On the frontiers of Europe, not all musket balls were round; accuracy and penetration of various types of military small arms munitions from the mid seventeenth century to the early eighteenth century

Abstract

While many armies began to adopt large calibre weapons in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, frontier conflicts in the outer reaches of Europe and in North America have provided evidence for the retention of smaller calibres, particularly evidenced through the archaeological recovery of ammunition. Present within these assemblages are various forms of non-standard ammunition — i.e. not round — including bullets with casting sprues still attached at the time of firing. This paper provides an assessment of the combat effectiveness of these various types of ammunition through a series of firing tests using replicated ammunition.