, The Persian Army, 550-330 BC.
- Boris A. Litvinsky, “Shield: In Eastern Iran.” Encyclopaedia Iranica (link).
- Godehardt, Erhardt et al., “The Reconstruction of Scythian Bows.” In Barry Molloy ed., The Cutting Edge, pp. 112-133. Tempus: Stroud, 2007. {Description of enlarged reconstructions}
Novosibirsk State University has a virtual exhibition with some of the other finds from the Altai (link)
Edit 2022-04-11: converted to block editor
Edit 2023-05-28: added the ‘skeuomorph’ tag
Sean, you didn’t mention it here, but these shields bear a striking resemblance to some shown in Assyrian reliefs depicting sieges. I’d go so far as to bet money that they’re of the same sort of construction.
-Gregory
(Detailed photos borrowed from Alamy)
http://c8.alamy.com/comp/BP29A5/siege-tower-battering-ram-in-action-assyrian-army-destroying-the-walls-BP29A5.jpg
http://c8.alamy.com/comp/BP29A9/assyrian-army-archers-while-one-shoots-the-arrow-the-other-is-protecting-BP29A9.jpg
Hi Gregory, that is a good point! Those smaller rectangular shields do look like the same style, whereas the big ‘pavises’ seems to be made of bundles of reeds like a reed boat. I would like to look at all the cuneiform texts describing shields at some point.
is it possible the smaller paper sized shield might not have been a shield at all and may have been a small piece of strapped leg armor?
At least in Anatolia where we have more sculptures there were kinds of ‘saddles with protection for the front of the legs’ by about 450 BCE (Nick Sekunda’s book on Persian armies has photos), but when shields are worn as static protection its usually on the back or occasionally tied to the chest. I guess someone could try lacing a shield like that to the left breast of their kaftan and draw a bow. Or they could try to wear it on the shoulder like an ō-sode from Japan and see if it got in the way.
Traditional shields don’t tend to be arrowproof, usually arrows will get stuck in them but can stick out the back. So you want some space between the shield and your body, especially in a world without antibiotics where any cut can lead to slow death from infection. The volume “The Cutting Edge” had some handy photos.