Archery. Encyclopedia of World Sport

Archery involves the loosing of an arrow from a string
fastened tightly to each end of a curved bow, with the
goal of hitting a target. Both recreational and competitive target shooting are popular in many countries, and
bows and arrows are also used in hunting.
History
What is sport today was first done for hunting, defense,
and, apparently, ritual. Bows and arrows appear as
hunting equipment in prehistoric cave paintings in
Spain and France, and stone arrowheads have been
found in many excavations as archaeological evidence
of early human hunters. Evidence of archery can be
found almost everywhere, indicating that it did not
spread from one place to others but originated independently in various places. Bows and arrows were also
used as lethal weapons in warfare. The training of these
military skills led to competitions, which can be considered as prototypes of organized sport.
Archery was often linked with magic and full of
symbolism. Among the ancient Hittites, for example, it
was part of a magic rite to cure impotence or homosexuality. A magical formula then confirmed that he
was cured and that all female elements had been expunged. It is often difficult to differentiate where,
when, and how archery was practiced “for its own
sake.” The links with hunting, warfare, and ritual are never far away, but they have throughout history often
been invoked as a rationalization for practicing shooting for pleasure.
Tutankhamen’s tomb, discovered in Egypt in 1922
by Howard Carter (1873–1939), revealed, among other
artifacts for hunting, bows, arrows, quivers, arm
guards, and a bow case belonging to the king’s hunting
chariot. Drawings show that the king hunted with bow
and arrow from a sitting or standing position, and also
from a moving chariot. He displayed these hunting
skills not out of economic necessity, but for pure enjoyment. These royal hunting scenes also symbolized the
king’s military preparedness and his physical fitness.
The motif of the king hunting with bow and arrow
in a two-wheeled chariot is also frequently found in Ancient Mesopotamia, where King Asshurnasirpal was depicted in 9th- and 7th-century B.C.E. reliefs, performing
his hunting skills before spectators.
Archery contests are described in Homer’s epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. A series of sporting contests were organized in honor of the Greek hero Patroclus, who had been killed by Hector during the siege of
Troy. As part of these funeral games, Achilles had a
ship’s mast set up in the sandy soil, with a pigeon tied
to it by one leg, for the archery contest. Teucrus, who
won first shot, hit the ribbon and the pigeon flew off.
The second archer, Meriones, snatched the bow from
Teucrus and aimed at the bird as it circled in the
clouds. His arrow struck the bird in the chest, went
right through its body, and came down to bury its tip in
the ground at the archer’s feet. This scene is an early
predecessor of popinjay shooting, which appeared on
the program of the modern Olympic Games in 1900
and 1920.
Roman soldiers trained in archery but excelled
more in handling the sword. Until the 5th century C.E.
Roman legionaries shot their bows by drawing the
string to the chest, instead of the longer draw to the
face, which gives the arrow far more accuracy. Saint Sebastian, a Roman officer of the Imperial Guard, was
martyred by being pierced with arrows because of his
Christian faith around C.E. 300. He became the patron
saint of many medieval archery guilds.
Archery seems to have been among the first sports
for which records were set. A Turkish inscription from
the 13th century praises Sultan Mahmud Khan for a
shot of 1,215 arrow lengths. A 17th-century miniature
also portrays archers on Istanbul’s Place of Arrows,
where shots of astounding length were recorded.
Just as Attila and his Huns had terrorized the eastern
borders of Europe with his horsemen-archers in the 5th
century, Genghis Khan rode westward with his Mongolian cavalry in the 13th century. The Mongols used powerful composite bows, and their archery tradition survives in present-day Mongolia, where champion archers
enjoy much prestige. The so-called Mongolian draw or
thumb lock for drawing the bowstring refers to this cultural heritage.
Kyudo, the traditional Japanese art of archery, is a
branch of Zen Buddhism, in which the bow and arrow
are used as a means to achieve a spiritual goal via physical and mental discipline. The famous samurai warriors were not only expert swordsmen but also skillful
archers. They practiced shooting from a galloping
horse, which is still known today as yabusame. A gallery
in one of the ancient religious temples in Kyoto served
as a shooting range in the so-called Oyakazu contest,
which took place between 1606 and 1842 and consisted
of shooting a maximum number of arrows in a period
of 24 hours through an aperture of 4.5 meters (14 feet,
9 inches) without touching the walls of the gallery. Interest in this contest dropped off after 1686, when an
archer scored 8,132 successes with 13,053 arrows; it
seemed virtually impossible to break this record.
The Toxophilite Society of London, formed in 1781
for the practice of archery as a sport, sparked the great
revival of archery at the end of the 18th century and influenced later societies. At that time the game varied
from one society to another, but rules for scoring, the
number of arrows to be shot, and the distances for
shooting slowly evolved in an attempt to standardize
the sport of competitive archery. Archery, until then
linked with the lower classes, was now rapidly adopted
by the wealthy “leisure class.” The archery field thus became an arena of fashion, coquetry, and elegance.
In England, the first Grand National Meeting was
held at York in 1844. It was agreed to shoot a “York
Round,” which consisted of shooting 72 arrows at 100
yards (91 meters), 48 at 80 yards (73 meters), and 24 at
60 yards (55 meters). The championship of Great
Britain is still based on these rules, decided upon by
the Archers of the United Kingdom. Women competed
for the first time in the second Grand National Archery
Meeting of 1845, although some had already been
members of various societies previously. Queen Victoria herself, before her accession to the throne, had been
both a patron of the Queen’s Royal St. Leonard’s
Archers and had actively shot with them.
The English archery tradition spread to the United
States, where the first archery club was founded in 1828
on the banks of the Schuylkill River, under the name
the United Bowmen of Philadelphia.
In the United States, the Civil War (1861–1865)
helped renew interest in archery. After the war, former
Confederate soldiers were no longer permitted to use
firearms. Two war veterans, the brothers William
(1846–1918) and Maurice (1844–1901) Thompson
spent the period from 1866 to 1868 in the wilderness of
Georgia’s swamps and Florida’s Everglades, living
mostly on the game they killed with bow and arrow.
Maurice Thompson’s book The Witchery of Archery,
published in 1878, captured their love of the sport. The
book was widely read and interest in archery spread
throughout the country. American archery tackle had
rapidly improved and was now at least of equal quality
to the English. Archery declined, however, almost as
rapidly as it had expanded. Americans sought their
thrills in rival fashionable outdoor games such as tennis, rowing, baseball, and golf.
Archery was also exported to the British colonies. In
Australia, for instance, it was one of the rare socially acceptable competitive sports for women, and was organized in mixed clubs.
Rules and Play
In 1931 the Fédération Internationale de Tir à l’Arc
(FITA) was founded at Lwow, Poland, with representatives from Belgium, France, Poland, and Sweden. This
started a new era in international archery. FITA rules
and regulations were internationally adopted. The
United Kingdom joined one year later. Archery was
voted back into the Olympic Games at the meeting in
Mexico City in 1968.
In the single FITA round, competitors shoot six sets
of six arrows from distances of 90, 70, 50, and 30 meters (98, 77, 55, and 33 yards). Women’s rounds have
distances of 70, 60, 50, and 30 meters (77, 66, 55, and 33
yards). In Olympic competitions a double round is
shot, which comprises 72 arrows at the same distances.
Archery lends itself to a variety of organized forms.
Shooting from a wheelchair, for example, has become a
standard sport among many paraplegic athletes. An alternative to formal target archery is field shooting,
based on conditions as they might be encountered in
hunting. This more “natural” type of archery has also
become standardized and is practiced either as the
Field Round or as the Hunters Round. They include:
• Flight shooting, or shooting for maximum
distance. Distances of over 1,100 meters (1,200
yards) have been recorded.
• Clout shooting, or shooting arrows with a high
trajectory to fall into a target zone, marked by
circles on the ground.
• International crossbow shooting, which is
regulated by the Union Internationale de Tir à
l’Arbalète (UIA), founded in 1956 in Switzerland,
the land of the legendary Wilhelm Tell. Several
variants exist both in traditional crossbow types
(for instance, the bullet crossbow, still practiced
in Belgium) and in the targets.
• Popinjay shooting, practiced both at a tall mast,
from which feathered “birds” have to be shot
down, but and also horizontally in lanes.
Archery across Cultures
In Africa archery is still used for hunting among isolated groups such as the San and Khoi-speaking peoples in the Kalahari and foragers in the rainforests of
Central Africa, who employ rather small bows and poisoned arrowheads.
North American Indians have always been associated with the bow and arrow. Bow types and arrow
forms varied widely among the different tribes. The
Inuits of North Alaska moved archery indoors in winter and used miniature bows and arrows for shooting
at small wooden bird targets hung from the roof of the
communal center. After the Spanish introduced horses
in the 16th century, the Indian archers quickly adapted
themselves to shooting from horseback. Contests included shooting for accuracy at an arrow standing upright in the ground; arrows arranged upright in a ring;
an arrow locked in a tree; a suspended woven grass
bundle or a roll of green cornhusks.
Archery is also widespread in indigenous South
America. Shooting contests are usually organized as
contests of dexterity in which the archers aim at a stationary or a mobile target. Shooting for the longest distance is also common. A thrilling variant (for instance,
among the Yanomamö of the Brazil-Venezuela border)
consists of shooting blunt arrows at opponents who try
to parry their blows.
The British Legacy
The traditional English longbow occupies a special position in archery’s evolution. The secret of the longbow
lay in the natural properties of yew (Taxus baccata),
which was cut in such a way that a layer of sapwood was
left along the flattened back of the bow. The heartwood
of yew withstands compression, while the sapwood is
elastic; both return to their original straightness after
the bow is loosed. This combination had already been
applied in prehistoric times, as shown by Neolithic bows
discovered in a peat bog in Somerset, England. The Saxons used bows for hunting purposes only, not for warfare, as they considered only man-to-man combat with
hand-held weapons appropriate. This would change,
however, after the Norman invasion of England in 1066,
in which William the Conqueror used massed archery.
A more proficient longbow, probably developed by
the Welsh, would make England a first-class military
power. Folktales celebrated the lore of bow and arrow
and featured such legendary bowmen as Robin Hood.
Of special importance for the spread of the English
longbow was the victory in 1346 at Crécy, where the
English archers completely routed the Genoese crossbowmen of the French army. Edward III’s victorious
army, largely outnumbered by the enemy, consisted of
some 13,000 men, half of whom were archers. The yeoman archer became feared and respected and was
therefore imitated on the continent, where the swift
longbow was adopted side by side with the much more
precise but slow-to-load crossbow.
The first law concerning archery was passed in the
12th century; it absolved an archer from charges of
murder or manslaughter if he accidentally killed a man
while practicing. From the 13th to the 16th century all
servants, laborers, yeomen, and other menfolk were enjoined to have their own bows and to practice at the
butts on Sundays and holy days. Target archery thus
gradually lost its exclusive military character and also
became a social pastime. During the reign of Henry
VIII (1491–1547) several acts were promulgated to encourage archery. One ordered all physically fit men under the age of 60, except for clergymen and judges, to
practice shooting the longbow.
Militarily speaking, however, firearms made the
bow obsolete. Despite all the official encouragement
and the publication of a specialized treatise on archery,
called Toxophilus, the Schole of Shootinge in 1545, the
bow’s decline had begun.
Continental Archery
The Frankish knights who joined the First Crusade
(1096–1099) became acquainted with a new weapon,
the crossbow, a bow made by fastening a bow at right
angles to a stock or tiller. This instrument proved so
deadly that it was forbidden to Christians by the second Lateran Council of 1139—another antiwar decree
that has never been observed!
By the end of the 13th century special elite troops
had been set up within the urban militias; these were
the guilds of the crossbow-men. These guilds obtained
their charters and received privileges during the 14th
century. In the course of the 15th century the military
role of the crossbow and longbow guilds was seriously
affected by the invention of firearms. More and more,
the archery guild’s main pursuit was representing the
prestige and status of the leading citizens, thus losing
their role in military training but maintaining their
traditional social status and political power.
Popinjay shooting still is a popular sporting activity in the northern (Flemish) part of France, in Belgium (mostly in Flanders but also in Wallonia) and in
the Catholic southern provinces of the Netherlands. A
few cities in Italy still keep their medieval crossbow
tradition alive. During the magnificent yearly Palio
della Balestra in Gubbio or San Marino, two rival societies of crossbow-men compete each other in full medieval attire, accompanied by their flag wavers and
drum corps. Numerous Schützen (rifle clubs) societies
in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland found their origins in archery guilds.
Archery’s Precarious Olympic History
Originally archery was included in the Olympics only at
the request of the national archery association of the
host country. International rules did not exist; the rules
of the host country were used. Archery first appeared
during the 1900 Games held in Paris and consisted of
horizontal target shooting (tir au berceau) both with
the crossbow and with the handbow and vertical
popinjay shooting (tir à la perche) with the handbow.
Archery reappeared during the 1904 Olympic
Games, when women first participated. All competitors, male and female, were Americans. During the socalled Anthropological Days, American archers competed against a number of “savages” from different
parts of the globe. Where the white Americans put
practically all their arrows at the four-foot-square target board at 40 yards, the “savages” hardly hit the target
at all. This carnivalistic event with racist undertones
upset Olympic head Pierre de Coubertin, who called it
a vulgar experiment not to be repeated.
For the 1908 Olympic Games, held in London, clear,
concise rules of competition were drawn up. The competing teams consisted of women and men from
Britain, men from France, and a lone male competitor
from the United States.
Olympic archery next appeared in 1920 in Antwerp,
Belgium. Archery was Belgium’s national sport par excellence, but it was rather idiosyncratic. Only archers
from Belgium, France, and the Netherlands showed up,
and there were no women’s events.
The codification of international rules in 1931 initiated a new era in international competition and in
1972 archery reappeared at the Munich Olympics. It
has remained an Olympic sport since then and has expanded in terms of number of nations competing and
number of competitors.
Archery is an activity and a sport dating back thousands of years and has been practiced in many cultures. Despite almost entirely disappearing as a military, hunting, and ritual activity, archery still remains a
recreational and competitive sport.And, while it is perhaps too highly specialized to exert mass appeal, loyal
archers will continue to loose their arrows, worldwide.
—ROLAND RENSON
Bibliography: Acker, William R. B. (1965) Japanese Archery.
Rutland, VT: Tuttle. Guttmann, Allen. (1978) From Ritual
to Record. New York: Columbia University Press. Loades,
Mike. (1995) Archery: Its History and Forms. Knebworth,
UK: Running Wolf Productions (video). Paterson, W. F.
(1984) Encyclopaedia of Archery. New York: St. Martin’s
Press. Renson, Roland. (1976) “The Flemish Archery
Gilds: From Defense Mechanisms to Sports Institutions.”
In The History, the Evolution and Diffusion of Sports and
Games in Different Cultures, edited by P. P. De Nayer, M.
Ostyn, and R. Renson. Brussels: BLOSO, pp. 135–159.
Schröter, Harald. (1983) Roger Ascham, Toxophilus: The
Schole of Shootinge. London 1545. St. Augustin: Richarz.

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