What kind of range are folks getting with these? The figure "20 meters" sticks in my head from a passage on the use of such light javelins in the ancient world.

Thanks for the additional photos of the amentum, Craig! Has anyone experimented with fletching darts of this size?

From " Barbarians Warriors, Saxons, Vikings, Normans " Dan & Susanna Shadrake, © Brassey's ( U.K. ) Ltd.

Page 12 There is a graphic giving range estimates for various missiles:

Hand thrown projectiles ( Angons ,Pila Fransciscas, stones ) about 30 meters.

Plumbata 60 meters.

Modern World record spear throw 258 meters using an Atlatl by David Engvall in 1995.

Modern reconstructed medieval bow 280 - 350 meters.

Rhodian sling 400 meters ( Lead missiles estimated, trials with unshaped pebbles 260 meters. )

Anybody know what the record is for Olympic style javelin ? Throwing from a stationary position or a couple of steps versus a short sprint ?

As I understand it, modern Olympic javelins are designed tip-heavy to prevent flat landings (dangerous) and restrict length of flight (due to confines of stadium infields).

Hi Shane

Thanks. The attached ones seem to be most common in ancient art. There are several depictions of them flying through the air with the loops still there. Got to love Greek vases for documentation. It may have been just a speed thing for military as you would not want to have wind each one as you did it on the battle field.

But either way there are examples of both.

Best
Craig

Bob Gresh has this to say about Irish javelins/darts (for those of you who might want to use the wonderful new A&A javelins for Renaissance applications):

There are many names for spears and darts in Irish. Halpin, in "Native Irish Arms and Armour.." did his best to classify them. Very difficult as writers were not particularly diciplined in their use of vocabulary, but he could say that ga, gae or foga, to give it the particle, was a kind of dart. Birin (bir-een) was another word for these. Sleag was a slender spear, thrust or thrown. And craisech (cree-sach) is a heavier spear, used for pushing and boring, and sometimes carried by horsemen, retained after they have flung their gae. The ties of "full hard flax" cord, called suaineamh (soonev) were what the Romans called ammentum. They were lashed on mid-shaft for sleags and towards the butt for gae or birin. A cord was wound around the shaft several times, securing a loop about three inches long. The forefinger of the right hand was inserted into the loop, and added to the force of the cast. Unlike the arrow-throwing Yorkshire miners of the 19th century, the Irish finger-loops went with the javelin, and did not unwind. My impression is that three of the smaller gae would be carried, or two of the tall sleag, the "Da Sleag" of heroic tales.

Note the flax finger loop. This is the method I used with my experimental gae, although I used hemp twine. I'd love to try the A&A darts, and I hope somebody will experiement with fletching and report back to the forum. :D

Finally getting back to this... sorry the pictures are a bit blurry though.

The first three pictures I used a braided amentum with a split tail, and the final picture shows just a single length of braid. One advantage with using a loose amentum rather than the attached amentae is in some of the more fine adjustments that can be made as the situation dictates. In a battlefield situation it might come down to the experience of the javelin throwers. If you recruit and train them to be throwers than attached would probably be the way to go, but if you have men and boys who have been using javelins form a very young age then things might be different. One of those things that we will never really have a totally clear picture.

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Shane

Jean-I stripped a gear. I meant to say that the collection of javelins is in George Cameron Stone's "Glossary of the Construction Decoration and Use of Arms and Armour" Dont leave home w/o This one!