An introduction and a request.

[PedroRamirez]

Hello all.
I'm new to the forum but not this kind of combat. Though we in the SCA are slow to pick up on these new fangled things like "manuals" some of us do catch on...
I was wondering if anyone had some decent photos of period bucklers, roundshields and targets that they could pass along?
I've made a few but I like to have more inspiration if for no other reason than to file them in the "dream projects" box.

[Keith Culbertson]

Welcome Pedro, I hope ARMA will expand your horizons! You can see bucklers in the I33 manuscript breakdown in the resourses section of the ARMA pages----it is our oldest known MS. Capo Ferro has a section, and I am forgetting several others...

Dig around and have fun,

[Brian Hunt]

Most of what I have seen from museums are pavises, not regular shields. I have also seen pictures of some targes and a few bucklers. There are some good books on shields and the archeology behind them such as the Anglo Saxon shield and there is a really good book on shields that is written in German, but I don't remember the name of it off the top of my head.

Here is a good website with info on viking round shields.

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~chrisandpeter/shield/shield.html

If you are looking for books on how to fight with a shield, we don't have much information on how they fought with a shield in medieval times. We have the I.33 manual for medieval buckler use, but now known surving shield manual. We have examples of shield fighting with German dueling shields, iconagraphical evidence from paintins and statues, and we have your 16th century Italian Target manuals. That is about it.

Hope this helps.

Brian Hunt
GFS