[Keir Maxwell]

re Lance use

There are some very interesting articiles around on Lance use pre the invention of the Stirrups. One that I read in Slingshot (Wargaming mag) was by a guy who jousts etc - and does it without stirrups on occasion. Sure he makes no issue of the fact that stirrups are really useful but he still can joust without them and his descripotion of why is very enlightning. It also confirms the widely held view that Companions were Lance equipped shock cavalry.

Companions are differentiated from all the cavalry around them by the fact that they are shock cavalry. If you give them a spear you are removing their historical role and I believe going agaisnt the overwhelming wieght of evidence - shock, lance armed, cavalry existed for over 1000 years before the arrival of the stirrup and superseded chariots in this role. Equipping Companions with a spear makes them the same as all the rest of ther cavalry from this period which the ancients differentiated then from - which they were not. Another example of early shock cavalry is Lydian Lancers.

If Companions let go of their lance (Sarrissa) at contact then why do we have descriptions of them fighting with broken Sarrissa? A Sarrissa had a butt spike on it and after it broke at impact Companions would often use the shortened lenght of wood with the butt spike as the spear head instead of drawing swords. You can theorise that this is impossible but for some reasons the ancients tell us it happened.

Sure you can equip Companions with spear if you want but you are going against the the generally accepted view that its was the Sarrissa was an early Lance and the Companions used it in a shock role.

Also it takes very little time to adopt tecnhonlogical inovations. The Avars turned up in europe ~500AD with the stirrup and it was adopted very rapidly by the Byzantines. Would Arco do less when everyone around them had stirrups. To me this is like giving Mictlan copper armour when they are surrounded by peoples (including indie's) using superior tech. Treating nations technology in abstract from each other is not very realistic. It was the isolation of Meso Ameriacn cultures that definied their poor level of military technology. Take them out of isloation and things bcome far rosier.

re. .tga's

I've been doing work on tga over the Last couple of days - capturing the images, cleaning them up etc and it does take awhile. Are the .tga's going to made generally available? I have vast amounts to work on and it would save me alot of time.

Cheers

Keir

[ January 20, 2004, 20:34: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]