On the Diversity of the SCA's Period

A natural outgrowth of the millenium-spanning continentally-spread focus of the SCA is that there will be some things which people will be interested in, which others will find incompatible with their own period of focus. There are a number of ways it can manifest itself, some more harmful than others.

One of the more famous incidents of this narrow focus are those times where the Crown of various Kingdoms has decided that the late-period game of fencing "isn't part of their SCA", and so have banned it, either from their presence, or from their Kingdom entirely. While most of these are fading to an unpleasant memory, I must say that for a Crown to ban a particular aspect of the SCA enjoyed by members of the populace, for no greater reason than its being incompatible with their own idea of what the SCA should be, is, in short, a breach of the fealty to the Kingdom which they swore at their coronation.

On a less intensively horrible scale, there are those not in a position of banning parts of the SCA, who nonetheless make statements on such things, when discussions of various activities in the SCA come up. The latest one, which inspired this post, was on the subject of black powder weapons at demos and events. The comment was made, that as a consistent pre-black powder persona, they don't think anyone else should be allowed to do it either.

I too have a consistent period of my persona, of a 16th century Englishman. If I were to stick to this quite firmly, I should insist that there not be Vikings and Byzantines and Saxons wandering about. In fact, for the latter 16th century, we should remove heavy combat as such a central thing, as Gloriana's reign marked the end of such things. But, I don't think any of those changes should be made.

Why? How do I reconcile being a 16th century Englishman surrounded by people from centuries from the 4th to the 15th? How do I bow my head to a 12th century Crusader Crown? Quite simply. This isn't London, and it isn't the 16th century. This is Politarchopolis in the great Kingdom of Lochac, and it's anno societatis 48. People come from many strange lands, separated by miles and years, and have a variety of bizarre names and manners of dress. What do you expect? Foreign cultures are always weird. That doesn't mean they can't exist together.

On the Beginning of Period

The ending point of the SCA's period is fairly easy to define, within a range of about fifty years (and on a strict reading, down to a range of three years). The beginning of period, however, is somewhat trickier to define to any accuracy.

The SCA governing documents define period as

"The era used by the Society as the base for its re-creation activities. The Society is based on the life and culture of the landed nobility of pre-17th Century Western Europe, focusing on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance."

Later on, in "A Brief Introduction to the Society for Creative Anachonism", it continues with this:

"For Society members, most of the world, and all of the centuries prior to the 17th, can serve as a source for personal research. However, the further you go from the core of Medieval and Renaissance Europe, the less the environment we offer will resemble what someone of your time and country would find natural or homelike. For example, you can be an Asian or African guest at a European court, but you cannot expect others to share your special interests - like any long-term visitor in a foreign land, you are the one who will have to adapt to the customs you find around you. Since members have free choice of what areas they will explore, it follows that Society branches cannot decide to specialize in a specific time and place, since that would make it hard for members there to pursue their own interests in other times and places."

From these, we can see that there is no hard "earliest" mark for period. However, in all of the definitions, there is a focus on medieval and renaissance Europe. For example, the Roman Republic or Empire is European, and clearly pre-17th century, but I would also argue that it is also not compatible with a medieval setting, as it was the Frankish and Gothic barbarians who overthrew Rome who have become the cultures of our period. Going even further, so little was known of the ancient Egyptian culture (until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799) that having one of them present in a medieval court would be confusingly obtrusive at best.

There are various numbers thrown about, from 600 (which gives a nice even thousand-year period), or similar arbitrary numbers.

While I cannot offer a definitive answer, I can definitively say that there is no definitive answer, nor is there likely to be one. For my own judgements, I place the mark at 476 AD, when Romulus Augustulus, the last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, was deposed. This is one of the common markers of the start of the middle ages and end of the classical period.

Please, no bunny fur cave-man bikinis.