Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

Ian · 15th April 2005, 04:45 AM

Barung banditos:

I'm thinking that with some skillful wordsmithing, even widely divergent views can be syhthesized along the lines of "one school of thought has suggested ..." and "another body of opinion believes that distinguishing between the characteristics of barung among the Samal and Tausug is very difficult because of substantial overlap in styles." Seems that a scholarly approach could be crafted that would be useful to the reader as we search for more information to better define the subject matter.

I suspect that the truth lies somewhere between being able to conclusively distinguish the two forms and there being no way to distinguish between them.

Spunjer and others have spent some time trying to work this out, and they have offered some testable hypotheses. Those efforts are laudable and should not be cast aside. Can you guys get together and work on the available data -- pictures, descriptions, etc. -- to flesh out these ideas and reach some consensus? It would be great to move beyond opinion and conjecture, and understand better the areas of agreement and disagreement.

Waiting for Cecil Quirino's book is a poor reason for not trying to do something now. As far as I know, nobody has yet seen a draft of this book. Moreover, just writing a book is a substantial and time consuming undertaking, let alone getting it printed -- it is possible Cecil's book may never happen. Why not try to do something more modest with what we have here?

Ian.

15th April 2005, 04:45 AM	#29
Ian Vikingsword Staff Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: The Aussie Bush Posts: 4,396	Barung banditos: I'm thinking that with some skillful wordsmithing, even widely divergent views can be syhthesized along the lines of "one school of thought has suggested ..." and "another body of opinion believes that distinguishing between the characteristics of barung among the Samal and Tausug is very difficult because of substantial overlap in styles." Seems that a scholarly approach could be crafted that would be useful to the reader as we search for more information to better define the subject matter. I suspect that the truth lies somewhere between being able to conclusively distinguish the two forms and there being no way to distinguish between them. Spunjer and others have spent some time trying to work this out, and they have offered some testable hypotheses. Those efforts are laudable and should not be cast aside. Can you guys get together and work on the available data -- pictures, descriptions, etc. -- to flesh out these ideas and reach some consensus? It would be great to move beyond opinion and conjecture, and understand better the areas of agreement and disagreement. Waiting for Cecil Quirino's book is a poor reason for not trying to do something now. As far as I know, nobody has yet seen a draft of this book. Moreover, just writing a book is a substantial and time consuming undertaking, let alone getting it printed -- it is possible Cecil's book may never happen. Why not try to do something more modest with what we have here? Ian.