Talk:Historical reenactment

message: This could use some more content. Especially on
* history of historical reenactment
* reenactment groups
* living history groups
* differences between living history, reenactment, recreation, drama
* references to PBS content: Frontier House, 1940s House, ...
** What is it the participants were doing? (Livining history, I think)
** What is it that PBS was doing? (Creating historical entertainment, I think)
Happy editing! Jeff 21:15 Nov 13, 2002 (UTC)
Could we have a section or a new article on Old West reenactments? I know it is the stuff of tourist based bank robberies and gunfights but it is probably one of the oldest form of reenacting going back to the days of Buffalo Bills wild west show. HowesR1 (talk) 22:04, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  More Content Needed 

message: Hi, I'm new to the whole Wikipedia editing, but the quotes in this sentence:
The purpose of re-enactment is the authentic recreation of a time period, not merely playing "dress up" in "clothing that kinda looks historic".
are biased and un-cited.  How do you make the flag for uncited references?  Would it be okay to just take out or re-word this sentence?
X8spudnik (talk) 17:59, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  quotes 

message: Although less known and fewer participants, American Revolutionary War reenactments do take place. The regiments portray everything from British redcoats to French and German and of course the American troops. The reenactors mainly come from the East Coast of American though there are contigents all over North American and even Canada. Tony
*Comment: Per Wikipedia:Fair use#Policy point 9, "Fair use images may be used only in the article namespace", I am removing the image from this page.  The image can still be viewed at :Image:Deserter.jpg. -- Black Falcon 06:29, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revolutionary War reenactors 

message: Fowler says it should be re-enactment -- whats does US spelling say? -- Tarquin 09:05 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)
: Webster's shows it as reenact. Jeff 00:37 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)
:: Yep, re-enactment is the British spelling.  I get the impression that Wikipedia is culturally American, so I do not change Americanisms although I have to say I write in British English myself :-)  Salvianus 14:45, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't hold too firmly to that impression. It is cross-cultural see Wikipedia:Manual of style#National varieties of English Jooler 16:32, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I try to avoid it in the face of evidence :-) Thanks - the manual clears that up reasonably well - presumably this article should stay with reenactment because that is how it predominantly is already? Cheers  Salvianus 22:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spelling 

message: I'm bothered by the fact that the SCA is listed as an "example re-enactment group" (indeed, as the ONLY example).  I've been in the SCA for twenty years, and that's not what it does.  See <a href="http://www.ostgardr.org/terminology.html">what the SCA is Not</a>, which includes some discussion on the topics Jeff raised.  -- sbloch June 29, 2003
:I merged the content of a page on reenactors, with a bit of tailoring here. I'll make the reenactor page a redirect. Thanks to User:Rmhermen for pointing thiss out. The SCA isn't the only fantasy group, and the article can still use considerable expansion. -- Lou I 16:56, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: That's not very helpful -- the SCA *does* have historical aspects. It's safer to call it "re-creation" than try to add adjectives to "re-enactment." Greg 07:51, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

text: It's fair to say that the world at large has not invented a category name that splits the two, so Wikipedia can't invent it either. I propose re-creation because other groups don't seem to ever use it to describe themselves. Greg 04:43, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  SCA Inclusion 

message: Just curious Does anyone know of re-enactments of more recent time periods? I don't know of anything more modern than the American Civil War.  Do they do any re-enactment at the Tenement Museum in New York? ike9898 17:47, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)
:There is a World War I recreation group, so I assume they must have some sort of reenactments, however, I don't know anything about them and assume that this is rather smaller in scale than the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. Vagrant 19:47, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  More Recent Time Periods? 

message: Is fantasy reenactment really the best term to describe reenactment that is not exclusively based on historical facts?
I don't think most European medieval reenactment can be described as "fantasy", which has a ring of dragons, wizards and Zweihänder-wielding barbarians to it.
I think the difference between "professional" and "fantasy" is aritifical. Most "professional" reenactment groups are either groups of actual actors or experienced display groups.
A more important difference seems to be between display groups and combat groups, although some groups (SCA?) seem to be umbrella groups satisfying both tastes.
In Germany display groups have been the only kind of medieval reenactment for quite a while. Only recently has the combat reenactment been introduced by copying American, British and other concepts (some groups seem to be influenced by the Eastern European rules that sometimes allow for sharp weapons, full-momentum blows and random headshots, all of which are usually examples for practices that are not allowed in most other rulesets). In England, in turn, German display reenactment is usually perceived as rather odd because it sometimes tries to be authentic to a point at which it just seems unintentionally funny or unrealistic for outsiders (especially if the authenticity is then intermixed with fairy tale like storylines for display fight and tournaments).
The difference basically is that combat reenactment generally is a free-form practice quite similar to a sport (although less goal-oriented, except for explicit tournaments) that has a specific ruleset and specifies a number of "lives" for each combatant (oftenly based on the type of armour worn, usually varies between 1 and 3 for simple padding and modified by 1 for chainmail and 2 for plate -- i.e. 2 or 4 for chainmail, 3 or 5 for platemail, depending on the base amount), whereas every hit in a legal area deducts one of these lives and the loss of all lives results in "death", usually without a chance of resurrection for the scope of the battle, or sometimes even the entire event.
Display reenactment usually focusses on living history (note that by "living history" I usually refer to the reenactment of civilian life in a period or of trades and arts of that time) and/or display fights, such as knights' tournaments performed for tourists at various castles. Display fights usually have a strict choreography or at least somewhat strict sequences of moves, usually focussing on non-lethal hits, especially against swords, shields and other weapons. Unlike in combat reenactment, the goal is not to score a lethal hit on your opponent but entertain the audience with a prolonged duel and a lot of noise (since your oponent knows where you will hit him, you can even smack away on his shield or sword, thereby creating a lot more noise than a normal fight would -- given that your equipment is made for that kind of (ab)use).
Combat reenactment is different from LARP in that its combat has a strong focus on technique -- though not as much as most common Martial Art's, although some groups go as far as practicing traditional European Swordfighting as a combat sport by the book, although I'd say they're closer to real sports like Fencing rather than reenactment -- and public battles are usually still within a historical setting (even if it's just "Arthur's guys vs. Mordred's guys" and Arthur and Mordred do a little display fight at the end.
Some combat groups do display work as well, and some display groups have an interest in free-form combat, but usually groups have or develop a focus on one thing and stick with that, although they may later join umbrella groups which provide a platform for ALL kinds of reenactors.
To my understanding Civil War reenactment, which seems to be what American reenactment is mostly about (opposed to the medieval focus of European reenactment), is mostly display work since it is very fire-arm heavy and apart from paintball guns there isn't any apparent way to provide a real base for combat reenactment without killing anyone -- and paintball guns don't make that satisfying bang a display gun creates.
That actually makes me wonder: Should reenactment be specified by whether it's based on history or not (which is a very foggy seperation because most reenactment is not historically accurate, because that simply is not possible, especially not in an entertaing way -- neither for reenactors nor for the audience), whether it is focussed on combat or living history (which again creates the problem of having to deal with fluent borders) or what time period it is based on?
The latter seems ideal to me, especially because of the geographical focus I mentioned earlier. Individual groups could then again be further categorized by professionalism (whether they're actually stage actors or simply reenactors doing it as a hobby), focus of interest (living history or combat reenactment) and so on.
Depending on how broad the term should be used, we could even include "minorities" like the processions in Napolean uniforms which occur in memorial of the Napolean invasion in some parts of Germany, although that might be going too far because they usually don't do much but "look pretty and authentic" and doing a parade, possibly with a theatrical scene at the end of it and a (sometimes enclosed) campsite beforehand (which in turn might be considered display work).
As a consequence I would suggest considering splitting the article up into a main article and sub-articles about the general periods ("medieval" for anything from the European Dark Ages to the renaissance, "American history" (or somesuch) for the Civil War and Revolutionary War, "modern history" for the world wars and 19th century stuff, maybe "ancient" for everything before the Dark Ages, "Asian" for samurai-related stuff, etc etc) -- of course it'd be insane to just braindump a list of reenactment articles and go on from there.
I don't think any article should be created unless someone has some real content for it, but since I'm currently working on an article on the Codex Belli, the quasi-standard ruleset of most German medieval combat reenactment groups for quite a while (including display groups which practice free-form combat), I know at least one potential author for that one.
I don't want to edit this article accordingly because that'd be a lot of changes and I'd rather have some feedback on changes with that level of impact.
--Ashmodai 20:34, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree.  What's being called a "Fantasy Reenactment" is really a fictional live performance/stage play.  Just like LARP, this doesn't belong in the article.  Kageskull (talk) 15:48, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Classification of Reenactment styles 

message: Do we have a stub template for reenactment-related articles? Ojw 18:44, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's reenactment-stub Ojw 22:02, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Stubs?

message: Perhaps someone involved with dark age reenactment could suggest a naming convention for the articles?  At the moment, it seems to be "Dark [Aa]ge(s) reenactment".  Is that even the right name, or are there other words to describe later than Roman and earlier than Medieval?  Ojw 22:02, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: From what I know it's generally called "Dark Age" rather than anything else. Some medieval reenactment events feature a "Dark Age battle", so I guess that's close enough. Since I personally only participate in such events occassionally and don't know of any specifically Dark Age focussed events, I can only assume. -- Ashmodai 03:12, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  In Britain, the immediate period after the withdrawal is now usually called 'Sub-Roman', but Christopher A. Snyder makes a good case for the term 'Brittonic', as avoiding the implication of degeneration which now appears to be an oversimplification (in An Age of Tyrants Britain and the Britons, AD 400-600, 1998), but this would not cover Europe. I sometimes favour 'Post Roman'.  Of course much of the empire continued with much less disruption than Britain. 'The Early Middle Ages' now seems to be covering from the mid C7th.
I would suggest a brief outline of these alternative terms, but  re-naming is less certain, as I think most people would only search for 'Dark Ages'
Salvianus 10:52, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Dark age reenactment

message: Another time period, The war of 1812 is also recreated in North America I was wondering if we should include it here. The scale of these events is somewhat smaller than Civil War events in the states however there are often as many as a few thousand re-enactors at these events and a field strengh of a few hundred per side is not uncommon, 1812 is probably one of the most prominent time periods re created in southren Ontario. Should I add it? 1st scots 16:10, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: War of 1812

message: Some claims around criticism are included here. No doubt there are criticisms, but what are they? who made them? when did they make them? or are they hearsay and/or merely the anonymous criticisms made by the originator of the piece? 20:16, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Work needed.  It could reflect the difficulty of recreating the appearance of our ancestors when for some periods average heights are greater and skin diseases less prevalent, or the issues about speaking in period languages that are incomprehensible, but is that what a dictionary entry should contain, as opposed to a blog article? I think that, at the least, it should adhere to the writing guide about avoiding 'woolly phrases'.  Salvianus 23:19, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  OK, some specifics which I think need deletion or references:
"Reenactors are sometimes looked on with suspicion, particularly by military veterans, but also by elements of the general public." and 
"There is certainly much criticism from within reenactment organisations as to meritocracy, leadership and so-on. On the whole reenactors could be guilty of projecting their own, present-minded attitudes onto their historical alter egos." and
"This is largely drawn from an North American perspective, although there are parallel issues on the European scene." Salvianus 21:44, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  criticism- unsupported claims 

message: , why do you insist on adding :Image:Swordplay.jpg? It appears you have taken this image along with some others at a Scottish renaissance fair. Could you kindly use them to illustrate renaissance fair? They really have nothing whatsoever to do with historical reenactment. This particular image shows a motley combination of garb and equipment spanning the 15th to 20th century, mostly 20th. Being very charitable, we could perhaps use this image as an illustration of 18th century Scottish infantry if the 'reenactor' didn't sport a Hanwei "practical knightly" sword (13th century, made in Manchuria, $96.95) (we won't mention the boots). This sort of thing may have qualified as "historical reenactment" back in the 1970s, but we are far past that stage now. dab (𒁳) 10:16, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Have it your way, friend. If you wish to play the role of ellitist exclusionist by making broad conjectures about where any piece of an actor's outfit might be manufactured, as well as malign my work as "shoddy," then so be it. The article itself says "Historical reenactment can be considered a form of live-action role-playing within a historical context."  Which is plenty broad enough a definition for me to include this photo. However, getting into a war of words with you about it, is just not worth the effort to me.  --Mactographer 15:08, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Gentlemen; As a reenactor I've seen this same argument far too often.  May I suggest the two of you collaborate on the extent of different reenactment groups?  I've seen groups where the clothing had to be remotely reminiscent of the character that is being portrayed (such as cheap costume from the Holloween Store) to those that insist on "stitch-counting".  While people on both ends of the spectrum might not often get along, it should add a wealth of knowledge to the article.  For example, are there any external references in the more lenient groups saying it's more about the message behind the historical event and then another stitch-counter expousing their belief it's important to portray the event with the most accuracy?  Just a thought.  Kageskull (talk) 03:56, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: images

message: I have clean out the external links sections.  Please, wikipedia is foremost an encyclopedia, not a linkfarm!.  Most of the links were not applicable per our external links guidelines, they were not telling about the subject, but telling about specific subparts of the page.  Maybe that some are useful as reference.  --Dirk Beetstra T C 22:25, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links 

message: I need some good information for my history asssignment and there isnt ani good infoo ani where  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.198.184.211 (talk) 12:46, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wheree is the good informationn ??? 

message: This article is almost entirely about military re-enactment.  I know it makes for a good show, but is that all there is for re-enactment?  How disappointing.  Everyday life is just as interesting if not more.  74.10.198.118 (talk) 15:43, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: This article focuses on military reenactment, partly because that is what gets written about elsewhere (because, as you point out, it makes a good show) -- that's a restriction inherent in Wikipedia's prohibition on original research. But see, for example, Regency reenactment, which, although the period includes the Napoleonic wars, tends to focus more on social aspects: music, dance, games, clothing, etc. Reenactment also includes living history, and there are many living history museums doing this (e.g. Greenfield Village, Colonial Williamsburg, Norstead (Newfoundland)). cmadler (talk) 19:04, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  History = war? 

message: cmadler has gone through and requested Citations for the popular periods of historical re-enactment. What is the benchmark for popular? That The Sealed Knot is listed as the largest re-enactment group in Europe (not just the UK, Europe) should imply that the English Civil War period is a popular period. There's no listing for Colonial re-enactment (for Victorian era re-enactments not involving ACW) though I know of several groups locally who focus on that period. ~ Brother William (talk) 10:11, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: At this point, I'd be satisfied with almost any citation suggesting that a given period is popular, because otherwise this will eventually become a list of all periods that are reenacted, and I don't think that would help the article. I do think it still needs to come from an independant, reliable source; I see that The Sealed Knot claims to be "the single biggest re-enactment society in Europe", but has any third party confirmed that? The other concern I have about basing the popularity of a period upon the size of individual reenactment groups is that it doesn't always match. For example, here in the US the most popular reenactment period is the American Civil War. But while ACW reenactor groups tend to be smaller and more fragmented, reenactment of the American Revolutionary War is concentrated into a handful of larger groups. I think it's possible that the largest single reenactment society in the US (and maybe even the top two or three) are Revolutionary War groups, despite the documented fact that ACW reenactment is done by perhaps 10x as many people. cmadler (talk) 11:47, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation requests for "Period" 

message: It seems to me that this article is overly cluttered with photos that add little value. I have started by verifying that all images are on Commons (moved 3 that weren't), and accessible through the "Reenactments" category (including sub-categories) which is linked at the top of this article. Next, I'm going to slightly reduce image sizes. Then, I will remove any low-quality and duplicative images. I will then try to match images to relevant sections of text, with captions to tie them together. After that, any that can't reasonably be matched up, I will remove from this article. cmadler (talk) 19:02, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm removing images where a period/war is represented by multiple images except that I'm leaving the images illustrating farb/mainstream/hardcore as all American Civil War, for a better visual comparison. cmadler (talk) 19:30, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too many photos, too little relevance 

message: Insulting someone's weight is foolish. The cigarette is farby granted, but that can be potentially humiliating if the man in the photo sees it on wikipedia. Furthermore, it is quite possible a soldier could be overweight if they were on garrison duty or if it was at the beginning of the conflict or if they were a quartermaster or doctor (who may have had access to more supplies). Or especially homeguard.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.19.193.137 (talk) 06:43, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed picture o f overweight farb 

message: Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that :File:Bataille Waterloo 1815 reconstitution 2011 3.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on September 17, 2013. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2013-09-17. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. Thanks! — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:02, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[:File:Bataille Waterloo 1815 reconstitution 2011 3.jpg]] to appear as POTD soon 

message: I added some points about the role of authenticity as interpreted by Michael Petzet, a former general conservator in Bavaria and important Icomos player. He has done some important work on conservation history, using the benjamin approach. As living history is more important in Germany than event reenactment, the difference needs some explanation. The socialistic and grim looking GDR indians are much to funny to be left out as well ;) Serten (talk) 12:29, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  German living history approach 

message: Here is a yet incomplete, but public map of reenactment groups, maybe it should be added somewhere.
https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zdHCmJRFuWxo.k9e2RcuWXlCc  — Preceding unsigned comment added by ZsoltSch (talk • contribs) 10:17, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map of groups 

message: The References Section of Historical reenactment 
cites "Funnel Cake" within Wikipedia as a valid area to link to.  
I question this assumption and propose to remove this link. 
 - John Voris  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jvoris (talk • contribs) 16:24, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  References Section cites "Funnel Cake"  

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: That's pretty much it. Trying to find research material for a paper and it's surprisingly difficult to find scholarly work on the subject.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.103.120.252 (talk) 03:52, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  First link broken 

message: I added more information about the reception of historical reenactment by academic historians, as this is one part of the subject that wasn't covered in the original article. I also added some extra details to the critiques section, and some more details to the section on living history. This was done to reflect both historical reenactment as a practice, but also as a method of historical inquiry.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yvonne Peterson1 (talk • contribs) 14:31, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  More Details about Reenactment as a Historical Genre