Weight and grip of sarissa and shield in macedonian phalanx

[Sean Manning]

Note too that the shield is at an angle to the body (not square) and this is how synapsismos/locked shields was able to be formed with the sarissae protruding.

But the question remains, how much space was then occupied by single soldier. Personally, I don't think that much less than Polybios three feet of frontage woulb be practicable. Warry's 0,5 (or rather 0,45 m) seems simply to restricting for phalangites to use their weapons.
About the term "synapsismos" itself - my Greek is not very good, so could you explain if it means literally "locked" or "close (one to another)" shields.

Peter Connolly got a phalanx of 16 hoplites together in 2000 and armed them with small round shields on telamons and sarissas 5.8 m long (12 Athenian cubits) weighing 4 kg. They had no problem forming up with two cubits per man then closing up to one cubit per man. They found that they naturally closed up this tight if the front rank pretended to be stuck in combat while the rear ranks tried to push forwards- which is consistent with later testimony that pike formations tended to get crowded as combat wore on. In fact, they found that keeping the right spacing between ranks was more important to allow free movement and the use of weapons.