Ballista
Archaeology and the Roman ballista

Archaeology, and in particular experimental archaeology has been influential on this subject. Although several ancient authors (such as Vegetius) wrote very detailed technical treatises, providing us with all the information necessary to reconstruct the weapons, all their measurements were in their native language and therefore highly difficult to translate.

Attempts to reconstruct these ancient weapons began at the end of the 19th century, based on rough translations of ancient authors. It was only during the 20th century, however, that many of the reconstructions began to make any sense as a weapon. By bringing in modern engineers, progress was made with the ancient systems of measurement. By redesigning the reconstructions using the new information, archaeologists in that specialty were able to recognise certain finds from Roman military sites, and identify them as ballistae. The information gained from the excavations was fed into the next generation of reconstructions and so on.

Sites across the empire have yielded information on ballistae, from Spain (the Ampurias Catapult), to Italy (the Cremona Battleshield, which proved that the weapons had decorative metal plates to shield the operators), to Iraq (the Hatra Machine) and even Scotland (Burnswark siege tactics training camp), and many other sites between.

The most influential archaeologists in this area have been Peter Connolly and Eric Marsden, who have not only written extensively on the subject but have also made many reconstructions themselves and have refined the designs over many years of work.
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