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Re: historical evidence




Poster: "Stephanie M. Thorson" <smt2@st-andrews.ac.uk>

Writes Elen Prydydd in response to my point about written v oral sources:

> But there is also another type of historical evidence that can be highly
> informative:  artifacts.  Their use may be a moot point in this discussion,
> but not in others.  Sometimes, it outweighs the written evidence, or even
> helps posit a new interpretation.

That is very true.  Of course, with Arthurian material, the surviving
artifacts are largely post-Geoffrey.  

(And now the rant starts; brace yourself folks, <g>)

However, such artifacts of the Middle Ages as we have are often very
fragmentary and/or very scattered.  Those of you playing along at home can
take a look in the HMSO Textile Finds from Medieval London book, just for
instance. There are vast numbers of bits and scraps of material which
"might have been part of a ...".  The digs of mediaeval London are also
unusually well reported - I'm still trying to track down an archaeologist
who supervised a dig here in Scotland which has real relevance to my PhD
thesis, but which has never had *any* finds or results published, even
though the dig was 15 years ago.  So often we don't have the luxury of
artifacts. 

What I'm getting at here is that as lovely and useful as visual or
archaeological evidence can be, text is often the only (albeit bloody
unreliable sometimes) means by which information has been passed on to us. 
If we relied solely on artifacts, we would have to posit that knitted
stockings (a personal project) were not worn in the 14th c.  On the other
hand, I can show you entries in the French royal accounts from 1387 and
1396 which record the purchase of knitted wool stockings (chausses de
laine faictes a\ l'esguille) by Charles VI.

It is, incidentally, not that much harder to date a text than to date an
archaeological find; sometimes, it's even easier.  I am starting to haver
now, but one could even logically argue that manuscripts being "made"
things, are artifacts, as are the texts contained within them. 

Alianora
ranting again
*****************************************************************************
Stephanie M. Thorson			|  SCA: Lady Alianora Munro
Dept. of Scottish History		|  Clan White Wing
University of St Andrews		|  Tarkhan, Khanate Red Lion

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