Bows from Miran

Thanks to you and Andrew for your efforts. Check out the article on Indonesian trad archery, too. This is an exciting new area for ATARN. :)

Wonderfull boys ! Very interesting ! We are closer to the history bow evolution.

That's a really interesting article, especially about the different bow shapes. Do you know anything about their cross-section?

Hunn type bows are very interesting because every one is somewhat different. One thing they have in common is that the ears are not spliced on but the limb slat is curved around to form the core of the recurve. The horn builds this up and other slats are added to fill out the necessary thickness. Most usually bone plates fill out the edges and replace the core at the nock, where the bone plates meet.

In the earliest versions, the limb core slats overlap at the grip and are reenforced with bone plates.

In the Miran bows, the grips are short and, as Andrew has pointed out, this makes it less likely that there is a splice, and therefore probably also lacks bone grip plates.

Therefore, the core is likely one piece with a riser at the grip with additional slats reenforcing the ears and making a type of kasan, as it were.

The unique feature of these bows, though they are constructed somewhat differently, is that each has two spiral layers of sinew opposing eachother, in addition to the usual lateral one. The stature, curve and nocks are almost identical. Alltogether, it is most likely that the same person made both bows, or at least that they were made in the same workshop.

I will go further and say they were both carried and burried with one individual. I have demonstrated in earlier posts that it was not unusual in the first millennium for archers to carry two bows.

Andrew can certainly add to this. Jack

Thanks Jack and Andrew for sharing this.

Maybe I?ve missed something.
Are you talking about hornbows or all wood laminated bows, similiar to the olon kurin gol findings?

Michael

These bows are covered almost entirely with sinew so it is not possible to know the construction exactly. But other Hunn bows are hornbows.

Even before seeing these bows I wondered about the practicality of wrapping a bow diagonally with sinew. Do ATARNites have an opinion on the engineering?

Diagonally so the sinew don't separate. But why wrap? Maybe the belly and back need that so they don't separate. Glue issue?

From mi point of view diagonally wraping have only one reason- hold all components fast together.. If you need good compact holding ,you have no vay - only diagonaly sinev. This must be strong heavy war or hunter bows , because if archer need more fine and tuning sporting bow, every gram sinev slower his bow down.

One of the bows was altered after final construction, the heavy bow. An additional layer of longitudal sinew was added after the two spiral layers, surely to further strengthen the bow. By the dimensions, Andrew guesses that the heavy bow drew at least twice what the light bow did.

Now if the heavy bow pulled 120 or 130, which I suppose is possible, then the light bow would have pulled only 60 or 65#.

The heavy bow was a kind of artillery for extreme distance but the light bow was for accuracy. And the bows are associated with what looks like leather armor scales, so the implication is military. Of course there is no proof but there is evidence.

There are representations of Sakians using these bows to shoot the horse and at warriors faces, as these were the only unarmored targets. -j-

I have seen diagonal wrapping with sinew on both Xiongnu and Scythian-type bows. It seems to be associated with potential points of weakness. Since some Central Asian bows were made of overlapping components, these potential weak points were more common. It must have worked ok...

I?ve seen tracks of diagonal wrappings at the bow- findings of olon kurin gol too. The grip- section, the recurves, the sharp curves at both sides of the grip had been wrapped, I guess with sinew, it makes sense to wrap these spots. I did it on my reconstructions too.

Jack, did you record the relation of the lengths of the longer and the shorter limb. Maybe you remind that I?m looking for the Golden ratio within asymmetrical bows?
Is there really no track of any horn- slats at the bow?s belly?

Michael

Stephen Selby wrote:

I have seen diagonal wrapping with sinew on both Xiongnu and Scythian-type bows. It seems to be associated with potential points of weakness. Since some Central Asian bows were made of overlapping components, these potential weak points were more common. It must have worked ok...

Are overlaps inferior to splicing the parts together? How come?

Michael; I did not handle the bows. They were in a private museum which I was visiting. The museum had many wonderful items including these bows and a Mongol one with quiver of arrows in the same case. I never asked to open the case and examine them. The backs of both Hunn bows faced out. I took pictures, made drawings. noted details, and that was all. Later, I teamed up with Andrew Hall because of his important work on the subject.

We discussed the project for much of a year and this article is the result. Somewhere there are alot of these bows in burials, but for now very few have been found and are published. Now there are two more.

Daryush, of course a V-spliced together bow core (Turkic type) is superior to layered (I am afraid to say laminated because someone will ask if Hunns had fiberglass and epoxy) Is a cartridge rifle better than a muzzle loader?

Is a modern race car better than a steam driven car? Of course they are. Technology developes over time. But the ancients did not know what they did not know. Centuries or a millinneum separates Hunn technology from Turkic.

Personally I am interested in the entire spectrum of the History of the bow., as are many others. -j-

I don't quite understand why a V-splice is superior to layering / overlapping though ...

Are overlaps inferior to splicing the parts together? How come?

If you can choose between a V-splice with a long total surface area (sometimes enhanced with surface grooving), there is less to go wrong than numerous joins of overlapping parts. Multiple joints increase the overall risk of failure. (In my post, I was referring to numerous overlaps found in Central Asian bows rather then a single one.)

In addition, if you have just two major components to glue together, you can do a better job of removing air bubbles using heat. This is another way to reduce risk.

So it's not so much that one way is automatically better: just that simple V-splices carry less risk.

The first thing that I noticed was the opposing diagonal wraps on the first few bows. It looked as though they extended this wrap all the way to the nocks on the siyahs.

Two speculative thoughts spring to mind, could opposing diagonal wraps be used in order to keep each other from unwrapping, much like the opposing wraps of reverse twist braiding on bowstrings? Or like the reverse twist braiding of japanese bowstring, where the innner strands twists in reverse of the outer strands?

I also have considered trying to braid sheets of sinew and glue them on as a backing that is less likely to have longitudinal seperation cracks. I wonder if that was ever tried on any sinew backings of older bows.