Aside from the magnificently decorated, heavy shield from Sutton Hoo Mound 1, remains of early Anglo-Saxon shields suggest they were typically relatively plain. Curiously the shields from the other treasure-filled princely burials – Taplow, Broomfield, Prittlewell, Sutton Hoo Mound 17 and others appear especially so, not befitting the status of these burials, with little in the way of decorative fittings, and very minimal, unusually simplified bosses. 
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In the previous chapter (link) we revealed that (in contrast to the wide variability of shields from contemporary graves) the late 6th century princely burial shields were all practically identical, with suites of four simple disc mounts on the board, simple 1a(i) iron grip reinforcers, and innovative SB-4b / Dickinson’s Type 6 shield bosses – the smallest and lightest of all Anglo-Saxon bosses. In a number of these cases the boards were also made of ultra-light-weight willow. This is the lightest combination of fittings possible, among those evidenced from early Anglo-Saxon graves.   We have therefore argued that the princely shields represent a class of very carefully made, high-performance versions of the standard Anglo-Saxon shield, with weight-reduction prioritised over ostentation.
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In 2021 we undertook a project to reconstruct such a shield – to explore precisely how light such a shield could be for a given diameter, and to explore methods consistent with archaeological clues which might have been employed to embellish such shields, commensurate with the status of their owners, without compromising their performance.  The result would provide a theoretical minimum weight for an early Anglo-Saxon shield of practical size, and represent our tenth and most ‘authentic’ shield reproduction to date. 

 ​In the frequently damp environment of early medieval Britain and western Europe sheaths were essential for valuable ferrous blades, including swords, war-seaxes and smaller utility knives. The sophisticated and labour-intensive construction of sword scabbards, formed of animal-hair lined carved wooden plates enclosed in leather or hide (“skin product”) is evidence of the priority given to protecting blades. Well preserved examples of seax sheaths, mainly from productive leatherworking sites of the mid-to-late Anglo-Saxon period, at York and Gloucester (Cameron, 2000) as well as more trace evidence from earlier grave finds, demonstrates the high level of craftsmanship which went into these, usually of a single piece of folded and moulded skin-product, sometimes intricately decorated, as might be expected given that the sheath, and not the blade, was the most visible component of any seax assemblage day to day and therefore an important surface for wealth display. Vastly more common but nevertheless valuable personal possessions and often of sophisticated smithcraft, smaller utility and eating-knives also required tight-fitting sheaths of valuable skin-product, but despite the abundance of such knives in the archaeological record, for a wide range of reasons clues about the sheaths of smaller knives are scarcer than for larger seaxes.  

It might be reasonable, and has been the practice among more detail-oriented living historians and reenactors, to assume that sheaths of smaller knives in, for example, the early Anglo-Saxon period, might be miniature analogues of those of larger seaxes, yet fragmentary sheath remains from a handful of well-studied early Anglo-Saxon sites appear surprisingly crude, with amateurish stitching having unattractively contorted the seams in a way that might disgust a modern leatherworker. There is no reason not to think these examples are not well representative, and indeed, many of the later (Viking-Age) knife-sheath remains from York, though often skilfully decorated, bear the tell-tale marks and contortions of this same rudimentary stitch work.
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It is always tempting to base the sheaths of our knives on the very fanciest, and neatest archaeological examples to hand, and perhaps neaten them up with some more modern handiwork, but this can lead to a creeping departure from what is truly known of the historic craft culture purportedly represented. In contrast, replicating (to our modern eyes) “unbecoming” examples might provide useful, practical insights into why they were made this way.  Such is the case with these apparently crudely stitched knife sheaths – our experiments in replicating them have revealed what might be a cunning Dark Age leatherworker’s “life-hack” which made the tricky shaping of sheaths vastly quicker and more reliable.

​Few, or perhaps no items of personal warrior gear are more important to our image of an Anglo-Saxon, or Viking warrior than the shield. Our understanding of this most essential piece of war-gear is informed, to some extent by pictorial depictions and written references, but, mainly, by patchy but nonetheless reliable inferences from cemetery archaeology.

Of the studies of Anglo-Saxon shields, arguably the most frequently cited, and informative, is Dickinson and Härke (1992) which, among other issues, seeks to shed light on the murky subject of shield size. Many readers, particularly those from the reenactment community, will be surprised to read that shields could often be as small as 34cm – certainly of no use for building interlocking 'shield-walls' described in later poetry, which we are led to believe was the dominant combat strategy as far back as the period of pagan burials.

Over 20 years on from the publication of this still critically important work, this observation has gradually exerted influence on some modern impressions of warriors from the period, and even beyond, given the limited evidence for late Anglo-Saxon shields, and limited availability of information on 'Viking' ones. It is further, not uncommon to hear, repeated by respected historians, the assertion that most early Anglo-Saxon shields were “little more than bucklers”. To what extent is this statement accurate? Just how small were Anglo-Saxon shields?

​(Article originally published in March 2016, Thegns of Mercia blog.  Updated March 2021)

Few archaeological finds are as evocative as helmets - many items of war-gear can help paint a picture of ancient battlefields, but in framing (or in some cases directly representing) the face, helmets help to humanise warriors from centuries past. This is particularly ironic given that, at least in some cases, helmets in antiquity were designed to create an intimidating sense of “otherness”, occupying the “uncanny valley” between metalwork and man.

​ It is in our nature to recognise and emotionally respond to faces, and it is hard to stare into the eyes of the Sutton Hoo helmet and not feel as though you have, in some sense, met a person, rather than simply viewed an archaeological artefact. No surprise then, that over and above all the other treasures in that unprecedented burial panoply (including some with considerably higher bullion value) it is the helmet from Sutton Hoo that
has become emblematic of the assemblage, and the most enduring symbol both of Anglo-Saxon material culture, and even of British history itself.
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The Anglo-Saxon period in Britain spanned six centuries, and although it is unfairly reductive to characterise it purely as a time of war, it is undoubtedly true that regular clashes between well-equipped armies peppered the period and dictated the convoluted path taken from locally identifying post-Roman communities to a coherent united England. The scale of Anglo-Saxon armies continues to be debated, and it is not entirely clear how well equipped they were, but archaeological discoveries in recent decades have provided abundant examples of war-gear – especially weapons – to inform our image of Anglo-Saxon warriors. Such gear is most abundant from the early period (5-7th centuries) thanks to grave goods from the ultimately doomed furnished-burial rite, but even from these centuries, that most evocative item of war-gear, the helmet, is exquisitely rare. We just don’t have many examples. There’s a bigger problem though; we don’t even know how many examples we have. Almost all running totals are wrong.
(Originally published in May 2020)