What do we know? I mean really.

Ed · 5th July 2016, 12:11 AM

This thought has been with me for some time and I think that I actually posted something along these lines ages ago but I thought that it would be worthwhile to revisit the idea.

I will speak for myself here. My interests have tended to be in the time period 1400-1650 or so. 250 years. During this time, how many swords were produced? Millions, certainly. But 10 million? More? How about articles of armor? And of these, how many survived? 1% I doubt that. Maybe 1/10 of 1%? And which kinds were among the survivals? In other words, could you say that the survivals are representative of those objects whose population they were drawn from?

The reason I bring this up is that often I hear (particularly from my friends in the curatorial profession) that something "does not look right because we've never seen one before" or words to that effect. So a certain foliation decorative element is "never seen before the 15th century". Fine and good, but what is such a judgement based on?

The fact is that we really don't know what the range of decoration or other embellishments or even the form of weapons might actually be for the period in question. The sample that we have is vanishingly small and is almost certainly not representative of the those objects in use at the time. By representative, I mean a sample randomly drawn. They aren't.

I am not a nihilist saying that we can know nothing, rather I am suggesting that we should not be too quick to dismiss an object because it is not contained, in it's precise form, in our references.

Of course, we have documentary evidence, from the arts, particularly manuscripts. I think that manuscripts have their own problems and have resulted in fantasies gaining traction (the massive and silly repro of the gun shown in the Milemete Manuscript comes to mind) but they do form a useful part of our intellectual corpus.

I am interested in knowing your thoughts.

5th July 2016, 12:11 AM	#1
Ed Member Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 237	What do we know? I mean really. This thought has been with me for some time and I think that I actually posted something along these lines ages ago but I thought that it would be worthwhile to revisit the idea. I will speak for myself here. My interests have tended to be in the time period 1400-1650 or so. 250 years. During this time, how many swords were produced? Millions, certainly. But 10 million? More? How about articles of armor? And of these, how many survived? 1% I doubt that. Maybe 1/10 of 1%? And which kinds were among the survivals? In other words, could you say that the survivals are representative of those objects whose population they were drawn from? The reason I bring this up is that often I hear (particularly from my friends in the curatorial profession) that something "does not look right because we've never seen one before" or words to that effect. So a certain foliation decorative element is "never seen before the 15th century". Fine and good, but what is such a judgement based on? The fact is that we really don't know what the range of decoration or other embellishments or even the form of weapons might actually be for the period in question. The sample that we have is vanishingly small and is almost certainly not representative of the those objects in use at the time. By representative, I mean a sample randomly drawn. They aren't. I am not a nihilist saying that we can know nothing, rather I am suggesting that we should not be too quick to dismiss an object because it is not contained, in it's precise form, in our references. Of course, we have documentary evidence, from the arts, particularly manuscripts. I think that manuscripts have their own problems and have resulted in fantasies gaining traction (the massive and silly repro of the gun shown in the Milemete Manuscript comes to mind) but they do form a useful part of our intellectual corpus. I am interested in knowing your thoughts.