After reading through this forum for a while i've noticed many differing views on how the phalanx functioned in battle. I've read about the pulse theory and the othismos, and whether the hoplites held their spears over or underhand. I'm reading "Western Way of Warfare" by VDH right now as well and he talks about wrestling on the front ranks in a phalanx and i'm having a hard time imagining how this would be done with a shield strapped to your left arm.
Another thing I have trouble imagining is how this massive shoulder down shield push could be done while at the same time the second and third ranks who would be receiving a lot of pressure from the back ranks able to accurately thrust with their spears. I also find it hard to imagine a body of men once engaged in battle would separate for a breather.
My question is has there ever been a good recreation of a phalanx battle where the two sides are actually engaged? It seems to me a lot of questions could be resolved if a good realistic engagement was put on. As realistic as possible with both sides trying to win.
Your reservations are well placed. As /u/Tiako says, Hanson is wrong. Hanson is usually wrong. Hanson takes arguments and theories that are nearly fifty years out of date in some places, and oversimplifies them to the point of absurdity, then mixes in a poor understanding of modern economic theory anachronistically interpolated into an ancient setting. and unlike Tiako I'm not going to apologize for that, Hanson's work is really just trash and is very misleading due to its popularity, keeping our level of understanding of the matter well behind where it should be. As Tiako mentions, the entire premise of the classical hoplite model, which was discarded back in the 70s, is completely based on a single reference by Xenophon which describes the battle of Mantinea as being divided into four stages, the last of which is the othismos, a term that we don't understand and which Xenophon doesn't explain to us. There's no indication that this happened regularly, and considering that Xenophon is describing a very unusual battle there's every reason to suggest that this was am idiosyncrasy of Mantinea. The idea that it happened all the time, according to the classical hoplite model, is absurd, and no scholar has really supported it in decades. My comment here explains some of this, as well as laying out why reconstructions like the one you're asking for are not only not useful, but downright misleading
In any event it really doesn't matter much. Battles are very individual events, and things can change very rapidly from battle to battle, even if the same basic tactics are being used. Without detailed descriptions, the way we have for Roman warfare, we can't really construct much more than a very broad picture, which aren't particularly useful. And for most fields of study within classics it's not particularly necessary to be able to reconstruct Greek battle tactics and it's really a waste of time. Honestly, most of our supposed knowledge of the mechanics of Greek warfare is speculation
Hanson, as is his wont, is wrong. He is like a very well made Swiss clock in terms of predictability in that way.
OK, that is harsh, but essentially his argument for the reconstructed hoplite battle is based off of the word othismos, "push" which is used by Xenophon in describing one battle. Based off of this and a general sense that the Greeks strove for a degree of line depth, a description of phalanx clashes at rugby scrums popped up in military studies and spread rapidly outside of it. The problem for this is that, for one, it actually isn't really supported by the ancient evidence (othismos can have the same range of figurative meanings that "push" does), but more importantly it doesn't account for certain issues in terms of unite cohesion and simple physical practicality.
Modern historians of ancient militaries prefer to take more account of psychological factors when reconstructing battles. For an excellent description of hoplite battles, I would recommend this article by Goldsworthy.