specifics in Spear fighting combat

[Kineas]

The impression I'm working on (I do a lot of talking for a guy who's still making his first Chiton) will have no tents. My understanding is that., first, early hoplites were usually close to home, and second, that later hoplites didn't use much in the way of tents.
Officers had something--there's lots of descriptions of how various Persian and Macedonian generals had big tents.
However, I'm used to camping without a tent. Its no fun when it rains, but its not that hard--especially in Greece, I'd think--in summer.
There's also the period-correct 'improvised' camp. Ten guys could be quite comfortable with a canvas boat-sail and some oars. We know they actually did rig such shelters, and we do it all the time, too, in 18th C.--we have galleys called "bateaux." Two pairs of oars lashed in "X" shape, a fifth oar across the top, toss the sail over the cross bar, and you have tentage for about thirty--the whole crew of a small boat, or a bunch of soldiers. You have to pack in like lemmings, but that's what soldiers did--still do, when they're cold.
I'll tack on the best description of a boatsail I could find. I'm planning to make one from heavy linen panels, with leather reenforcement and brails--just to "have around" for rain...
I don't know whether I can get 30 guys (and gals) to Athens in 2010. If there's really an event--even on somebody's back lawn--I'll start pushing it. It'll be easier for me to get people interested in the whole hoplite project if there's an "event" in the wind. But even if there were just five of us from Canada--with 5 from other places and the folks in Greece--wouldn't it be glorious?

Please, tell me you'll have an event! Then post dates. And then let's see if anybody's government and/or Ministry of Heritage (or what have you) will subsidize...

Back to looking at linen samples...

The sail (histion) was often made up of pieces made separately and stitched together (whence the plural histia often means only a single sail). The only kind of sail known by the Greeks, according to Boeckh (Urk. 141), was the square sail. The velum triangulare of the Alexandrian corn ships was of later date. The sails were often strengthened, when made of separate pieces, by strips of leather sewn over the stitching. (Cf. bas-relief from Pompeii, Smith, Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul; Joseph. Ant. iv. 8, 37, para ton histon epi polu estêmen anablepontes arithmountes tôn bursôn tas epibolas.) The sail was fastened to the yard by the peritonion, which passed through eyelets (krikoi) made in the border of the sail (cf. parakrouein). At the lower extremities of the sail were the sheets (podes) and tacks (propodes). [p. 218]