The small buckler shield gave English the word 'swashbuckler'
A buckler was a round metal shield just 20 to 40 centimetres across, light enough to hang from a belt and used for both blocking and striking at close quarters. Carried by knights and common soldiers from the Middle Ages into the 16th century, it left its name in the word swashbuckler.
Shields may have first appeared in the Late Neolithic, though the oldest surviving ones date from the Bronze Age. Most were wood or hide, sometimes wicker or even turtle shell; the few metal survivors, such as the Iron Age Battersea shield, are thought to have been ceremonial. Medieval makers favoured split-resistant timbers like poplar and lime, often faced with rawhide and reinforced with a metal boss or rim, and a strap called a guige let riders sling them over their backs.
Designs followed tactics. Mycenaean Greeks carried wicker-and-leather figure-of-eight and tower shields covering the body from head to foot. The hoplite's bowl-shaped aspis, faced with bronze, also protected the man to his left, which made the phalanx possible. Roman legionaries' scuta, oval at first and later rectangular, locked together into the testudo, or tortoise, an armoured box that let troops advance under missile fire.
Early medieval round shields of linden, fir, alder or poplar were meant to catch blows on the central boss, which could also punch, and they formed shield walls. Around the 10th century the Normans introduced the kite shield, rounded above and tapering below to protect a rider's legs, gripped by leather straps called enarmes. As limb armour improved, shields shrank into the heater shape that inspired heraldic designs. Specialised forms followed: the bouche with a notch for a lance, and the pavise, a freestanding screen crossbowmen hid behind while reloading.
Painted patterns identified armies and clans, and nobles' coats of arms grew into formal heraldry during the High Middle Ages. Shields outlasted the arrival of guns: 18th-century Scottish Highlanders favoured small targes, and Zulu warriors still carried shields in the 19th century. Modern police and military units use them for riot control and hostage rescue.
Source: Shield
