The Crusades; Light Armor.

[jimminy]

Sorry! I tend to post and run. An innate fear of internet forums. I need to remind myself how polite this one is...

I bow to anyone's greater expertise. My comments about holes in the armpits were inspired by Dr Timothy Dawson's take on the Byzantine kavadion, based on descriptions by Nikeforos Fokas in his tenth century Praecepta Militaria. Soldiers could pin the arms back and poke their arms out the armpit holes during combat for greater freedom of movement. The epilorikion, or padded surcoat, seems to have been similar, according to a glance at Dawson.

You can see a picture on Dawson's rather cute site.

He has an article in Byzantine Women: Varieties of Experience 800-1200 by Lynda Garland, and talks about armpit-holes on p. 54.

Of course, this all depends on how much you trust Dawson, and it's hard to find the pertinent translated snippets of Nikeforos Fokas. Dawson is affiliated with the dreaded Osprey Publishing (ominous musical cue).

And now for some meaningless circumstantial evidence and hearsay: The gambeson I have with holes in the armpits is so comfortable, I wouldn't want to swap back to one without them. It breathes so much better and it is so much easier to move in.

I note that another gambeson I have has no padding in the armpits anyway, even if it is sealed with cloth there. It's probably a hard place to pad.

Anyway, I'll happily bow to anyone who knows better. There are some real experts on medieval armour here and I wouldn't pretend to know better. I mentioned armpit holes because I had seen Dawson's arguments and I happened to get a reproduction gambeson with armpit-holes that I absolutely love, not that the latter means anything in regards to history. Certainly when it's hot, I think armpit holes would help. If the rest of a coat was heavily padded and the armpit was just thin cloth, and you were sweating and fighting and wearing it in all weather, that cloth at the armpit might be the first thing to rot out anyway. Then you would quickly find how nice armpit holes are to have in a padded coat while you're wandering the desert!

The key point for the original poster, though, is: the experts and me agreed on heat in armour not being as much of an issue as some GMs might claim, armpit holes or no :p

Thanks everyone on these forums for being so polite, and I'll have to make sure I don't just post and run next time!

[DanHoward]

I don't trust Dawson at all. More than once I've seen him make reference to a text and when I've gone looking for it, I've discovered that it says no such thing. Here is a perfect example:

http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...&postcount=151

His other problem is that he takes illustrations and pretends that he knows whether the garment or armour in the illustration is the same item that is being referred to in a text.

You also need to be clearer about the terms you are using. A gambeson can be two completely different garments. One is a heavily-padded standalone armour and the other is a very lightly padded garment designed to be worn under mail. To avoid confusion I tend to use the term "gambeson" to refer to the former and "aketon" to refer to the latter.

[jimminy]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

I don't trust Dawson at all. More than once I've seen him make reference to a text and when I've gone looking for it, I've discovered that it says no such thing.

Oops! The Osprey alumni strike again. I admit I did worry when I didn't see 'Dr Dawson' showing up on any university faculty websites, and found his list of publications only on his own hosted page... Search for reputable medieval military or cultural historians like John France or John Haldon and you'll see them appearing on all sorts of academic sites in proud, effortless testament to their academic (and peer-reviewed) achievements.

If Dawson's misrepresenting his sources in published texts, that's just poor form. He's breaking some of the basic rules of academia. I'd hoped the book on Byzantine women from King's College his essay appeared in, cited above, meant he had something to show for himself.* Apparently not. Although, he did also appear in a book by John Haldon, 'Byzantine Warfare', so some of his stuff must be refereed. Perhaps he writes more carefully sometimes, for refereed publications, and less carefully for Osprey?

Anyway, thanks for pointing that out to me, Dan! Dawson seems to get a lot of traction on the internet. I've seen his name appear in a few history blogs, re-enactment forums and the like as a cited authority. More's the pity if he's dodgy.

Mr Dawson, if you misrepresent your sources then you can have your armpit holes back. I don't want them anymore!

*Judith Herrin was in the book too! She wrote a popular history of Byzantium I really quite liked. Has my faith in Judith led me astray?

I should have noticed that at the start of the book Dawson's bio is by far the least impressive, starting out with his 'chequered history', moving on to never mentioning where he earned his qualifications... or indeed, mentioning any qualifications at all... and finishing off by plugging his cute website. But perhaps he is trying to appear informal to appeal to the 'keeping it real', home-grown, do-it-yourself ethic of the re-enactor crowd.

EDIT: Oh, and just to be clear! In the posts above, when I said gambeson, I was talking 100% about under-armour padding, what Dan defines as an aketon. It's all rather more hot and unwieldy with the padding and the armour on top, and for that I, at home as a non-expert collector, quite appreciate any vents here and there that make the thing more comfortable. Might be less of an issue without the extra layer of metal above it... But the armpit holes are also less of a problem, in theory, if you are wearing a hauberk that gives some protection down there. But this is an observation on modern dress ups stuff, not any claim about history.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

OK, Bruno's heavy clothing is heavier than what most of us wear...

A horrible combination of lower-TL equipment and some really horrible local weather conditions. Just updating the coat and boots should make a huge difference but since they're both still good enough, I keep putting it off...

There's a reason why the second it's about 0C here in the spring, you see people in the streets in shorts and t-shirts. It's not that we really think it's short-sleeves weather, it's just we're so tired of all the dang clothing.

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Bruno

A horrible combination of lower-TL equipment and some really horrible local weather conditions.

I'm trying to remember Bruno - are you one of the Saskatoon GURPSers? Or are you from one of the cold parts of Canada?

(Saskatchewanian inside joke translation: Sask is cold, but complaining about it too loudly inevitably conjures someone from the territories out of the permafrost to shame you over being an utter pansy.)

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by martinl

I'm trying to remember Bruno - are you one of the Saskatoon GURPSers? Or are you from one of the cold parts of Canada?

(Saskatchewanian inside joke translation: Sask is cold, but complaining about it too loudly inevitably conjures someone from the territories out of the permafrost to shame you over being an utter pansy.)

Outskirts of Ottawa - far enough out that we enjoy none of the warmth from the downtown core and rivers, high enough up the valley side that we're in the prevailing winds instead of sheltered, and close enough to the city and rivers that we get hit by the disturbed weather and extra precipitation.

But Saskatoon gets more very cold days a year and the prairie winds are ferocious; we get thrown around in random directions while trying to find our cars under the snowbanks.

The territories always win though :)

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by Bruno

A horrible combination of lower-TL equipment and some really horrible local weather conditions. Just updating the coat and boots should make a huge difference but since they're both still good enough, I keep putting it off...

There's a reason why the second it's about 0C here in the spring, you see people in the streets in shorts and t-shirts. It's not that we really think it's short-sleeves weather, it's just we're so tired of all the dang clothing.

That list of clothing sounds like something you'd maybe use here in winter, if you went to the top of a mountain.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

That list of clothing sounds like something you'd maybe use here in winter, if you went to the top of a mountain.

Except for the low TL stuff, which I'm not sure why you'd use. Of course, I'm not sure why you'd go to the top of a mountain either, considering that all the comfortable places to sit and lie, not to mention sources of food, entertainment and opportunities for social interaction, all exist in the urban lowlands.