[Ansteorra] Why aren't we doing this?

[Chris Zakes]

At 08:48 PM 11/4/2010, you wrote:

>Years ago (almost twenty now), I subscribed to the Pikestaff, the newsletter
>of the East Kingdom. If memory serves, I received a copy of their Kingdom
>Law as well, in which they defined their SCA period to end at 1650 (or it
>was included in one or more of the monthly newsletters). That little tidbit
>of information was remarkable enough for me to remember. The justification I
>heard back then (from whom, I cannot now remember. It may have been Master
>Robert McFarlane, but don't quote me on that) was to include more years of
>swashbuckling history in our period.
>
>It may not have been society-wide, and 1650 may not be the cut-off point
>these days, but it was in the East Kingdom in the early 1990's.

Interesting. I happen to have a copy of the East Kingdom Laws dated 
AS 27/1992, and I'm not finding any such policy in it, so if it *was* 
in an earlier or later edition--they were published annually--it 
didn't stay there for very long.


>In the "things I heard but never saw in print" department, I had also heard
>years ago that the cutoff date for the SCA period was set mainly to exclude
>the use of gunpowder...which, oddly, was already in use in 1599. I never
>knew where that one came from.
>
>Detlef von Marburg


I've heard that, and I've heard that the date was picked to include 
tobacco. <shrug> As is evident from our upside down award structure 
(knights and masters outranking lords) the folks who set up the SCA 
weren't necessarily all that knowledgable about history.

         -Tivar Moondragon