The Crusades; Light Armor.

[Tzeentch]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Well, its been criticized by the community of people who wear and study armour, most of whom are involved in at least one of living history, reenactment, historical martial arts, or mock combat with historical kit. The barriers to studies like this are that very few people study arms and armour at universities, that not all of those are interested in getting advice from people without a PhD or know where to find it, that few experts outside the academy live close to the right university, that money is very short in the humanities, and that human-subject-research guidelines aimed at preventing the next Milligram Experiment or Tuskeegee Siphilis Experiment often make it very hard for humanists to experiment with arms and armour.

-- They shouldn't be chasing medieval history money (such as it is), they should be aiming for grants by the military medicine folks who would be interested in alternative and historical load carriage designs that might be applicable to new body armor.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Tzeentch

-- They shouldn't be chasing medieval history money (such as it is), they should be aiming for grants by the military medicine folks who would be interested in alternative and historical load carriage designs that might be applicable to new body armor.

But that adds yet another organization that has to be persuaded to join in,* and such a study doesn't have much to attract anyone's armed forces. Its fairly obvious that marching with weights on your legs or pressure on your abdomen is tiring, and I'm pretty sure that there are studies available to quantify this. But I don't think modern infantry carry much weight on their legs, precisely because its tiring.

The historical solution was pretty simple: you didn't march in your leg armour, and when possible you didn't march in armour at all. Soldiers with full leg armour generally had at least one horse and at least one servant.

The basic problem is that the people accustomed to publishing their work rarely have the right skills and interests to study something like this, while the people with the right sills rarely have time, energy, and inclination to publish. Its frustrating, but its a wicked problem. The other thing is that universities these days have vast publicity machines which experts outside of academe don't have access to, so their work is very visible whether or not its very good.

* And civilian universities and armed forces tend to get on very poorly, for tribal reasons.

[safisher]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Well, its been criticized by the community of people who wear and study armour, most of whom are involved in at least one of living history, reenactment, historical martial arts, or mock combat with historical kit.

Ahem. These "people" range anywhere from complete cranks and idiots and posers, to biased and unscientific amateurs with an axe to grind, to surprisingly competent amateur researchers.

The barriers to studies like this are that very few people study arms and armour at universities, that not all of those are interested in getting advice from people without a PhD or know where to find it, that few experts outside the academy live close to the right university, that money is very short in the humanities, and that human-subject-research guidelines aimed at preventing the next Milligram Experiment or Tuskeegee Siphilis Experiment often make it very hard for humanists to experiment with arms and armour.

The other barrier is that there are far too many unknowns to make accurate, acceptable, and useful observations. Of all mentioned, this is the foremost.

When these tests are conducted (as a few have been) they are criticized by the reenactors for making the "wrong" assumptions and by other professionals for being conducted at all. Why spend money on this stuff when it would be better to digitize some archive, or hire archivists, or pay ME to research in an exotic locale during my sabbatical?

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by safisher

Ahem. These "people" range anywhere from complete cranks and idiots and posers, to biased and unscientific amateurs with an axe to grind, to surprisingly competent amateur researchers.

Well, yes. And studies like this can also go badly when academics pick the wrong non-academic experts. But based on two years of research, I don't think that there is a huge reservoir of expertise on armour at North American universities. Many academics working on armour are amateurs too, because its not their specialty. The other difficulty is that humanists often make mistakes of experiment design, while scientists often neglect historical context. The ideal experiment would involve scientists, humanists, armourers, and armour-wearers but organizing something like that is very difficult.

On second thought, I actually think that Tzeentch was right about approaching military research institutions. The Defense Academy Warbow Trials, the Great Warbow longbow tests, Horsfall et al. on stabbing, and Godehardt et al. on Scythian bows all involved researchers at a military college or university, and all were solid research (Gabriel and Metz is more problematic). For some reason, there are lots of good studies of bows by academics, but few of armour and hand weapons.

Originally Posted by safisher

The other barrier is that there are far too many unknowns to make accurate, acceptable, and useful observations. Of all mentioned, this is the foremost.

I think you are overstating this. We could, for example, do experiments that concluded that a set of replicas of mid-15th-century German harness, worn by fit adults with the proper arming garments, had effect so-and-so, or that weights strapped to the legs have effects thus-and-such. But it is harder to do before 1430 or so because of the lack of surviving armour and the lack of evidence for arming garments. Its also possible that it was common for poorer men-at-arms to wear badly fitted armour ... Robert MacPherson believes that late 14th century body armour constricted the waist between the hips and the ribs, and he is one of the leading experts.

[Tzeentch]

-- Quantitative studies face a lot of resistance in most social sciences (thank the postmodern/critical perspective for that) so right off the bat you have a problem. Archeologists and others are also big hoarders of data for when they "eventually" publish and avoid being 'scooped' so there's all sorts of stuff sitting around in typewriter drafts and stored in boxes in some professors office.

-- Those who are interested and able in this have little incentive to work with the reenactor community for a number of reasons, including widespread use of anachronistic technologies and methods, a "I could do better, but won't" attitude among some, a general lack of appreciation for good experimental design, and no obvious funding source. The more rigorous people are also guilty of self inflicted wounds in this regard with their ridiculously arcane and fragmented academic community (frex specialty journals like the Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies are hilariously hard to get a hold of even on interlibrary loan at a college).

-- An open-access peer reviewed journal for experimental archeology would be a MASSIVE leap forward for everyone. but I doubt we'll see anything like that until the old guard on both sides die.

[safisher]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

I think you are overstating this . . . But it is harder to do before 1430 or so because of the lack of surviving armour and the lack of evidence for arming garments.

When I said, "there are far too many unknowns to make accurate, acceptable, and useful observations" you simply repeated my assertion in another form. Strange. The lack of data is a major obstacle, something the armor research community simply needs to accept.

As for calling academics who do this sort of thing "amateurs, too." I'd say rather that you have a bizarre definition for "professional."

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Saying "all armour is stifling in hot weather" wouldn't bother me, but your claim seemed to be "armour is not stifling in hot weather".

Armour is no more stifling in hot weather than heavy clothing. I can wear both all day in the middle of an Australian summer. It isn't comfortable but nothing about wearing armour is comfortable. It isn't enough of a problem to bother with explicit rules in GURPS to accommodate it.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

You should probably stop looking. Historically the mid-1200s are much too early for anything but little drips and draps of plate. No iron/steel breastplates at all.

Guillaume le Breton wrote that Richard the Lionheart wore a "plate of worked iron" under his hauberk during his joust with William de Barres. There's no way to tell whether it was a whole breastplate or just a pectoral.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Armour is no more stifling in hot weather than heavy clothing. I can wear both all day in the middle of an Australian summer.

To which I say "More evidence you are actually a clockwork automaton"; that would likely put me in the hospital if I was doing anything more than lying prostrate in the shade drinking cold water (and even then, with the lack of evaporation it might put me in the hospital anyways).

Last time I was in Oz was the year the desert winds were blowing right over the mountains, so it was reaching 50C in Sydney in places around Christmas (sunny places, admittedly). I was barely functional at a modest amble in t-shirt and shorts and lots of water, and only then because of the ludicrously low humidity. Block the sweat evaporation with obstructing clothing and I'd have had heat stroke again. (with the low humidity it was more like a wet bulb temperature in the 20-25C range - all it takes is changing relative humidity up to 40% to bring wet bulb temperature over 35C in those conditions, which is lethal)

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by safisher

When I said, "there are far too many unknowns to make accurate, acceptable, and useful observations" you simply repeated my assertion in another form. Strange. The lack of data is a major obstacle, something the armor research community simply needs to accept.

I think you know well that "we have enough data starting about the year 1430" and "we don't have enough data" are very different claims. Even before then, one could experiment with the handful of likely possibilities. Not all will be significant.