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Testing the Meare Heath Bow Replica
The finished bow was taken first to The Roebuck Archery Centre at Gussage Saint Michael, Dorset. The final poundage of the finished bow was measured and found to be 42lbs at 28". On the outdoor range, a dozen arrows were shot over 25m and every arrow hit the target! Two points were noted upon shooting the bow, firstly the criss-cross webbing acted as a shock absorber, making the bow almost silent, and secondly the bow was very quick. The bow was then taken into the field to try some distance shots. It was found that the bow was accurate up to about 100 yards (91.44m). It was capable of shooting an arrow further than this distance, but not accurately.
Following these tests, the bow was taken to an archery equipment supplier: Quicks of Honiton. Here the bow was put through a chronograph. A chronograph measures the speed an arrow leaves the bow, which provides information about a bow’s efficiency. The faster the arrow leaves the bow, the more efficient that bow is. The Meare Heath bow tested at 43 metres per second velocity, shooting an arrow with the projectile weight of 30g. This is surprisingly fast given the poundage of the bow. A longbow whose draw weight measured 45lbs at 30" shooting the same arrow (30g) averaged 34 metres per second. This means that the Meare Heath bow has a velocity advantage of 9 metres per second over a longbow of similar poundage (Fig. 10).
Findings & Conclusions
1. The bow was shaped ignoring many of the rules applied to the art of modern bowmaking, but still produced a very workable weapon.
2. The transverse leather bands were put onto the bow to hold faults in check, and strengthening weak spots around shakes and knots, which would otherwise have caused the bow to break.
3. The cross-webbing aids to protect the archer should the bow break, and acts as a shock absorber, helping to spread the load and stresses throughout the limbs, whilst additionally helping to silence the bow.
4. The binding at the bow's tips, strengthen an otherwise weak area.
5. The bow took 49 man-hours to produce, although an experienced bowyer could probably have done the work in a third of the time pointing to a bow that can be fashioned from average timber in a fairly quick time.
6. The bow's weight is 42lb's (19kg) at 28" (76.2cm).
7. The bow is accurate up to around 100 yards (91.44m)
8. Shooting an arrow with a projectile weight of 30g, the bow tested at 43 metres per second velocity. This was 9 metres per second faster than a longbow of similar poundage (45lb's at 30") shooting the same projectile (30g).
9. The creation of the replica helped to shed light upon the level of technology used in the creation of the original, which it turns out is a highly sophisticated weapon. The Meare Heath Bow actually accords with 20th (or perhaps now 21st!) century principles of scientific design and is a better weapon than the highly stacked medieval longbow that followed several thousand years later. This implies a considerable amount of thought and experiment on the part of the prehistoric bowyers.
10. The creation of the replica proved that Neolithic bowyers were skilled enough to know the best tree for the job, the best part of that tree, and the best way to treat the wood of that tree, in order to get the best results for bow manufacture. The Meare Heath bow is a fine example of the maximum utilisation of available raw materials to match the needs of the archer. In other words, the bowyer who constructed the original bow really knew how to get the best bow for his needs out of the materials available to him, with the minimum amount of effort.
11. In Neolithic Somerset, a hunter using the Meare Heath bow would have been able to kill a deer at 50 metres in just over a second. What is more, with the bow silenced (due to the cross webbing) if the archer missed the animal, and it did not see the arrow, he/she might even have been able to get off a second shot.
12. The disposal of the bow is perhaps the most interesting of all the facets of the bow’s history. It was thought for many years that the Meare Heath Bow had broken in use and had been thrown into the bog, perhaps by a disgruntled hunter. Careful scrutiny of the break in the handle points however to the bow being deliberately broken. It appears most likely that the bow was unstrung, the handle scored with a flint tool, the bow turned over and then snapped over something hard, like over one’s knee. Ritual deposition of votive artefacts/objects is a well-known practice the world over, and such deposits can be traced back thousands of years, so it is possible that the Meare Heath Bow was just such a deposit.
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