I should add that I'm not disputing infantry fighting with heavy loads. I mean, thureophoroi were fast-moving 'medium' infantry, and the thureos is freakin' heavy. But they pretty clearly *did* that. My guess is just that they were plenty tired afterwards.
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In an ideal world, we'd have for Greek and Roman shields what we have for Gallic ones (also Iberian caetra) - a few sets of bosses where the rivets still connect to the handles, giving a fixed, clean way to measure thickness at the core.
NMB N 2902 (see Lejars, La Tene: un site, un mythe 3 (2013)), a Middle La Tene shield boss, still has the handle attached by the original rivet to the wing of the original boss; the wood would have originally been 9-10mm thick at that point.
