We've all seen film depictions of medieval or ancient battles where everyone gets chaotically intermingled after the first charge and start fighting with absolutely no cohesion, much less a battle line. It never makes much sense, except maybe to show how heroically badass the main character is or cut down on production costs. But what do historians say these battles *really* looked like and how do they come to those conclusions? Obviously contemporary accounts written after battles exist but these are pretty limited for a lot of reasons so it seemed worth wondering what other ways we could get insight into the matter.
I don't know how many of you are aware of the youtube subgenre of hool fights but they were fairly popular some 10-15 years ago during the heyday of the European hooligan firms and hooliganism in general. Basically hooligan firms are organized groups of young, typically male, supporters of a particular football/soccer club who routinely get in fights with the firms of rival teams. These fights are usually pretty well planned as far as street brawls go with firms coordinating on the number of participants on each side, location, colors worn, even rules to an extent such as allowing downed individuals to tap out to exit the fight.
Anyway... some of these larger fights (around a 50 vs 50 person count and above) kind of seem like they play out a lot like battles fought centuries ago. The fighters on both sides keep pretty tight with their comrades, a major goal is to avoid having someone run up and hit you from behind, there's even a clear "line of battle". Sure there are no deadly weapons, missiles, etc. but there's still lots of stuff you might expect if you transported yourself back to watch two semi-organized societies go at it back in the day. You even see how battles were won, with one side gradually giving ground until the participants decide they've had enough and make a run for it. Pretty interesting stuff.
And so all of that's just a long winded way of asking if serious historians ever study these types of fights to get a clearer understanding of what battles were like and how they were fought. Thanks for reading and please enjoy a few more videos that I think are good representatives of the "pre-firearm battle" style of hooligan fights. And if anyone has a link to one particular fight where the blue shirted side absolutely crushes and rolls up the flank of the orange shirted side then I'll give you some god damn reddit gold.
Maybe the most famous video, it's found under many (often incorrect) title descriptions around the web but : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqIAWcTLKx8&list=PL1666786A54648A90&index=35&t=26s
This one isn't as organized but DOES show the pulse effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RWzc1R6pRE&list=PL1666786A54648A90&index=40
A smaller scale example, maybe 25 vs 25, but has many of the same principles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItKm6EdZaWU&list=PL1666786A54648A90&index=24
So far these videos have featured Russian or east european hooligans but here's one with Swedes vs Danes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4ncM0FguKo&ab_channel=Interestingshortvideos
Edit - added another video and cleaned up some stuff.
Maybe so; the idea can certainly be found in scholarship and some historians do indeed watch videos of riots to try to gain insight into what ancient battles were like!
You might be interested in an earlier answer to a similar question given by u/Iphikrates.
I'm most familiar with J.E. Lendon's scholarship and would point out that his identification of Japan and South Korean riots as a useful source was inspired by the fact he grew up in Japan during the time these riots were occurring. Another book by Lendon that touches on the same topic is Soldiers and Ghosts (2005). There he compares the mass of a hoplite army to an armed mob or group of rioters: they are there for a fight and have certain expectations but are not trained like modern soldiers or police.