We really need to bolster the textual resources link.  it's looking awfully bare!  And I know there are others out there and people have mentioned them in the past.


Here is the current list:

• Savage, Cliff  "The Sling for Sport and Survival."  Breakout Productions.  Port Townsend, Washington.  1999.

• Cahlander, Adele  "Sling Braiding of the Andes"  Weaver's Journal Monograph IV.  Colorado Fiber Center, Boulder.  1980.
 
• Ballard, Lynn P.  "Making and Using the Venerable Hand Sling."  In, Mother Earth News  May/June 1985: 148-149.
 
• Korfmann, Manfred  "The Sling as a weapon."  Scientific American 229(4): 34-42.  October 1973.
 
• Campbell, Paul.  "The Chumash Sling"  SPT Bulletin of Primitive Technology.  Fall 1996.
 
• Owen, Rodrick  "Braids: 250 patterns from Japan, Peru, and Beyond"  Interweave Press.  Loveland, Colorado.  1995.
 
• Heizer, Robert F. and Irmgard W. Johnson  "A Prehistoric Sling from Lovelock Cave, Nevada"  American Antiquity 18(2):139-147.  October 1952.
 
• Schwartz, Max.  Machines, Buildings and Weaponry of Biblical Times. Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1990  
 
• Hawkins, Walter  "Observations on the Use of the Sling, as a Warlike Weapon Among the Ancients" Printed by J.B. Nichols and Son, 1847.  London : 14 p. ; 30 cm.  
 
• C. Van Driel-Murray (hrsg.) :Roman Military Equipment: The Sources of Evidence. brit. arch.rep. intern. ser. 476 (1986) s.255-279

Heizer, Robert F. and Irmgard W. Johnson  "A Prehistoric Sling from Lovelock Cave, Nevada"  American Antiquity 18(2):139-147.  October 1952.  

Suggested by Archeorob actually, but people seem to avoid this post like the plague....

Chris

• Thomas Völling: Funditores im Römischen Heer. Saalburg-Jahrb. 45, 1990, 24-58.
• Dietwulf Baatz: Schleudergeschoße aus Blei. Saalburg-Jahrb. 45, 1990, 59-67.

The first is a very good article about everything related to slinging in the Roman army. The second article compares slinging ammunition made from lead, stone and clay in a computational way. It can give an impression on the effect of different specific weights, but probably not much more. (He assumes spherical ammunition of a constant cd of 0.4 and slingers throwing them with 75 m/s.)

At http://www.mbsks.franken.de/slinging/slinging.html I have a page with information about my slinging successes and failures and experiments to reconstruct equipment from antiquity.

Zwiebeltuete

I posted these in another thread, but I'll post them here too. Some of these are articles or books and some have a lot on the sling and others just mention a few things, but they all have useful information. I found many of the articles in my library's database, but if you don't have access to something similar then you can probable get them through the inter library loan system.


Harding, David. (Ed.). (1980). Weapons: An International 
    Encyclopedia From 5000 B.C. to 2000 A.D. New York: 
    St. Martin's Press.

Mixter, John R. (2001, August). Man's first long-range
     missile weapon, the sling was a deadly military asset
     in skilled hands. Military History, 18 (3), 12.
     Retrieved February 9, 2006, from Academic Search
     Premier (EBSCO) database (4671041).   

Foss, Clive. (1974). Greek Sling Bullets in Oxford.
     Archaeological Reports, 21, 40-44. Retrieved
     February 9, 2006, from Arts and Sciences Collections I, II
     & III (JSTOR) database.

Crump, J.A. (1901, January). Trephining in the South Seas. 
     The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great
     Britain and Ireland, 31, 167-172. Retrieved February 28,
     2006, from Arts and Sciences Collections I, II & III
     (JSTOR) database.

Foss, Clive. (1975) A Bullet of Tissaphernes. The Journal of
     Hellenic Studies, 95, 25-30. Retrieved February, 2006,
     from Arts and Sciences Collections I, II & III (JSTOR)
     database.

Greep, S.J. (1987). Lead Sling-Shot from Windridge Farm, St
     Albans and the Use of the Sling by the Roman Army in
     Britain. Britannia, 18, 183-200. Retrieved February 9,
     2006, from Arts and Sciences Collections I, II & III
     (JSTOR) database.

Vutiropulos, Nikos. (1991). The sling in the Aegean Bronze
     Age. Antiquity, 65, 279-286.

@ zwiebeltüte

the website you gave the link to is very interesting. The situation you mention is probably the retreat of the 10000 greeks after the battle of Kunaxa. I agree with you that the only reason why the Persians where not able to use lead glandes as the Rhodians did is the training you need to get familiar with a material that has a density that is 3 to 4 times higher than the usual one. The different density gives a totally different feeling for the ballistic. I tried lead sling shots for several times. Being used to stones it was hard to get the right moment of release. All sling shots went astray and I stopped these trials when I completely ran out of ammunition.
The Persians just didn't have enough time for training before the greeks managed to get out of close distance to the Persian troops. The quality of persian slings was rather no reason. A weapon normally is made for use under difficult and hard situations. No ancient soldier would trust in a weapon that was likely to break when strained a little bit more than normal.

funda iucunda

This one talks alittle about the Balearic slingers and it has a great picture by Angus Mcbride of the slingers in action.

Treviño, Rafael. (1992, March). Rome's Enemies (4): Spanish
     Armies 218 BC-19 BC. Osprey Publishing.