[Dan D'Silva]

Hello again. I've had these shield boards sitting around for two or three years waiting for bosses. Ideally I'd like them to fit into a 5th century BCE setting. It would be easier/cheaper to finish them with round bosses rather than custom-made wooden barleycorn ones, but I'd thought that round bosses on oblong shields was a combination that dated to later centuries.

I recently came across some Etruscan art from the preceding century that appears to show this kind of shield with a round boss. Another famous Etruscan situla shows what looks like round bosses with bites taken out, and possibly round ones with large square flanges. What I'm wondering is when any shields like these might be seen north of the Alps. Is it possible that the Etruscan ones were an early anomaly, abandoned for a while due to fashion or not being as effective?

Also, do we have any idea what the Etruscan bosses looked like? The Met has a number of bronzes purportedly dated to yet another century earlier that are identified as Etruscan or Italic, but (as best I can judge from the head-on photos) they look awfully shallow for center-gripped shields, unless the grips stand off the back. A number of auction sites have similar objects claimed as Etruscan. Other than these, I've had zero luck finding out about Etruscan shield bosses.

[Edward Lee]

This looks like a job for Tod's stuff.

https://todsworkshop.com/

[Dan D'Silva]

Do you mean for information or for a replica?

[Edward Lee]

I mean both, Tod just comes to mind when looking at this kind of object.

[Dan Howard]

In the 5th century the Etruscans were using the Greek aspis so there was no shield boss.

A couple of centuries earlier they had bosses.

From the 4th C onwards they largely used the same gear as the Romans.

[Dan D'Silva]

Thank you. Would you suppose that these 7th-century bosses are similar/ancestral to the ones illustrated on the 6th-century situlae (or at least the first one I linked to)? And do you think the shields shown on the situlae have any connection at all to the later La Tene or Roman ones?