History
The SCA's roots can be traced to a backyard graduation party of a UC Berkeley medieval studies graduate, the author Diana Paxson, in Berkeley, California, on May Day in 1966. The party began with a "Grand Tournament" in which the participants wore motorcycle helmets, fencing masks, and usually some semblance of a costume, and whacked away at each other with weapons including plywood swords, padded maces, and even a fencing foil. It ended with a parade down Telegraph Avenue with everyone singing "Greensleeves". It was styled as a "protest against the 20th century". The SCA still measures dates within the society from the date of that party, calling the system Anno Societatis (Latin for "in the Year of the Society"). For example, 2009 May 1 to 2010 April 30 is A.S. XLIV (44). The name "Society for Creative Anachronism" was coined by science fiction author Marion Zimmer Bradley, an early participant, when the nascent group needed an official name in order to reserve a park for a tournament.
In 1968, Bradley moved to Staten Island, New York and founded the Kingdom of the East, holding a tournament that summer to determine the first Eastern King of the SCA. That September, a tournament was held at the World Science Fiction Convention, which was in Berkeley that year. The SCA had produced a book for the convention called A Handbook for the Current Middle Ages, which was a how-to book for people wanting to start their own SCA chapters. Convention goers purchased the book and the idea spread. Soon, other local chapters began to form. In October 1968, the SCA was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation in California. By the end of 1969, the SCA's three original kingdoms had been established: West Kingdom, East, and Middle. All SCA kingdoms trace their roots to these original three. The number of SCA kingdoms has continued to grow by the expansion and division of existing kingdoms; for example, the Outlands, Artemisia, Ansteorra, Gleann Abhann, Meridies, and Trimaris all originally belonged to the fourth kingdom, Atenveldt, which began as a branch of the West.
Read more about this topic: Society For Creative Anachronism
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“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
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