This issue of Ancient Warfare magazine has a Celtic theme.
There's an article by Lindsay Powell on the Siege of Maiden Castle in 44 AD by the Romans.
  A section of the article mentions the defenders using slings in defense against the Romans.
  " Grabbing pebbles from their caches, stone throwers urgently scrambled onto the ramparts ready for action. Equipped with slings of  braided flax, hemp, or wool, each about 61-100 cm (2-3.3ft.) in length, a practiced warrior could throw a stone over a distance of 400m (1,312 ft.). A flying stone striking the head could kill a man."
  I would like to know where he got the figures and distances.
   " The Roman legate critically assessed the situation. Faced with a potential rainstorm of deadly slingshot, he decided to keep his distance and deploy his artillery pieces and units of archers with their compound bows. Roman tension and torsion weapons could shoot sharps and arrows over hundreds of metres, depending on the size. A small catapult launching a 91.5 cm (36in.) bolt  could even hit a target  some 370m (1213ft.) away."
  There is a nice picture of the Celtic slingers in action.
  Any opinions on the info?   

I agree with Bill, although height advantages are rather signifigant. I can sling around 25% farther with a 30 foot height advantage.

Compound bows?  I had the impression that around this time the best a long bow could manage was about 200-250 meters..  I know there must have been crossbows around that time, but you didn't generally deploy those things in mass formations..

I don't have any way to prove it, but I've read that the Penobscot (that is the name of the bow you describe) may have been a quite "recent" scam (early 20th cent)

3 foot sling and a stone - 300m metres would be around the sensible maximum.

But then feet inches and metres didn't exist in 44ad so who knows what distances were actually claimed.

As David said, Compound = Composite = Horn and sinew bows.

Those are the Pensbocot bows and there are many theories that it was a scam. Plus, that was really the only area (If it is true) to utilze that style of 'backing', so its really safe to say that's not the kind of bow refered to here. The design does work, but it wasn't really prevelent historically.

I'm skeptical about the distance but I don't doubt that slinger's might have been utilized in that battle, just not at that distance.

Compound / composite bows were used by the Syrian archers employed in auxiliary units by the Romans. Source: Trajan's column, and I think various gravestones of auxiliaries.

Lugh-Lamhfada wrote on Apr 20^th, 2013 at 9:30pm:


Hungary was home to very active composite bow horse archers for centuries. The weather there is absolutely typical of Europe generally. The water sensitive parts of a bow were covered with paper-thin birchbark.