What do we know? I mean really.

[cornelistromp]

Originally Posted by Ed

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?

.

it is based on nothing.

in those rare cases when some self-appointed specialist tells me that he has never seen it before, I Quote Oakeshott:

"that you have never seen it, means absolutely nothing unless you have seen them all, those hundreds thousands of swords"

and of course this is the truth, it means absolutely nothing that an individual has seen something never before, In most of the cases, it does not mean that it is not possible.

best,
Jasper

[Sancar]

"History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon." - Napoleon Bonaparte

[Bob A]

Originally Posted by Sancar

"History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon." - Napoleon Bonaparte

History is also the story of conflict written by the winner.

That said, there is documentation available, written by interested or uninvolved third party sources, which is subject to cross-checking by those knowledgeable in that art.

The siege of Troy was long thought to be mythic, until the actual site was found and excavated. (Of course, Homer knew the tale as reality. But even that is problematic; my Greek teacher told me that those epics were not written by Homer, but by another Greek with the same name.)

We can only approximate historical truth - even the immediate and contemporary is open to question; see today's newspapers. But making an honest effort is always worthwhile, and can be informative in many dimensions, some quite unexpected.

I personally have little experience in the subjects under study here, but even a few years' exposure has brought me to a point where I can detect the more obvious errors and anomalies. There's more than a little merit in long experience, but a thoughtful examination of the source of data, and a certain skepticism, is part of the process.

Those are my thoughts. I doubt they'll contain answers, but that wasn't the object of the exercise, of course.

[Marcus den toom]

Just thought about this and i think that style is mostly a luxury which is abandoned during times of war. Only the functionality matters with weapons, so any gun could differ. Also the maker's age adds to the stylistic variations, Michael once wrote about this as well.

This is, i guess, mostly true for the late gothic/early renaissance and onwards.