- Hello, I'm Dan Smith. I'm one of the field archaeologists
here at Jamestown,
and today we're going to have a warbow demonstration.
Although the warbow had been replaced on the European battlefields
as the main long-distance weapon by the time the colonists got here in 1607,
we did find a number, and have found a number,
of projectile points, or arrowheads,
in the excavations over the past 20 years.
So we do know that the colonists had bows with them and were using them,
whether for battle primarily or for hunting, we're not sure.
But we have found at least five different types
of arrowheads here in the excavations.
You can see this is one of the arrows we found here.
It has a long, very sharp tip,
and it might have been a field arrow, even a practice arrow,
but it was sharp enough and heavy enough
to have been able to pierce some of the less sturdy armor
that was primarily in use for the first couple hundred years,
300 years, of the warbow's main battlefield use.
And another one is a bodkin, which had a bit more armor-piercing capability,
heavier tip, blunter but stronger, with sharper edges on sharper blades.
Here's one that's called a forker, and this was mainly a hunting arrow, it seems.
It was used to slice the neck of birds or their wing feathers,
or even it could be used to bring down larger animals by shearing tendons off,
if they were a good enough shot for that.
Here's another one that might be one that,
according to our senior curator, Bly Straube,
this one might have been a 9th- to 11th-century design.
We don't know why it was here, although we know they were using
some of the older weapons that were given to them by the crown.
Here's another one that would be an ideal war arrowhead,
because, you can see, once it enters the body,
trying to pull it out is going to rip flesh and tendons and veins and arteries.
So that would be a very effective weapon.
This is the English warbow we'll be using today for the demonstration.
We had it made for us based on the bows found
on the 1545 wreck of the Mary Rose just off the coast of England.
And we didn't have good representations of the medieval and later warbows
until the Mary Rose, because they deteriorated
or broke and were thrown away, whatever happened to them.
So we had the folks in Worcestershire, England--
Steve Stratton is their master bowyer, and he actually made this bow for us.
He is the one who makes all the warbows.
So based on the Mary Rose designs, he made this warbow,
which is about 6 feet, 8 inches long, and it has a draw weight
of about 110 to 120 pounds, according to Steve Stratton.
And it's a very simple weapon. It's one piece of wood.
It's called a self bow, because it's one single piece of Italian Alps yew
and with just a cowhorn nock on both ends for the string to go into, and that's it.
It's just four pieces, and that's all there is to this entire bow,
yet it's one of the most powerful and devastating weapons
on the European battlefield for 200 to 300, almost 400 years.
All right, now we're going to go ahead and give it a try with a couple of arrows.
OK, for this next shot, what we're going to try and do is hit a balloon filled with water.