Working on expanding my library, and general knowledge, of historical weapons. While I'm confident in my knowledge of the 18th century onwards (I'll talk your ear off about the evolution of bayonets), the farther back we travel, the fewer details I know, and I'd like to correct that.
Any ideas on books about armor, spears, shields, tactics, fortifications, etc? I'm all ears! Ideally with lots of pictures and measurements. I want to know as much as I can, not just the basic "Romans liked the gladius because it was suited to their tactics". We all know the basics. I'm looking more for what kind of steel was used, how were they constructed, was the design standardized, why did different regions use different handle materials, was bone or wood preferred, how weapons evolved over time, how soldiers cared for different kinds of weapons, etc. Not specifically looking for any time period or nation, really I'm open to everything, from the Japanese to the Celts, and everyone in between.
I do have a specific interest in European weapons if anyone has suggestions. I do have Oakeshotte's first book, did he write more? Any help is greatly appreciated.
Somwhat related, I'm moving into college now and I absolutely want to major in military history. Any professional historians have suggestions on that front?
This is specific to Celtic swords. It's not exhaustive and there are nice books (which I don't remember the names of) that have centrefolds showing the evolution of blade types and chape style though much of this is included in the linked book.
https://www.reddit.com/r/celts/comments/956fr2/the_celtic_sword_radomir_pleiner_1993_out_of_print/
Much of the really in depth stuff seems to be in French or German which is of course where most of the finds for Celtic stuff comes from.
For a general introduction to both armour and weapons that is widely available (IE in public libaries or for not much used on Amazon), Edge and Paddock's Arms and Armour of the Medieval Knight is mostly pretty good. It has nice illustrations, and while the scholarship isn't cutting edge now they do a lot to summarize 500+ years of both armour and weapons history. Arguable some of their contextualization needs some tweaking as military historians continue to fight over whether the Infantry Revolution of the 14th century even existed, but as far as the 'what' of medieval armour and weapons, the book is solid, and unmatched for breadth - most others focus on either armour or weapons.
However, for armour, there's are better and more focused books:
Blair, Claude European armour, circa 1066 to circa 1700 London: Batsford, 1958. The best overview of European armour from 1066-1700, with a particular emphasis on the development of plate armour. It is primarily a descriptive history of armour's form. This books is 60 years old but it is still the standard introductory text, for a reason.
Williams, Alan The knight and the blast furnace : a history of the metallurgy of armour in the Middle Ages & the early modern period Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2003. A detailed metallurgical analysis of hundreds of surviving pieces of plate armour. It also includes historical sketches of the armour industry in different cities, accounts of medieval and early modern steelmaking and a final chapter evaluating the effectiveness of armour. Keep in mind this is going to be really expensive to buy, but you can get it in interlibrary loan at most good academic libaries.
For studying the people who made armour, "Armourers" by Matthais Pfaffenbichler is a great resource on the armour industry that you can get pretty cheap used online.
For weapons, I prefer Oakshott's Records of the Medieval Sword to The Achaeology of Weapons since it is more focused on his strengths - sword shapes and description, but of course being sword-centric it is pretty narrowly focused.