The Avar bow

The Avar bow was a kind of steppe-nomadic bow; as these weapons were used by mounted warriors, they had to be relatively short but strong. Early Medieval craftsmen increased the strength of their bows by joining diverse materials and developing a specific design. While the nomadic bows used in the steppe zone in diverse historical periods differ in some morphological characteristics, they worked on the same principle: all were compound recursive bows.
These bows are compound tools because they were made of diverse materials, including wood, horn and bone plates, and animal sinews; the parts were joined, glued with animal glue, and bound together. Making a bow required enormous skills and experience; producing one likely took about a year because some processes could only be carried out effectively in specific seasons.
The term ‘recursive’ hints at the characteristic shape of this weapon: the unstrung bow bends oppositely to the drawn when the bowstring prevents it from returning to that shape. The bowstring was made of twisted skin or bowel strips. After being drawn, the bow was immediately ready for use; otherwise, it was usually stored relaxed.
The different characteristics of the materials built into a recursive bow all serve to increase the strength of the weapon. When the bow is drawn, the horn plates glued on its arms compress like a coil spring, and the animal sinew layer stretches, adding their potential energy to the shot. The endplates glued to the ends of the bow’s arms at an angle work as levers, also increasing the power of the shot. Recent experiments have revealed that the effective shooting range of these bows was around 180–200 m (or even 300 m, according to historical sources), while precise shots could be fired at targets even at a 40 m distance.
Hourglass-shaped quivers also appeared first as part of the material culture of the Avars; these were designed for storing arrows with their heavy trilobate points pointing downwards. The illustration depicts an early Avar bow. The designs of the Early and the Late Avar bow variants show considerable differences (for example, the endplates on the late variant are much broader), but dissimilarities can also be observed even between individual specimens.
by Zoltán Boldog