The Swords

[Grimnir69]

I agree about the features and likely use of katzbalgers and just about everything you said. However plate armour was still in use amongst the Swiss and German troops and the almost completely round point is a bit odd. Even type X and XIII had a bit of a point with at least little bit of thrusting capabilities.

Armour was used pretty late actually. Just look at these images from 1614, that I've put up, where early rapiers are used against plate armour, alongside of pikes and muskets:

http://www.hroarr.com/temp/wallhausen/

Most attacks are against gaps and seams in armour, as expected.

Quite an interesting set, isn't it? :D

[blossfechter]

http://www.st-max.org/images/woodcut...lsoldner-5.jpg
http://www.st-max.org/images/woodcut...ts-Doppels.jpg
http://www.st-max.org/images/woodcut...s-n-Weibel.jpg
http://www.st-max.org/images/woodcut...ed/Edelman.jpg

This is what I found in a google search. These look to be mid to late 1500's though.

[Grimnir69]

I have tons of Landsknecht images. I'll see what I can find. :)

[u1ysses]

Academic degrees are (at least were I come from) meant as a kind of quality control. This system does of course not work flawlessly. Sometimes complete idiots are able to somehow slip through the net (you are the best example). We even had cases of fraud where people got degrees which could hardly read or write.

I'm well aware of why there are academic degrees, but can you name a single degree you'd accept as proof of mastery of the typology of swords? Some sort of archaeology or museum studies thing, except the academic literature on those subjects is extremely flawed, due to some faulty experimental studies (John Coles in Anglo-American archaeology) and the passing down of gentlemanly Victorian ideas about weaponry.

Nevertheless, as flawed as the system may be, it is the only one we have atm. Its that or no quality control at all.

No, the academic system is shorthand for establishing the authority of people who have proven themselves through proper study in their field. What we have here is you dismissing someone who studied the field of sword typology extensively because they don't have a degree. You've got it backwards, dumb ass.

The question that arises is, if Mr. Oakeshott studied medieval weapons full time for years, why did he not acquire at least a masters degree while he was at it? He must have known that doing so would have had a lot of benefits, not only for the acceptance of his work, but also to make access to scientific institutions and museums in europe much much easier.

Oakeshott is the typical example of the need for an outsider perspective to break up what the in clique is doing. Oakeshott took the functional evolution of the blade seriously, rather than dismissing is it as a crude stylistic change, and joined that work with the work other scholars had already done on weapon hilts (a more typical stylistic typology in archaeology) and did something scholars weren't doing - building a huge overarching medieval typology.

It would have been nice had he been in an archaeological or museums field (conservation springs to mind) but this was hardly the era of reliable checks and balances on academic perspectives in those fields - Marija Gimbutas was active during the time that Oakeshott was most active doing his 'amateur' research.

But as was already said, this is sidetracking the thread. Discussions on Bullshido's WMA-forum prove to be completely fruitless again and again (at least the ones centered around medieval stuff). And not even funny. I will thus stop my participation in this thread with this post.

If you dislike Oakeshott, you should not be surprised when you get laughed at when your only reason is his lack of a degree in fields for which quality control was light during the period of his study. Oakeshott's not perfect, and I'd be fine dismissing some of his work based on evidence that he was wrong. The italicized part which is what you're lacking.

Honest, I promise to play nicer if you'll stop basing your argument on egregious logical fallacies.