SHIELD PENETRATION! Roman Pilum VS Shield: Was this the main purpose?

Hey folks, Matt Easton here, Scholar of Valid Choice. So we're going to be looking at the mighty Roman Pelum again, which as I've shown in previous videos, if you check out I've put some links to those below. As I've mentioned in previous videos, this is in some ways you could say the primary weapon, certainly one of the primary weapons of the Roman legions, and it doesn't get enough credit. It doesn't get as much credit as certainly as it's due, and clearly it doesn't get as much credit as they thought it was due because it was so ubiquitous, it was so important to them, and you know it came in various different types, various different designs, and hung around for such a long time, and you could say survived the Roman era as the angon of the Frankish Anglo-Saxon right the way up almost to the Viking era. So this was a super important weapon. We don't know precisely how they were actually deployed in warfare, but I've spoken about that in previous videos, some ideas I'll probably talk about some more in the future. What we're going to look at here is some testing against a shield. Now I've pinned my colours to the tree in the past and said that I do not think that this design with this long thin shank was primarily designed to bend. Now I've shown in the past that it can bend throwing into an archery target which it penetrated through very deeply. I've shown that sometimes when you try and pull this out the shaft can bend, and sometimes when you throw it into a target it might bend, but it doesn't happen consistently and it doesn't happen reliably, and in fact if we look at the construction and the form of the original archaeologically found peeler, we find in my opinion that they're not really optimised for bending, they're optimised in my view for penetration. Penetration obviously of a body, of a target, but potentially for penetration of the and we find parallels to this even in African spears and shields from the 19th century where the intention is that the shaft passed through the shield and having made that hole, that square hole, some of these have a sort of barbed head incidentally, but once it's made that larger hole the shank being thin is able to then carry on passing through and hopefully strike the person behind. We'll have a little look, you'll notice I've got a Roman scutum there, I'm not going to be throwing at the Roman scutum, I'm going to be throwing at the upside down medieval style heater shield I've got there. Now this isn't historical construction, this is purely as an analogue, as a demonstration. We might look at more, as far as we can get, more accurate reconstructions of the consistency of the shield, but this is an approximate analogue, this should give us an approximate idea. That is plywood of roughly the correct thickness, this is probably a tougher target than a Roman scutum because it's plywood and because it's got modern glues involved in its construction which makes it a bit harder, a bit more resistant, and it does have a canvas covering over the top. This is less inclined to split or splinter than the original Roman scutum would have been. There is some evidence that perhaps some Roman scutum were made with a plywood-like construction but obviously they would have been using traditional glue so it's difficult for us to get exactly close to the original Roman scutum construction, especially because our evidence is limited and we don't necessarily know how the standard Roman scutum was constructed or indeed if it was constructed the same way in all places and across the Roman era. It's possible that the methods of construction changed over time or perhaps varied in different places. The other thing I'd mention as well is that shields used in this era very often would have been far less resistant than what we're using here. There were wicker shields, there were leather shields, there were various other types of wooden shields made of plank construction which would have been more liable to split or crack in half, so I think what we're testing out here is really quite a tough target and I haven't thrown the pilum against a shield before. Now before I go on I want to mention one thing, this pilum is by Fabrica Catti, link below, and they very kindly have sent me a replacement shaft for this because this shaft has a crack in it so it's entirely possible that this pilum will break in this test but that's what it's here for, it's a sacrificial pilum. I do have another one and additionally I have a new shaft for this one as well so we'll see how it goes but let's see what this pilum does to that shield. And in case you're wondering this is 10 yards or roughly 10 meters distance so it's relatively close but it's the sort of distance you might throw your final pilum at close range as an enemy is charging in. So I haven't pushed this through any further and that's how far it went through the shield. As you can see it was stopped only by the earth and actually buried itself in the ground so that would have carried on going right the way up to the socket I would have thought and it would have hit the person behind I would say. This is a strap shield obviously medieval style but even with a boss grip shield which I'll talk about in a little bit that would have been a real problem. Let's have another go. I'm hitting rather low on the target as you can see so I need to recalibrate but you can see how much penetration we've got there roughly 11 inches I would say in imperial so we're probably looking at 25 centimeters something like that so well the way through and it's really being stopped by the fact that the ground is there and the shield's falling over so you can now see the penetration on this this is over 30 centimeters 12 inches and you know even if a person was holding a boss grip shield which again I'll talk about in a second that would be a major major problem and it's a it's a long way through the shield and incidentally we talk a lot about extraction of these from shields so even if it doesn't hit the person getting the thing out it's not that difficult but it does mean that certainly while you're holding the shield it will be a problem and you'll need to stop for a second to pull it out so it might break the charge and obviously if it hits you that's a whole different problem. Now you'll notice that this penetrated up to about here now on these Fabrica Cacti replicas we have a square section square cross section that is then forged into a round cross section that is not typical of the originals now it's interesting that the moving from the circular cross section to the square cross section and then it bound and stopped it could be that transition which is what made it stop before the socket if we continue with the round cross section all the way down to the base where it has to become flat to go into the socket if the round section continued all the way down there then I think it would have carried on penetrating and even again I'll talk more about boss shields in a second but even if we're holding something out here that starts to become a real problem if it's coming through your shield and with the impact perhaps moving the shield closer to your body as well and hitting the person behind so this is very much confirming what I believed about the purpose of these shanks on Pelham is penetration and hitting the person behind the shield let's have one more throw at the shield and see what happens so again we got the same result that the Pelham went right the way through the shield no problem at all it was really stopped by two things one the change of cross section on the shaft and two the fact that shield fell over and it hit the ground and the stand fell over and everything else so so far obviously this is anecdotal obviously I'm not throwing it a perfect replica of a scutum or any other type of remember of course the Romans a lot of time weren't throwing these at a scutum they were throwing them at Gallic shields or Dacian shields or British shields or whatever and those shields varied in construction if you go to North Africa they sometimes used wicker construction of shields sometimes leather shields were used rawhide sometimes planked wooden construction was used something similar to plywood was sometimes used like this so this is only an analogue but it does give you an idea that this has no this shield at no point came even remotely close to stopping this Pelham it went straight through and this to me is pull it or peel him out I found that to get them out you want some momentum don't wiggle it but actually just boom just slam the thing out the shield doesn't seem to stop the Pelham at all coming through initially it only slows it down but of course the longer the shaft is the more likely it is to reach the person the user the shield user behind the shield now I have promised we'll just talk about Bosch shields for a second let's just grab that Roman scutum over my shoulder before we look at the scutum let's just quickly look at the back of this shield and you can see it's blasted through the plywood a bit like a gunshot wound it's blasted out big holes out here and it's taken all of the canvas and glue material with it this shield didn't stand a chance it's still usable for haemopractice incidentally I'll just patch up these holes and for use with the training weapons we use it's absolutely fine that's why I decided to use this instead of the scutum but really the scutum is made of almost exactly the same type of plywood with canvas over the top so really the results wouldn't have been any different before any of you say oh why are you aiming at someone's shins this is the ridiculous comment whenever I'm doing archery or javelin related videos people say simply it's for safety because obviously I'm in my garden if I put the target up higher I would just aim slightly higher it makes no difference at all where the where the shield is placed it could be at chest height it could be at leg height we're just I'm throwing it at the shield okay so that was the target in this case now obviously this is a strapped medieval shield and as has been pointed out in recent videos on Todd Cutler channel one of the disadvantages of a strapped shield is that if missiles are coming through they're going to hit your arm now that isn't relevant to the Roman period but it does connect to the design of the Roman shield let's just grab that scutum so interestingly if missiles are coming in and hitting the Roman scutum we've got this large protective plate here in front of the hand so in fact if anything comes through the scutum or it hits the scutum here it's going to be stopped by the iron boss now some of these are brass but they're generally made of metal and even on shields for example Gallic and British shields where sometimes the boss is actually made of carved wood that thick wood will still for the most part hopefully stop a missile like an arrow or a javelin so having that protection over the hand is very important because your hands are next to the shield the shield itself of course is held further away from the body but that being said these big shields particularly the scutum or the Gallic the equivalent Gallic or Dacian type shields or British shields are sometimes held close to the body and as you can see if I just grab the grab the pilum if it's penetrating the shield to the distance that we saw there if you're holding it at all close to the body it's going to go straight through the shield and pin the person behind it you can of course when you see incoming missiles be they arrows or javelins if you see them coming and of course often you don't see missiles coming they just hit you or your shield but if you see them coming you could lift the shield up further away from your body but even then it might come through and penetrate the person behind the shield it won't penetrate the boss your hand will be protected close to the shield because of that extra hand protection you've got over the grip but even if you hold the shield far away from the body it might hit you behind but you can't be doing that all the time you can't be constantly lifting up these big heavy shields away from the body to defend against missiles which might be coming in in groups so in conclusion I strongly believe and I believe that this experiment has demonstrated to me fairly conclusively that the shanks on PLM are for penetrating shields and the person behind they're for wounding they're not to bend they're not to make shields incapable of being used they might have that as a by-product they might have that as a something that happens sometimes and that's why it's mentioned in historical sources because history often records the unusual and not the usual so those times when the PLM did bend and did mean that someone had to stand and pull it out their shield or discard the shield those are the unusual things that are recorded in history the usual reason and the original reason for designing this type of weapon is to penetrate through the shield and hit the person behind I hope this has been fun to watch give us a like and a subscribe please share this video around to anyone you think might be interested and I'll see you soon again on scholar gladiatoria channel for a similar video to this one cheers for watching folks