Historic Martial Arts

Historic Martial Arts / HMA

Historic Martial Arts is the Arts and Sciences discipline that studies period combat techniques through manuals and other accounts. Practitioners study plates and descriptions of combat plays and attempt to recreate the moves as depicted. This is generally done slowly, out of armor, with simulated "waster" weapons. A wide variety of University classes, papers and videos on these topics have been created by HMA researchers in Atlantia.

Some HMA students then apply a subset of these techniques to SCA combat within the appropriate rule set.

Translation from medieval Italian, German, or other languages can be required to understand many of the manuals.

There are deputy A&S officers for HMA studies at both the Atlantian Kingdom level and at the Society level. People have received all levels of Society, Kingdom, and Baronial A&S awards for their HMA studies.