[Iain]

Personally I think these heavy shields were paired with spears for the vast majority of fighters. Few men would be likely to carry swords and those that did were often mounted and did always carry shields (if they were heavy cavalry and in the model of Bornu etc).

I am attaching a number of photos.

First peoples from Bauchi state, all photos taken from African Knights by Cairns. My scanner wasn't working so I had to snap these with a camera, however the original image quality was not great in the book so you aren't loosing all that much.

[EDIT: for some reason the forum reversed my picture order - 1 is at the bottom etc.)

1. Irigwe horsemen on the left, Berom with greaves on the right.

2. Jawa (Jarawa) with shield.

3. On right sketch of Musgum reed shield, on left Kuru warrior, Berom tribe, shield made from strips of palm bark.

4. Borom (Kanam) shield of elephant ear.

5. Berom chief.

The rest are photos I had archived I'm not sure of the original source except that they were online.

6. Hausa shield.