Good idea. BUT as Bill Skinner pointed out-- the links, which worked when I first installed them, don't work. A bit of a shame, since I had some spare time and thought I'd link to this info, some of which I think is new on this site (clay bullets in Gaul, bullet moulds in Brittany, clay bullets in Carthage, clay bullets in Susa and Ugarit).

Too much info on the urls :) Of course, if you remove them, keywords won't be highlighted but :

Incendiary clay bullets in Belgium, 350 bC (French) info of a La Tène I (say 350 BC) dig with "incendiary clay sling bullets"-- probably identified because such things are mentioned by Caesar. Belgium.

Iron sling bullet? C2AD (French): A dig in the départment of the Vienne in France apparently found an iron sling bullet in the destruction layer of a Roman temple (C2nd AD). I wonder how they identified it.

Lead sling bullets at Knossos, 1500 bC: A report by Charles Picard (not very good archaeologist), on LEAD bullets found at Knossos, in a "chapel". If this is right, if the bullets are indeed bullets, and are not stratigraphical intrusions, then this is proof that lead bullets were used say ca. 1300 BC

Clay sling bullets at Chartage: 1910 dig in Carthage, two ammo dumps, sealed below destruction layer (146 BC): one is rough catapult stones, the other is big dump of CLAY sling bullets. Rather unusual at this date-- do Carthaginians continue the old NE habit of fired clay bullets, or is it because of the siege that they can't get lead ?

Late Neolithic clay bullets Tell Sabi: Late Neolithic settlement. Cache with 2000 clay bullets. Date: 5000-5100 BC ?

Bullets dump, Lambesis, 450aD: Legionary fort at Lambaesis (N. Africa). Dump with 300 catapult shot, and 6000 clay shot (possibly some small marble shot, too). Clay ones are hand-rolled. Date: ca. AD 450 ?

Clay bullets, Iran: Report on digs at Susa. Big cache of clay sling bullets in 'artisan's house', prepared and never used. Ca. 2000 BC ?

Celtic moulds: Mention of sling bullet moulds found in Celtic forts. Apparently the shape, cylindro-ogival, is typical for the region.

Clay bullets, 300bC, France: Jolly good archaeologist, O. Buchenschutz, reporting on a dig: ca 300 BC, clay sling bullets, from Picardie. Scroll upwards for pics.

Report on slingstone cache: Big slingstone cache, in ancient Ugarit. Date must be C16th BC ?.

Bullets from Paris: Mould for sling bullets (inscribed) found in Paris in 1991. Mention made of sling bullets found Rue d'Ulm. Alas, pictures cannot be shown.

Korfmann sling: Korfmann's thesis , on the Childe thesis (bow and sling mutually exclusive)

A short note from the famous history journal, Annales, on slinging: http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/ahess_0395-2649_1949_num_4_1_1700: arguing that slinging was originally a Medit. weapon, that sling bullets allow the use of the sling in non-Med. ecologies, and that the decline of slinging in the ancient world goes with the "Germanization" of the Roman army. The first point is not quite right. It is true, though, that lead sling bullets died out after a while


Those should work better.

And I will come back later with a short review in english from a slinger's PoV :)

The last one is a "discussion" about why Romans abandonned the sling : it may be because of a civilisation change, from mediterranean (sling widely used) to germanic and oriental, more used to the bow. (I did also found this one for my own research ;) )

I will have to complete this list from my own tresor box now... ;)

Thanks-- but now what is lost is the precise page number each time, which I found with searches in persee.fr. If interested, downloard the .pdf and search for "balles de fronde".

It also is a shame that in the tidying up, what got lost is the two sentence summaries for non-French readers, with, usually, an indication of why the reference mattered-- for instance, that the Knossos one, if correct, is proof of the Mycenaean lead bullets which have been suggested elsewhere (Cyprus) but explained away as weights etc.

Actually, while none of the links -but the one of the article- worked for me before gathering them together, now I can see them all, hope it's the same for everybody because these are really good information  :D
I don't know how to make the links looks like a sentence, so I had to copy the whole url wasting a lot of words, but now that C_A saved up on words I have been able to add these information Thearos provided us  ;)
And I'll delete my first post because it's completely useless, Caldou's one is the one with working links.
Greetings,
Mauro.

clicked on a couple -  :nopics:
Basically lol

Are there any pictures in there anywhere ?  

Topic added to the PG's Index.
Greetings,
Mauro.

Yes, some of them have pictures-- a lot of it depends on the type of publication (some of them are reports of publications elsewhere-- basically reading notes; some of them have pics, but cannot be reproduced).

The long report from Lambaesis has some pictures-- p. 44.

Anyway, this is quite a representative sample (there are more), and they unsurprisingly reflect the areas where French scholarship is strong: excavations in France, N. Africa and Syria. I did not include a few more publications from Greece-- Ph. Bruneau's excellent publication of a  sling bullet mould found on Delos (also on the site Cefael), and the various sling bullets from Cyprus published I think by V. Karageorgis, and the publication of the sling bullets in various collections (Alexandria, Froehner collection in Paris).

To repeat myself: the main takeaway points here are documented references to:

1. Lead bullets and moulds, probably Roman but perhaps Celtic, in France
2. Clay bullets in Celtic contexts, starting La Tène II (I did not give references for possible Hallstatt ones)
3. Clay bullets in Carthage
4. Clay bullets in Neolithic and early Bronze Age Near east.

The report from Ugarit has a photo of the slingstone heap at fig. 7 (and, at fig. 2, a bronze arrowhead caught within vertebras).

So if you want pics of various clay bullets or sling stones, there are 3 illustrated publications out of the 11 that are reports, or "reports of reports" (I also linked to a book review and a short article). I also recommend reading the publications (I skimmed them)-- some of them are very good pieces of archaeological writing, and the older ones have period charm. They may also help give a sense of how archaeology works (a favorite theme of mine).

I also noted, among the persee.fr results that "balles de fronde" located, a long dispute about whether various paleolithic finds were slingstones, but did not link to them (the dispute seems to ahve been resolved ca. 1920: no).  

Here's another Celtic one (S. France), fig. 7 for an example of the big slingstone ammo dump next to the walls:

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/ran_0557-7705_1983_num_16_1_1223

Thearos wrote on Mar 14^th, 2013 at 3:40pm:

Here's another Celtic one (S. France), fig. 7 for an example of the big slingstone ammo dump next to the walls: http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/ran_0557-7705_1983_num_16_1_1223

I wish I knew french...

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/ingeo_0020-0093_1951_num_15_1_1019

An article (in French) on C17th Paris and its streets. P. 17: on Sundays, boys gather for violent games and fights, including stone-throwing and slinging, even though the latter was banned in 1637, 1667, 1683. This doesn't look like a mistake or misudnerstanding, because the author (Andrée Bas) seems to refer to specific ordinances. Would be good to have the originals.

So: slinging in C17th France, and in an urban context. Explains why, during the siege of Sancerre in 1572, there are slingers around to shoot bullets; were there slings at the siege of La Rochelle in 1628 ? And of course, why the unrest against Louis XIII was called "La Fronde", the sling-- the weapon was a familiar sight in the hands of street urchins.

I wonder when this practice stopped.

interesting. England had pretty much switched to bows by then. Guess the french held on to the sling a bit longer :thumb:

Bloody lethal weapon in an urban environment. Not surprised they were banned.
No large open spaces so every shot is point blank. Could get very nasty, very quickly.

I would guess that this would be more of a street thug type of weapon than a weapon of war.  And by the mid to late 17th century, the English had switched to guns.

I think that it would be favored as a distance weapon simply because it could be carried at all times and ammo was free, unlike a bow or gun.  It could also be tossed if it looked like the authorties were going to grab you, then later, it could be easily and cheaply replaced.  

Street thug might be a bit strong, since the article seems to describe boys playing with it. They might have shot at each other, but maybe also at things in the streets, squares, yards, etc, of the early modern city.

I notice the same thing happening at Poitiers at the same time:

http://www.archive.org/stream/lapolicemunicip00boisgoog/lapolicemunicip00boisgoog_djvu.txt

Sur les remparts et dans les tours, parfois même dans les rues, les
jeunes « enfants et garçons de boutique et même de grands fai-
néans et gens mariez », dit une ordonnance, s'assemblent pour se
battre à coups de pierre, de fronde, de bâtons, amusements dange-
reux ou l'on relève des tués et des blessés.

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/bmsap_0301-8644_1868_num_3_1_9876

In 1868, the anthropological society of Paris received a gift of stuff from New Caledonia (Pacific islands inhabited by the Kanaks). P. 451: there is a bag for slingstones made out of "bark thread" (I assume this means woven out of strips of bark ?), and 4 slingstones (steatite and wernerite); also a "small thong made of niaouli bark, used to throw darts like the Spartan javelins"-- in other words, an amentum or detachable javelin strap made of bark.

-- of interest here, because it's a clear example of sling pouch (and also for the amentum: I know people here love them some amentum)

Mauro-- perhaps you are concentrating my various posts on historical topics in one thread for space reasons. But if so, the specific heading, and information, gets lost in a single massive thread: this does not help a historical researcher who is scanning a pageful of topics. At least, the topic should be "bullets, etc". But it's a shame: for instance, the information about C17th urban slinging in France (with two locales, Paris and Poitiers), is now lost in a long thread: if it gets several pages, the info is only retrievable by searches, and not reachable by browsing. This is a real reduction in functionality. I speak as a professional researcher (so I deal with issues of searching and serendipity), and a writer (so I deal with issues of keeping "paragraphs", namely information together in coherent clumps).

Right now, this thread collects info on Celtic clay bullets, Carthaginian clay bullets, Celtic bullet moulds, Polynesian slingstone bags, and early-modern European slinging. Each one of these topics is of potential interest, and each one had, before being gathered in one thread, a starter post with a precise bit of information referred to and clearly labelled.  

Hopefully, this is just a temporary solution - C_A's working on the forum's software and we mods are working on saving virtual space by removing ancient and dusty threads  :)
We all already had some success and as long as we solve the problem (which won't take long I presume) stay assured that every post will have its well-deserved space  ;)
Greetings,
Mauro.

Thanks for the reassurance !

And thanks for all the good work moderating.

Hey! I've been away, but something to keep in mind with the French Slinging:  in 17th and 18th century France you need a license to have a gun, have to be of the higher classes to have a sword, and many other weapon restrictions. That helps explain the persistence of the sling in the face of Firearms. Legality is a pain in every century I've yet studied.

Gallia, 1943, vol. 1.2, 83-124, excavations at Gergovia (!) for 1941 and 1942-- mentions "galets de basalte roulés, apportés des pentes du plateau, et qui ont pu servir de pierres de fronde", found in Hallstatt (i.e. C3rd BCE) context, and often in big "ammo dumps"-- i.e. the familiar Celtic slingstone heaps, as found on British sites.