[SCA-AE] Historical Combat resource page by Higgins Museum (Boston, MA)

[L. J. Sparvero]

Hi all,
     The Higgins Armory Museum (in conjunction with students in the
area and the museum's own sword guild) have put together a large
virtual exhibition on armored combat at:
http://www.higgins.org/Research/virtualexhibitions.shtml

They've put up photographs of pieces from their collection,
educational articles, and guides to techniques from original sources.
Also there is the Higgins Sword Guild page:
http://www.higginssword.org (not an SCA group, but you can recognize a
few familiar faces in the photos)

If you are looking to getting into historical combat study, their
online exhibit is a good place to start (and Boston can be a
reasonable weekend trip to see the exhibits and events). But as
always, don't take on faith everything everything in short review
articles (I wish some of them had references). For those that want to
come up with their own interpretations, just happen to have several of
the original sources they used online, and links to others. If that's
not enough, they are having a museum exhibit of Renaissance fencing
books.

Even if you have no desire to get into this, you might want to check
out the neat video clip they put together on Historical Armored
Combat. Go to the virtual exhibits page above, and follow the links to
Techniques of Medieval Armored Combat and then the Armored Combat
Sequence.

-L.J. aka Lyev

Disclaimer: Many historical combat techniques invovle wrestling,
arm-bars, pommel smashes, and other fun things that are intended to
kill, maim, or otherwise severely hurt someone. For good reason many
are illegal for SCA tournament combat. Please check with your marshal
**before** trying them out on the list. The excuse, "But I read about
it in a 15th century sword book" will probably not be enough to keep
them from pulling your authorization card.