| Jean Henri Chandler wrote: | ||||||||
Like I said, I'm by no means an expert on that, but you might find this article interesting, it made sense to me. http://www.thearma.org/spotlight/GTA/motions_and_impacts.htm The second and third pages get into a lot of detail about pommels specifically http://www.thearma.org/spotlight/GTA/motions_and_impacts2.htm http://www.thearma.org/spotlight/GTA/motions_and_impacts3.htm [ Linked Image ] 1.
You misunderstood me, I'm afraid I wasn't clear. I was referring to 34" in total length, which includes swords made for quite a long period of time, at least a millennia.
Matthew is a great researcher, I have corresponded with him before and learned a great deal from him. I would not have any trouble believing this. You might want to consider however that the Romans were literally mass producing swords by the thousands for centuries. Standards across the board declined in the last couple of hundred years of the Empire. So they may have very well been manufacturing very crude weapons indeed. Similar phenomena existed in Europe in the Renaissance, your so called "munitions" armor. Many halberds and bill blades were cranked out which were little more than jagged pieces of metal. None of that however means that finer quality weapons did not exist, nor that the quality didn't make a difference. It did. There is a reason why the Swiss halberds were often tempered steel for example.
I'm much more familiar with swords from the 8th - 16th centuries but I can assure you, within that period these weapons were far more than a sharpened pointed piece of metal. I'm sure many "sword-like-objects" existed, but so did the dynamic handling, balanced weapons you hear so much about on this forum. They were made that way for good reason. (and I suspect they were made that way well back into the Iron Age and probably the Bronze Age as well, though Bronze weapons were different in many ways) I can't think of any two-handed use "long swords" in the bronze age, either, though there were some found in the Iron Age. Long quillons seem kind of pointless to me, other than as another striking element for the user. |
With all due respect, that is because you don't know anything about HEMA. If you understood how these weapons were used, you would understand how critically important they were. Long quillons protect your hand in any number of counters, displacements and other contact with your opponents weapon. Every part of a sword was made for a specific purpose, you really don't want to add weight unless there is a compelling reason.
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Complex hilts? Nice, but not necessary. |
Lol. Not unless you want to use a weapon like a rapier and still keep your hand...
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Just as a personal example here, i once owned a close reproduction of what Oakeshott described as the "archetypical" medieval sword. It was a very, very nice sword, but I found it almost useless as a weapon. It was sharp, pointy, and had all that lovely dynamic handling that we talk so fondly off. Damned thing felt like it was floating on a portable anti-grav unit . . . . . In the end, I found that it couldn't cut as well as a $20 machete. It could thrust, if you could hit with it, but the POB was so far back that is was whippy *in my hands*. I have a cheap Del Tin bronze sword (not historically accurate at all) that would be a much better weapon for me. YMMV |
Unfortunately, just because a weapon is alleged to be a "close reproduction" doesn't mean it's in fact an accurate one. Most repicas, even the most expensive ones, as little as ten years ago were not even in the ball-park of the historical weapons they were meant to be replicas of, even on paper. Only in the last few years have fairly realistic replicas become widely available, and even now many quite expensive and well marketed swords are really barely worthy of the name.
I own an Albion Constable and I can assure you it cuts vastly better than any machete, (I can show you videos if you like) more importantly it also is correctly balanced so that I can use German or Italian Renaissance era martial arts techniques, and cut or thrust into my opponent while protecting myself. It is extremely light and fast and has a deadly point that could easily pierce the skull or rib-cage of any human being, and long enough to easily cut off the hand of someone trying to cut me with a machete :)
You should investigate how swords were used a bit more so that you can understand what they were, and that in turn will help you understand ancient History much better, it certainly did me :).
J[/quote]
Wow! That was . . . . enlightening. :-)
I don't mean to be a personal attack of any kind, BTW.
I am a historian and archaeologist by trade, and I do find that experimental archaeology is an excellent technique for better understanding history and culture change.
I do want to answer each of your points specifically, but I might miss some of them since I am just a wee bit tipsy at the moment.
1. I did read the arma articles, and I don't see where they specifically address method of pommel attachment, rather than distribution of mass and inertia.
2. Regarding weapons quality---of course there were higher and lower qualities of weapons. You can still see that today, in comparing, say, a semi-custom Les Baer 1911 to a production line "Springfield Armory" GI 1911. But even in very high quality swords, for examples, there were large differences in hardness, for example, across (and through) blade surfaces, and between blades. Indeed, some exquisite Medieval swords would not have passed muster by current standards for hardness and flexibility.
3. Dynamic handling----everything depends on context. what is good in one era or geo-historical context may be piss poor in another.
4. Long quillons-----wow, it's amazing to me that everyone besides medieval Europeans was so backward. Poor Middle-easterners, Central Asians, and East Asians never developed the long quillon. Seems to me like it was more of a personal preference than a requisite. I have seen quite a few European swords with "relatively" short quillons.
5. rapiers-----of course those beautiful complex hilts offer some protection for the hand---but their whole reason for being (okay, maybe not "whole") arose from the use of swords in a civilian or "lightly armoured" context, where heavy armor and shields were little used. I love compound hilts, as items of aesthetic value, but would rather have gauntlet and simply hilted sword, if I had to use a sword.
6. I won't say what replica I was using, but I will say that it was less than 3 years ago, and came from a top maker. Indeed, it was a wonderful sword. My point was, simply, that not every weapon, no matter its quality, was suitable for every user or every context.
7. And I can guarantee you that I *would* use and *have used* a machete to cut things that *would* hurt your constable, simple because the machete is cheap and replaceable---the constable is neither. It is a flesh-cutter, and an excellent thruster. The tasks that I would give a machete (or khukuri) would be considered sword abuse, and I would respect the Constable too much to ever offer it that abuse. I was a surveying technician for a while, and we used machetes every day. We cut quite substantial hardwood trees down with them, and every day I got in a few minutes of martial arts practice with a pair. :-)
8. I guess I'll go out and investigate that "historic sword usage" thing you mentioned, since it appears that the last 20 years of cross-cultural arms and armour research haven't accomplished anything useful.
In the end, I really have to apologize. You don't know me, and you don't know my research methods or background of scholarship. I really don't mean to prick so many sore points with you. I shouldn't have brought up so many issues . . . . .
Edited to add: Sorry for getting so far off topic. The bone-pommeled sword is quite amazing. I am always fascinated by how people adapt various types of blades for local tastes and usages. The cross-guard (lower hilt) on the pictured weapon seems especially thick. One wonders what the reason for this was? To create an adequately large surface for decoration? To create a certain type of handling? Or to allow the relatively fragile bone sufficient strength to maintain coherency during use?