[Michael Anderson]

Having recently purchased the wonderful 10th century crossbow made by Tod it got me thinking about the types of bolts and quiver that would be used to transport them.

The bow is a low powered hunting bow, only really powerful enough to take down small mammals and birds, so my guess would be the bolts would be much lighter and thinner than for a military crossbow and probably use feather fletchings.

Also how would these bolts be transported and finally what kind/ shape of bolt head would they have used?

I appreciate there is little to no archeological evidence of crossbow accoutrement from this period to go on, so much must be guesswork based around any depictions of crossbow use in art and iconography.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Many thanks

Michael

[Mart Shearer]

There are some images in the thread Tod began:
http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t...t=crossbow

It appears a couple of bolt heads were also recovered from Chavrines. Unfortunately I haven't found a larger photo than the one in the previous thread.

A lot of the published information appears to have been published in Valerie Serdon, Armes du diable. Arcs et arbalètes au moyen-âge. Here's a couple of bolt heads from p.306.


The Type A seems to be shown in the Roda Bible, while the ones recovered from Chavrines appear to be Type B.

The earliest quivers seem to be bags at the wast.
http://www.1186-583.org/IMG/jpg/Carquois_Liber_1190-1197.jpg