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© Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya - Barcelona
Omeka ID 2271
Olèrdola
Roman

slingshot projectile mould

MAC OLE-00551

Object type
mold
Production date
-100 / -50
Fabric
-
Museum
Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya - Barcelona
Culture
Roman
Discovery location
Olèrdola. Entrada recinte (sector 01)
Materials
pottery
Township
Olèrdola (Europa, Espanya, Catalunya, Barcelona, Alt Penedès)
Technique
moulding
Where is it?
Reserves
Dimensions
270 x 860 x 850 mm
Description
Fragment of mould, originally square or rectangular. It is made of red clay with a grainy texture, similar to that used in the big Roman jars. An oval cavity is observed with a spout and part of another. It has a burnt part in the region near the oval cavity. It was found during the excavation in 1986 in Sector 01 at the entrance to the site. The piece was recovered in a medieval level in Square 5 on a pavement of lime, outside its original context. This mould would be associated with a military use, as it served to make the sling shot later employed by slingers during battles. Since they were made of lead, this justifies the presence of a burnt portion near the cavity mould when making said ammunition. It is common to find lead sling shot in camps and military fortifications and in Iberian settlements, as it was a weapon used primarily by auxiliary units (auxilia) of the Roman army. In addition, in Olèrdola we have found some lead sling shot. The manufacture of lead shot is documented both in mining areas and cities. At Azuaga (Badajoz) about two thousand shot from the mould, unused, were well piled up, leading to interpret the site as a metal workshop for lead smelting, used only during the Sertorian wars (76- 79 BC ) (Domergue, 1968). In Empúries, some of the over 1,700 shot collected presented residues of the matrix stem (Puig i Cadafalch, 1910-1911), while in the Roman villa of La Caridad de Caminreal (Teruel) four blocks were recovered directly from the mould but linked by the stem, which indirectly gives information on the matrix and on the technology used (Vicente Redon et al., 1991 and 1997, 195). While lead sling shot are abundant in the deposits of the classical world, the moulds are much rarer. One has been discovered, made of lead, in the ancient Greek polis of Fanagoria (now Russia) today exhibited in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. A second, has been documented in Olint, Greece (Korfman 1973, 40; Griffiths 1989, 258), suitable for eleven rounds. Another, made of bronze, is known in the Paul Canellopoulos collection in Greece (Empereur 1981, 555, fig. 29). And one last cast, late-Republican period, was recently found at a site near Paris (Pou, Guyard 1999, 29-30). The Olint and Olèrdola moulds would be slightly different, because while the former has an arrangement like a tree -vertical-, we believe the Olèrdola one had a horizontal arrangement. The presence of the mould in Olèrdola military fortification is an indicator of the metallurgical activity expected to be performed by the soldiers themselves, manufacturing ammunition. The mould is easily transportable with other equipment and lead can be obtained through ingots or recycling deformed shot or other lead objects. In the Iberian Peninsula, the set of slingshot datable around the first quarter of the century BC, coinciding with the Sertorian wars, is especially noteworthy. The use of the sling was intense during the Roman republican period. The projectiles used to be made of lead and produced in large quantities in moulds, especially of ceramic. Some of them had inscriptions with messages or names of officers. The clay sling shot could be heated and used as sufficient incendiary munitions, as Caesar himself said in his work "The Gallic Wars" (Caesar, Bell. Gall., V, 43).

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