Archaeologists have shown uneven interest in the three principal forms of weapon used in Early Anglo-Saxon England (fifth to seventh centuries). Swords, the rarest, have appeared disproportionately interesting, no doubt because of their greater decoration and élite associations, though most analyses have been devoted to particular examples. Spearheads, the most common form, have been justly treated now on a comprehensive basis (Swanton 1973 and 1974). But with the notable exception of Vera Evison's pioneering paper (1963), which concentrated on the late ‘sugar-loaf’ type, there has been a dearth of published interest in shields.

The classification presented here is based on a multivariate analysis of the shield bosses from the Upper Thames region, carried out in 1975 (Dickinson 1976, 274–90, figs. 25–9). Intuitive methods had failed to work, just as they had probably failed for previous scholars, because shield bosses seem to lack strikingly obvious diagnostic features. By contrast, the adoption of an explicit and more broadly-based approach not only took advantage of the substantial sample, but also was well suited to the circumstances of the enquiry. Residual doubts, however, meant that the results were not published at the time, though others have found the system both useful and valid (e.g. Welch 1983, 136–40, where the essentials are summarized; Hirst 1985, 91) and Heinrich Härke (HH) also adopted it as a base for the dating of shield burials in the course of his research. There is little excuse, therefore, for withholding publication further, and it is presented here substantially as it was written then, save for some modifications and additions.

The classification was devised as an aid to dating male graves in the context of a cultural-historical study of the Upper Thames cemeteries. Its aim was chronological order, and its principal assumption was that similarity of form reflected a similarity in time and space of production, use and final deposition. It was largely innocent of developments in the theoretical ramifications of artefact classification (e.g. Hill and Evans 1972; but see now especially Miller 1985), and no doubt both contains and obscures categories which have little or nothing to do with time and space: some of these are explored by HH later in this volume.

The following discussion takes account of recent work, published and unpublished, but is largely based on personal inspection of the remains of some 150 shields from Early Saxon burials (Appendix 5). Comparative evidence includes the well studied Sutton Hoo shield, essentially a Scandinavian shield in an Anglo-Saxon context (Bruce-Mitford 1978, 91), the Swedish parallels from Vendel Period burials at Valsgärde (seventh/eighth century AD), and the well preserved shield remains from Roman Iron Age bog deposits in the Continental homelands of the Anglo-Saxons (mostly third/fourth century AD).

Very little work has been done on the use of the shield, and it is the aim of this chapter to demonstrate how this aspect may be approached using archaeological evidence. Although the use of the shield is easier to infer from written and pictorial sources, written evidence on this aspect is few and far between, and pictorial evidence is generally later than the period dealt with here. Archaeological evidence that can be adduced includes sizes and shapes of shield boards and bosses, damage and repairs, decoration and some board fittings. Weapon combinations in burials do not give much straightforward information on fighting practices involving the shield (see p. 67). The archaeological record is also unlikely to throw any light on the use of the shield in battlefield tactics, such as the ‘shield wall’ referred to in several sources (Beowulf, line 3118; Battle of Maldon; and the Battle of Brunanburh in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, AD 937).

Shields are among the more common grave goods in Early Anglo-Saxon burials. In the investigated sample of forty-seven cemeteries with a total of 3,814 inhumations, 317 burials (8·3 per cent) in forty-three cemeteries contained a shield (Appendix 3). The frequency of shields becomes even more apparent if it is translated into percentages of weapon burials: in England, just under half (45 per cent) of all inhumations with weapons had a shield. This proportion is significantly higher than in the contemporaneous weapon burials of Continental Saxons (18 per cent), Franks (16 per cent) and Alamanni (24 per cent; Härke 1989, table 4.2). Excavations of cremation cemeteries in England do not seem to have produced unambiguous remains of shields: the Anglo-Saxons, in contrast to the Continental Saxons, appear to have put shields only into inhumation burials.

The origins of the Anglo-Saxon shield are to be found in the Roman Iron Age on the Continent. The Early Saxon shield has the same basic form as the shields in Danish and North German bog deposits: a flat circular board of small to medium size, made up of several planks set side by side, and fitted with an iron boss and grip [46, 47]. None of these features had to be borrowed from Roman shields, which in the first three centuries AD were mostly rectangular or oval and included convex and laminated boards, whilst the Late Roman circular shield may actually be of Germanic origin. The types of Early Saxon iron boss and grip were also rooted in Roman Iron Age types, and the main constructions of wooden handles (particularly ones using a lap-joint) were already used on third-/fourth-century shields in Jutland.