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Fun shield facts: Hoplites and Peltasts get their names from their shields, not their weapons. A hoplite carries a hoplon, a peltast carries a pelte. Though calling them Dorians and Akoneers would perhaps have been funnier for modern historians. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 20:11
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Well, it'd be confusing them with the Dorians, for one. 
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Sep 9, 2016 20:20
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Firstscion posted:Just a quick question but why was the battle of Yorktown the decisive battle of the American revolution? Before Yorktown, if the British got in trouble, they would fall back to the coast and be supplied/picked up by the Navy. So Cornwallis was doing just that. But the French navy chased away the British force sent to supply Cornwallis, so all of a sudden he was stuck in a swamp with no way out. It took another 2-3 years before the British were willing to talk peace, but there weren't any other major land campaigns in the US because they'd just lost their main army.
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Sep 9, 2016 20:23
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FastestGunAlive posted:I thought the Spanish did win on occasion even without native allies? And even when they didn't, the casualty ratio was still insane (even when considering later victor inflation)? There was Cajamarca, but that was more of a one-sided ambush of Atahualpa and some unarmed guards. lenoon posted:I used to study stone tools before conscientious objection, so I know a bit about what you can and can't do with various types of stone, and what the Aztecs in particular did with obsidian. Stone tools are and will always be Would the bat-part of the obsidian club make it any more effective from just a blunt trauma perspective?
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Sep 9, 2016 20:33
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lenoon posted:I used to study stone tools before conscientious objection, so I know a bit about what you can and can't do with various types of stone, and what the Aztecs in particular did with obsidian. Stone tools are and will always be my first love - so pretty! So sharp! So useful! This is very cool, I have a collection of Native American flint arrowheads and a mallet head. The story goes that, during the Dust Bowl, my grandma and her siblings would go hunting for arrowheads after church on Sundays. The Dust Bowl stripped away so much of the soil they were everywhere and there's a bucket of several hundred somewhere back home. I can take some pictures if you or anyone is interested.
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Sep 9, 2016 20:40
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Pellisworth posted:This is very cool, I have a collection of Native American flint arrowheads and a mallet head. The story goes that, during the Dust Bowl, my grandma and her siblings would go hunting for arrowheads after church on Sundays. The Dust Bowl stripped away so much of the soil they were everywhere and there's a bucket of several hundred somewhere back home. My grandad, dad, and me all have small collections of stone arrowheads and what we've always assumed are stone tools that we found by literally tripping over them while playing in the canyons near Grandma's house in New Mexico. I have no trouble believing that they found arrowheads with minimal effort. None of us are archeologists so I guess we could be wrong about what we found.
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Sep 9, 2016 20:55
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Pellisworth posted:I can take some pictures if you or anyone is interested. 
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Sep 9, 2016 20:56
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LLSix posted:My grandad, dad, and me all have small collections of stone arrowheads and what we've always assumed are stone tools that we found by literally tripping over them while playing in the canyons near Grandma's house in New Mexico. I have no trouble believing that they found arrowheads with minimal effort. There are some in my collection that are definitely not arrowheads, blades or hand tools of some kind. And some incredibly tiny arrowheads that are maybe for a child's bow? I'm trying to figure out how to get good lighting, they're mounted under glass in a case and I'd rather not take it apart but there's a lot of glare reflecting from the glass. Photography tips?
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Sep 9, 2016 21:04
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Put the light at an angle where it won't reflect into the camera. So turn out the overhead light and put lights around the case.
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Sep 9, 2016 21:07
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:There was Cajamarca, but that was more of a one-sided ambush of Atahualpa and some unarmed guards. There were a few battles when Cortez first landed that were pretty one sided. I don't think it's terribly controversial to say the conquistadors had superior weaponry, it's just important to emphasize that this wasn't why they succeeded, and that their native allies were far more instrumental.
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Sep 9, 2016 21:08
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sullat posted:Before Yorktown, if the British got in trouble, they would fall back to the coast and be supplied/picked up by the Navy. So Cornwallis was doing just that. But the French navy chased away the British force sent to supply Cornwallis, so all of a sudden he was stuck in a swamp with no way out. It took another 2-3 years before the British were willing to talk peace, but there weren't any other major land campaigns in the US because they'd just lost their main army. True but the more important part is that they needed their other armies fighting everywhere else. The Revolution minus those other theaters ends with the continental army buried under the military weight of the empire. The success of the rev has a lot to do with the animosities left over from the seven years war
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Sep 9, 2016 21:25
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Koramei posted:There were a few battles when Cortez first landed that were pretty one sided. I don't think it's terribly controversial to say the conquistadors had superior weaponry, it's just important to emphasize that this wasn't why they succeeded, and that their native allies were far more instrumental. They also had horsies which are tough to deal with if your army has never seen them before and doesn't know how to properly resist a charge. But yeah, couldn't have done it without smallpox and native allies. Even then it wasn't easy. The conquest of Mexico is one of those crazy things where if we send ten gay black Cortez clones to alternate timelines, I'm thinking nine of them fail.
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Sep 9, 2016 21:29
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On this subject of the conquistadors, what are your thoughts on the argument set forth by the book Carnage and Culture? Do you think the way Cortes and his men fought and viewed warfare contributed to their success ( in addition to allies and technology) vs the way their enemies viewed warfare?
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Sep 9, 2016 21:34
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StashAugustine posted:Hey Disinterested that Operation Typhoon book looked interesting, it should be pretty approachable for a layman right? Well it's a tight look at one month which some people might find a little academic in its focus but it's short and pithy generally.
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Sep 9, 2016 21:37
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Fangz posted:Rome.
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Sep 9, 2016 21:39
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At the end of the day invading into an actual literal apocalypse that minor things like the crisis of the third century pale in comparison to helped the conquistadors a ton, as well. Also sweet, got a used copy of American and British Carrier development (I know I'm celebrating getting farther away from getting going at this point).
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Sep 9, 2016 21:40
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Post all the stone tools! Unidirectional light is best, Lithics tend to be illustrated with surrounding ambient light and then a top left directional light as well. I'm not that hot on my North American assemblages but I should be able to spot arrowheads and the rest of the usual gang - Blades, flakes, cores, burins, awls etc. Much better with European stuff if anyone has any of that. My own stuff - my old specialisation - was much cruder and older, mostly stuff between 2.8 million and 500,000 years ago. So hand me a chunk of rock that looks like poo poo and I can identify it right away, but nicely flaked points and arrow heads are much harder for me to do!
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Sep 9, 2016 21:40
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OwlFancier posted:Put the light at an angle where it won't reflect into the camera. Yeah I was messing around with a lamp instead of the ceiling light and that worked ok. Sorry for lovely cellphone pics, quarter included for scale.   And I'd forgotten but there's a text description taped to the back of the case that confirms these were found during the Dust Bowl when there was heavy soil erosion, then my grandma took a woodworking class in 1980 and produced a handful of these mounted collections. Edit: most of the arrowheads look like chert/flint to me and the mallet head is granite. Neither of those rock types are local to where they were found, they'd have to be sourced from hundreds of miles away. Probably the Black Hills. Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 21:40
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Pellisworth posted:And some incredibly tiny arrowheads that are maybe for a child's bow? Sounds like what are referred to as bird points. Despite the name and size, experimental archeology has shown they would be capable of bringing down game the size of deer.
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Sep 9, 2016 21:42
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I don't envy the experiemtnal archeologist who had to try that. Or the deer.
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Sep 9, 2016 21:49
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I'd be really interested in how that granite mallet head might have been made without metal tools, I'm guessing the starting rock was rounded by a river but how did they carve the grooves?
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Sep 9, 2016 21:54
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Pellisworth posted:I'd be really interested in how that granite mallet head might have been made without metal tools, I'm guessing the starting rock was rounded by a river but how did they carve the grooves? Other rocks. Yes it erodes the rocks you use as tools but there are lots of rocks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN-34JfUrHY
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Sep 9, 2016 21:55
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Pellisworth posted:Yeah I was messing around with a lamp instead of the ceiling light and that worked ok. Sorry for lovely cellphone pics, quarter included for scale. Nice collection! You've got a bunch of classic types of arrowheads, The rounder pieces are probably "scrapers", so called because.... well... we think they scrape things with them. Used for cleaning hide, or working wood, or sinew, or plant matter. You take a flake and chip off the sharp edge, giving you a fairly regular edge approaching 90 degrees, very robust, very good for ... scraping. edit: Yeah you make the groove with other rocks, wearing them down through abrasion. Put sand on there and rub the sand with another rock. You can do it with rope too. edit 2: "Arrowhead" doesn't necessarily mean "arrowhead" though - spears, darts, atl-atl javelins, even knives, probably all mounted with very similar pieces. lenoon fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 21:58
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You may use banging rocks together as a pejorative but banging rocks together can do some pretty useful stuff. I super recommend that youtube channel, it's awesome to watch. Building a tiled roof house with a hypocaust using rocks is pretty baller.
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Sep 9, 2016 22:00
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lenoon posted:Nice collection! These were found in the American Great Plains, South Dakota specifically. I'm guessing they're probably from a bunch of different time periods and groups, don't feel compelled to spend a lot of effort trying to type them but any general observations would be of interest. Thanks! e: it was a pretty great place to grow up if you're into finding fossils and artifacts. Fossils and petrified wood everywhere, Native American artifacts (though I've never found or collected any of the latter). My parents found a human skull while fishing when I was a toddler, ended up being repatriated to the Blackfeet and buried. Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 22:01
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Pellisworth posted:These were found in the American Great Plains, South Dakota specifically. I'm guessing they're probably from a bunch of different time periods and groups, don't feel compelled to spend a lot of effort trying to type them but any general observations would be of interest. Thanks! Ok so I know only a bit off the top of my head because I can immediately recognise a few given that you're northern midwest and I haven't read anything about that bit of america for all of eight years. However! You've got some early Archaic period points, somewhere between 8,000 and 3,000 BC. Those are the ones with the notches in the bottom (but not tangs or the diagonal notches). Third right top row, probably second right bottom row - and the others that look similar to that. The other arrowhead style things will be younger - but I'll dig into my books to get a proper ID. Your groundstone piece is much younger, as grindstone comes into the area a lot later. Possibly as young as 0 BCE. I think the people in South Dakota did quite a lot of "pecking", where you take a denser rock with a rounded point and literally peck away at the less dense rock.
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Sep 9, 2016 22:13
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sullat posted:Before Yorktown, if the British got in trouble, they would fall back to the coast and be supplied/picked up by the Navy. So Cornwallis was doing just that. But the French navy chased away the British force sent to supply Cornwallis, so all of a sudden he was stuck in a swamp with no way out. It took another 2-3 years before the British were willing to talk peace, but there weren't any other major land campaigns in the US because they'd just lost their main army. So, the thing about Yorktown is that Cornwallis had a chance to evacuate using his own local navy and probably could've succeeded had he decided on it but for whatever reason decided to stay where he was. The state/local navies available were really important to the AWI and are not very often discussed but they matter a lot to the various campaigns. quote:True but the more important part is that they needed their other armies fighting everywhere else. The Revolution minus those other theaters ends with the continental army buried under the military weight of the empire. So, here's the thing- the Royal Navy could not afford to concentrate, even without immediate French/Spanish involvement and the Americans were still able to conduct limited naval operations on their own without support. The 13 colonies had a significant shipbuilding output and fitted out enough small navies to work along the coast as necessary. The RN was never really able to dominate the coastline in a serious way- they could only really focus on a few big ports. This was just the nature of fleets back in those days. Even with the French and Spanish at peace, the RN had to keep most of its fleet in the isles because there was no way to rapidly bring it back if the French decided it was their time to move.
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Sep 9, 2016 22:15
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lenoon posted:Ok so I know only a bit off the top of my head because I can immediately recognise a few given that you're northern midwest and I haven't read anything about that bit of america for all of eight years. However! You've got some early Archaic period points, somewhere between 8,000 and 3,000 BC. Those are the ones with the notches in the bottom (but not tangs or the diagonal notches). Third right top row, probably second right bottom row - and the others that look similar to that. The other arrowhead style things will be younger - but I'll dig into my books to get a proper ID. well holy poo poo I figured these were hundreds or maybe thousands of years old but didn't expect them to be quite that old or spanning such a range of dates I mean, Native Americans have been here for ~15-20k years, but I know next to nothing about Paleo-Indians. Very cool, thanks again. I'm sorry I don't have any Oldowan and Acheulean* tools for you *from that one time I TA'd a biological anthropology class and learned some things Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 22:18
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Pellisworth posted:well holy poo poo I figured these were hundreds or maybe thousands of years old but didn't expect them to be quite that old or spanning such a range of dates I've just found this rather cool but very old-fashioned website, give it a look! http://www.projectilepoints.net/Search/National_Search.html Should let you have a look at what you've got by type, probably more accurate than me! But, since it's typology it won't be all that accurate, to be honest. Don't worry about the Oldowan stuff, unless you've been to East Africa recently...
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Sep 9, 2016 22:22
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OwlFancier posted:I don't envy the experiemtnal archeologist who had to try that. Ballistic gell or pig carcass most likely.
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Sep 9, 2016 23:40
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War with style exists even after HEY GAL's time.
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Sep 9, 2016 23:41
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Cyrano4747 posted:Ballistic gell or pig carcass most likely. Muntjac and Roe deer carcasses. edit: but having said that, I have actively hunted with palaeo tools, butchered a (natural death) elephant with stone tools, and taken down eland with hand held tools, which was a pant shittingly intense experience. Stone tools man, the original weapons. lenoon fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Sep 10, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 23:43
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Fangz posted:Rome. One of my Latin professors in college once described the gladii armed Roman cohort as a threshing machine steadily mulching and stabbing its way through unprepared Gallic shield walls, and the image has stayed with me forever after.
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Sep 10, 2016 00:02
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Fuligin posted:One of my Latin professors in college once described the gladii armed Roman cohort as a threshing machine steadily mulching and stabbing its way through unprepared Gallic shield walls, and the image has stayed with me forever after. It's a heavy infantry machine that wants to grab you by the the belt and just stab you in the chest until you're done.
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Sep 10, 2016 00:14
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Fuligin posted:One of my Latin professors in college once described the gladii armed Roman cohort as a threshing machine steadily mulching and stabbing its way through unprepared Gallic shield walls, and the image has stayed with me forever after. Hey, when it gets asses to elbows, a short, heavy sword shines over big, unwieldy weapons that you can't get enough space to use.
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Sep 10, 2016 03:04
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Thanks for the tank/mg answers. The milhist thread is always interesting 
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Sep 10, 2016 04:04
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Bad rear end women of war time! Today we learn about Agustina de Aragón a deadly and very professional Spanish partisan.
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Sep 10, 2016 05:06
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lenoon posted:I used to study stone tools I went and googled "prismatic blade core" and now I've been on youtube watching knapping videos for something like 3 hours  Ed: My grandpa was an amateur rock collector, to include a few dozen points (provenance totally unlabeled naturally) --I might have some of them in with the handful of specimens he gave me, I'll post them if I can find them. the yeti fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Sep 10, 2016 |
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Sep 10, 2016 05:14
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Fuligin posted:One of my Latin professors in college once described the gladii armed Roman cohort as a threshing machine steadily mulching and stabbing its way through unprepared Gallic shield walls, and the image has stayed with me forever after. The opening scene of Rome did such a good job of conveying well-oiled murder machine. Except for Titus Pullo of course!
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Sep 10, 2016 05:51
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the yeti posted:I went and googled "prismatic blade core" All you need to know is that it's the kind of thing you get in a game like KOTOR. I mean just read how goddamn sci-fi that is.
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Sep 10, 2016 06:00
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