Hello all and Best Wishes - I hope 2014 will be even better to you (or maybe even less bitter) than 2013 was.

Here's a thing to treat you (or bore you to death, depending) in this New Year's days : my PhD thesis is now online at this address :
http://www.theses.fr/2013PA010609
(click on "accéder en ligne", top right)

I surrendered and defended it last year (summa cum laude, with unanymous jury congratulations - said jury including experts such as Philippe Contamine or Bertrand Schnerb), and am happy to say that more than a few things in this work have been fueled by discussions and thoughts that stemmed in this place - so please let me thank you all again, most sincerely.

A few things, though :
- it is in French. There's an abstract in English though ("Description en Anglais")
- it has been stripped of almost all images, for obvious copyright issues ; but there are still pictures in it, especially photographs of the objects I studied. And a bit of google-fu (copy/pasting the image captions) should send you straight to what's missing.
- it is *old work*. Writing and finishing a thesis takes a certain amount of time, and this dissertation is merely the reflection of things I (mis)understood four to five years ago - therefore please read it with a gentle eye. Most of its content is probably 'old news' to the regulars here.
- due to time restrictions, I had to limit this work to swords, spears and axes.
- there's still a ton of mistypes and misquotes in it.

Make good use of it, still.

Cheers

Fab

Congratulations Doc. It is always great to have more reading material of good quality available in the heart of winter, especially one like we have upon us this year.

Congratulations from me also!

Although I don't speak French and couldn't read the text, I was quite fascinated by your technical drawings. They gave me precious knowledge and ideas. Yes indeed - a picture says a thousand words.

Thanks for sharing with us.