The Holmie bows did not follow a groth ring on the back and were backward bows with rised handls on the backs, don't know about the Mollies. Kenneth
Hi Little John
That is how it is represented in TBB, but it is not correct. The bows (I can only confirm the Holmegård artefact...since I have only seen that in person) have natural backs (i.e the outer growth ring underneath the barch is the back.
I raised the question on a danish bow builders forum when I read the miss-interpretation of he bow in TBB, and got this interesting reply:
"Hi Holten,
I translated parts of TBB 2 into German, also the contribution of Paul Comstock about the prehistoric bows of Europe, the German version is available under
www.bogenschiessen.de. I´ve seen the original bow before and was - like you - very surprised by Pauls theory of the "backward bow". After talking to the German editors I contacted Paul, and we exchanged some transatlantic mails. We - especially Paul - found out then, that a fatal error happened to him while reading archaeological drawings. European Archaeologists draw objects in a different way than woodworkers will. Woodworkers draw four views, rolling the object clockwise on the ground, archaeologists draw 4 views flipping the object over the edge anti-clockwise, so that drawn view and the edge of the next view are positioned near each other. If you compare this to the drawn cross section and misinterprete the way of changing the view, you may come to the conclusion, that the belly of the bow is the back. Paul was very unhappy about this, but we decided to leave the translation of his contribution without corrections, and we added some remarks by him making clear that he was mistaken. Your - and my - way of building holmegaards is and will be the right one. I wrote to Paul - who has never seen the Danish elm bows personally - that I could have made the same mistake while writing about the flat bows of the American plains indians without ever having one in my hand. You may call this the "Karl-May-syndrom", Karl May was a very famous German author who had written a lot of books about the Wild West and Arabia without ever having left his home town.
Mvh
ULFR"
I hope this clears out some missunderstandings:-)
Cheers