History...Other materials used for backing bellies?

Ivory or elephant tusks is remarkably heavy and hard. There is no evidence that it was ever used for bow bellies. It was used occasionally for bow tips and I have seen Turkish bows with ivory spliced into the tips to strengthen the nock area and for decoration. There are even surviving jade tips for bows.

Baleen from krill eating whales has been used. It appears to be good in tension as well as compression. I have seen now studies of is performance and I have only ever drawn one baleen bow.

Rhinoceros horn might work, but in the past it was very expensive and the horns are rarely long enough. Perhaps an emperor or a king could have had such a bow made or perhaps ceremonial bows for magical purposes were constructed.

In some nineteenth and early twentieth century works on Egyptian composite bows, mention has been made of hide, but the circumstances suggest that the material was so hydrolysed and degenerate that it was probably horn or sinew in a deteriorated state. I am not referring to rawhide used as a backing here, but to thick hide pieces used as structural elements.

I cannot remeber where I read it, but I think there was a reference to a bow with a belly consisting of many short pieces of bone, which had been found in a grave up north somewhere in (perhaps) todays Russia. I might remember this totally wrong, however.

:D Strange question Outlaw...Have you any experiences vith materials ? Elephant fang is tooth ! Can you imagen how can tooth working ?

Is evidence about some American indians bows made from elk(or caribo) horns. But only one material other than Ibex or Buf horns is whale bone. Tribes from Kamchatka(Alaska) to north Mongolia steps use that material.
best example is short reflex Japanese bows.

I haevnt this material in hand , but if i born erlier i am sure that i have :lol: , because evan to the 20 cen , european woman have this whale bones in his jupe corset for thiny belt...

Your memory is correct. There was a long bow with two curves found in Siberia of which the remains were a line of short bone lathes. I saw it published in a Soviet era book called The Peoples of Siberia I can't remember the date, but I think it was thousands of years old.

I believe that you both read Russian article acurately, but i read in Russian language many archeological and historical articles and 70% - mostly oldest /socialists era/ say about -"BONE"- but this is big mistake. Or uneducated. Because tru founds was- horns...
Evan in our country not only oldest , but todays books about armory, history, popular archeology -talk about wood x bones composites. This old mistake information have long life :lol:

Thank you Bede.

Dusan, until you posed it that way i didnt realize that is an odd question...my subconscient asked it, I guess. Now I make the link, Im travelling to south africa this week for work and i guess my auto-pilot made that association...

Somewhere in the net one can find an intriguing documentary shot at the times of Shackelton and co. circa first years of the XX, about the life of the Inuit, and one can see the things you have described so vividly...there is this bridge bow, made with balleen stuff and bones... Or so it looks.

:) Well , once sombody say that no exists bad question...anyway this thema is talking somvhere in Atarn earlier, vith eskimo bow pics and Japanes short bow pics...
If i was in Afrika like you, i will be more thinking how buy cheap long horns from Afrikas wilds and sinew, and .... :lol:

I have just found the original article.

Henry N. Michael, "The Neolithic Age in Eastern Siberia", Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, Vol. 48, No. 2 (1958),pp. 1-108

Here is a quote from page 57 where the illustration occurs:

Typical Serovo
As a rule, a grave included: (a) bow and arrows; (b) clay
vessels; (c) polished slate or green nephrite adzes; (d)
polished slate knives; (e) side-bladed spearheads (less
commonly) or "laurel-leaf" knives.

The original excavation was Bratskii Kamen' burial no. 8. by A. P. OKLADNIKOV, as far as I can tell.

Bede i dont doubt about your source, or what is write in this article. I only know from many Russian sources/what is probably source yours article too/ that Russians "experts" very often was wrong about glued composites.

From another point , maybe not if we accept bone like "backing" material in to this days living history eskimo tribes bows .
Shorter or longer bone plates was tie to short bad wood like support , vith binding sinew...
Here are some pics from Norvegia Kopenhagen museum.

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Here i mark bone plates. In some bows was bone like sidewals in both arms. But this bows was very bad eficienci. I think very small distance shooting

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todays Nenet tribe boy

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Dusan,
The plates were not very long. They were assembled end to end. They ranged in length from 50 cm to 87 cm. The archaeologists assumed the sources were red deer and elk antler. They pointed out that the Dolgans who lived near by made ramrods 1 metre long from antler.

The cutting, splitting,
and straightening of these antlers is a long and involved
process (fig. 28b). True, this practice of the
Dolgans is comparatively recent (Popov, 1937: 116-
117) but it is the only instance known for Siberia
where slivers of such length are manufactured and
indicates a possible answer to the mode of making the
unusually long bow-braces for the Serovo bows.

I agree that there are often examples of bone and horn being confused in Russian publications on mediaeval bows. However, these bows were found too far north for any animals to have horns the requisite length and they were old, Third Millennium BC. They may have had things in common with some Eskimo bows, but there would have been wood long enough to make continuous cores. The bows were close to the height of the people they were buried with, about 1.5 metres. They may have not been too efficient.

Dusan, many people use the word horn when they actually mean antler. They don?t distinguish between them because the two kinds of material grow out of animal?s heads.

There is normally no confusion between bone and horn.

According to Okladnikov, which is cited by Gad Rausing, the material of the Serovo bows is antler. There is good reason to believe this, as horn can only be preserved in the soil under two conditions: permafrost or desert. In thousands of archaelogical sites where bone and antler are still there, horn does not exist anymore. I personally have never found a single piece of horn during the excavations I made. I think the region is in the Baikal area, so I doubt we have permafrost soil over there. There also were found no wooden artefacts which should have been the case under conditions where horn can survive.

JJ

Yes JJ, this i understand :) . But base of mi answer is about horn(or antler) mesunderstand vith BONE. And this is big false.
Vith antler i haevnt any problem. I know that this material was use from start of human history...

Dusan,
One problem is that is hard to tell bone from antler with small pieces because it is very similar in superficial appearance. You probably know that it can be told apart if small holes for veins are present.

On this site and in many other places, bone and antler are treated as if they were synonymous, whereas they are created by two separate processes. I try to remember to put "bone or antler" when I write about these things where we are not sure which.