Over or Under?

[LusitanianWolf]

The festival is a mass event and as such it has to comply with law, so everything that is in programme, including reenactments of armed clashes, is legally covered. I have only found a set of rules concerning such clashes during a different event, but I'm quite sure it's the same or almost the same for each and every event. So, reenactors who want to participate in such a fight are obliged to buy "accident insurance" (I don't know how to translate it better, but I think it's self-explanatory) and they agree to participate in it on their own responsibility.

As for injuries, I don't know. On the one hand, clashes seem to be pretty violent, so the chances of being injured seem to be quite high. On the other hand, those people are well armoured, and their arms are replicas, not real weapons, so their damage value, so to speak, is as low as possible (official rules of the festival forbid both the participants and the public to posses weapons, including melee weapons, in the area of the festival).

Thank you! I have a cousin living in Poland, maybe in the near future (next years) I'll pay him a visit that by coincidence will be at the same time as the Wolin Festival :P

Totaly unrelated note: Broken Crescent Rocks!!!!!

Back to topic:
My point is - if people are able to use it today with success under free full contact conditions (as oposed to choreographed fighting as in movies and demos) is because it works so there is no reason to assume that wouldn't have worked for ancient people as well.

Another video: duel/sparring with spears and using both underhand and overhand.

[cultist]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb6VV2E5gQk

[Bodeni]

I never said underhand was impossible, just that overhand makes more sense and correlates with historical sources (from early medieval all the way back to classical)

Some criticisms I have of many reenacting techniques are that we don't have 100% accurate equipment, due to safety mostly, and although the aesthetic effects are minimal, the way this affects the fighting technique is noticeable. Another is that, even the most devoted of us do not get to go through both the fighting drills and the day to day labours that would have a huge impact on our physiology. A final, and by far the most poignant, is that you're not facing death. This is something that affects all sorts of simulation, from reenacting to video games. Knowing that death is a very real and, depending on the warrior's religious views, very final problem.
I mention this because in both RTW and in reenacting everyone acts far too eager and gung ho. Reading tales of heroics, we often forget that these stories are there to help people overcome the fear they would face. In truth, we have no idea how the people of this era fought.

[antisocialmunky]

I wouldn't say that people today have no idea how people fought back then, you probably have as much knowledge as a non combatant had back then. If you look at war today, most people have no idea how battles in modern warfare are fought and managed. They just know how the soldiers look, how they are armed, and some general idea that they shoot at other guys with guns and rockets and stuff just like people on this forum know how hoplites were equipped and have some general idea that they pushed and stabbed each other.

War, combat, and life or death situations breed a certain type of pragmatism that isn't readily evident in other parts of human experience because complexity and cleverness tend to break down in the face of trying to manage chaos. So it seems to me that you can get a pretty general picture of how these battles worked by just thinking through it and eliminating anything that seems too complex (unreliable) or dangerous (stupid).

At least that's my point of view.

PS. I'm wondering what people thing about this guy's ideas on Hoplite Combat:
http://hollow-lakedaimon.blogspot.co...le-part-1.html
http://hollow-lakedaimon.blogspot.co...le-part-2.html

I think its one of the more realistic takes on hoplite combat because it seems to make sense from what's been observed in modern reenactment of medieval combat (which is magnitudes more common than hoplite reenactment). It also seems to make sense of other pieces of hoplite kit such as why highly-curved, single-edged chopping swords or daggers were preferred hoplite side arms.