We share your frustration. Some people here play in multiple time periods, but tend to be just as conscientious as they are with their Medieval Impressions. Bob (chef de chambre) plays in 3 time periods: American Civil War: 5th Mass Battery; 1745 Jacobite Rebellion (this is new); and 1471-1477 under Charles the Bold.

He is still putting his kit together for the 1745 impression. However, he has researched weaponry, clothing, and other kit items to give the best impression he can. He's sought out the most scholary works on the time period, and as a result has already found inaccuracies in his kit and will upgrade it when he can. He plans on getting contacts or going without his glasses while in the field so he looks right.

Unfortunately, not everyone will take this level of care, no matter where you are. You try to influence or lead by example where you can, but unless there is an all out set of regs at both an organizational level and at a group level, it will be a long time in coming.

A lot of people are just "in love" with what they perceive as Celtic and what's historical goes out with the bath water because it doesn't fit their vision.

We can only endeavor to improve.

Jenn

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Originally posted by Peder:
But I assure you your not going to see these "celtic" groups at a real re-encatment event in the US. Brent

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Unfortunately, Brent, you are mistaken. I have seen abysmal Celtic groups at nationally-recognized major reenactments. There are some excellent groups in the gunpowder periods, but it seems the authenticity standards for pre-jacobite celtic groups in the US are non-existant.

Pivotal Celtic historical facts, especially "There were NO Clan Tartans before 17(whatever)" are ignored and invariably there is a bunch of guys running around doing an ompression of heavily-tatooed catholic schoolgirls in peasant blouses carrying big claymores.

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In my years running the 75years list I learned that for the most part our European counterparts mostly use the same books that we use over here. And the biggest source that they seemed to use that wasn't the books that we use are books on similar subjects written in languages other than english. While yes they have better physical access to items its not easy to run down to the museum which likely isn't all that close and even then you have to talk them into giving you actual access to the piece you need to see. Now I'll grant you that going and seeing real pieces is nice but when I order something from my armourer he doesn't need to go to Europe to see the peice to recreate it. He uses published pictures of pieces. Another example is if I want to do research on Coventry I don't need to fly to England or write the local records office. I go to my local academic library and look at the Coventry Leet book. Is it going to answer all my questions? Likely not.

I believed and was told the same things when I was in the SCA as you believe and honestly I know better now. No situation is perfect you just deal with things the best you can and you can easily make good items from books. I've seen it done and if it weren't for my lack of skill working with my hands I would have done it.