How to start your own research
How to start your own research
and get out of it without going crazy
When you don't know where to start, research can be scary. It looks like something bigger than you, suitable only for those with three degrees and a professor friend who can allow people to enter the secret recesses of museums.
What if I told you that you don't need any professor friends for a great reconstruction?
In this guide I will give you the tools to start your research journey. Remember that—as with all things—it takes practice. You won't become the reconstruction spiderman just for coming in contact with this informations. So: get ready to train!
Firstly, visualize your goal. Want a new dress? Want to build a piece of furniture? Want to buy a tent but you don’t know which one? Want to write a novel with historical details? Once you have a clear idea of why you are doing research then it’s time to choose the historical period and the geographic area, as well as the socio-economic extraction of the character you want to reconstruct/represent. Having these data clear will help you stay focused in your search.
Be as precise as possible: the chronological indication cannot refer to the entire century. A century might seem a small period to choose, but just think of how many things can change in a hundred years. The laptop was invented in the 20th century but it's a bit anachronistic to put it in the hands of a WWI soldier.
Remember that usually objects have a moment in which they begin to be used and sometimes even a moment in which they cease to be used in favor of more advanced technological innovations: do not make the mistake of anticipating inventions just because are less visible than the example of the laptop and do not assume a continued use. It is plausible that an object invented in 1612 is used also in 1620 without a real evidence only if it appears also in the years after 1620. If there is no longer any use after 1612, the fact that it was invented does not automatically make it present in the society.
Read a lot. When you are inexperienced it is better to start from “paper” research. You are less likely to fall into fake news. Read books and articles written by archaeologists/historians who are experts on the topic that interests you, and read more authors to get an idea of the various hypotheses: history is about make assumptions, there isn’t a universal thought.
Don't be afraid of the internet, but use it wisely, remembering that not everything that is written on the internet is true. Internet allows you to access research sites like Academia.edu but also to get stuck in fake articles.
That’s why you should pay attention to bibliography, sitography and references, both for Internet and books. You can usually find it at the back of books or articles. It is a list of other essays written by authoritative and reliable figures in their field, used as research for the book or article you have just read. The bibliography is the fingerprint of an essay: it tells you where the information came from, who gave it, when and in what context. Basically it tells you if what you are reading is reliable or not, plus you can find other interesting reading on the topic that interests you most!
What to do when an article seems serious but has neither a bibliography nor sitography. I admit that writing the bibliography is quite complicated as a university student (and I know professors who still don't know how to do it correctly). For a blogger who maybe is just a lot into research it could be even more difficult (do you want an article on how to write and read bibliography?). So, maybe before discard an article try asking the author to share their sources!
Said that, please never use Wikipedia as a source. And if someone uses it to corroborate their thesis during a conversation, be wary of him and his entire genealogical line up to his third great-great-grandfather on his mother's side. Wikipedia is a powerful tool of information with a noble goal, but the fact that the drafting of the articles is accessible to anyone without knowing anything about their reliability it’s a huge problem. If we then add the fact that many pieces of Wikipedia are copied from other articles and blogs which have no bibliography or sitography... you can understand why Wikipedia is not reliable for your purpose.
Once you understand how to search for information securely on the Internet, you can start looking for blogs and youtube channels that specifically concern your area of research. Not not great scholars, but people like you who show the whole reconstruction process from the study to the complete reconstructive hypothesis. This can help you understand the research process in detail and give you some interesting food for thought.
Keep in mind that an excellent reconstruction is done by considering and crossing different types of sources:
Written sources like city statutes, wills, ecclesiastic registers, household accounts, inventories, luxury laws has a lot of specific information on fashion and materials ready to be used. You can usually found all those informations in the city's historical archives. If you want to represent real characters these should be your primary sources: if they’re a noble, in the historical archives of their city you may find a lot of documents such as dowry, wills and inventories; if the character has a low extraction your search can start from the ecclesiastical registers.
Archaelological finds (normally material things of daily use that come from archaeological excavations) are excellent to be copied as they are. You can find them in museums, museum’s archives and if you're lucky even online catalogues.
In museums you can also find sculptural sources and their three dimensional informations.
Iconographic sources (murals, illuminated books, paintings, altarpieces…) are very useful since visual search is the easiest one for beginners. The paintings are in museums, the books in the archives, but the most accessible informations are in the city: a quick search on internet can make you discover churches and public buildings with murals that you didn't know. Sometimes the website of the archaeological superintendencies has also an image database.
One of these sources alone is not enough for a reliable reconstruction. You need to cross them to get an overview: an image or a statue does not speak of fabrics or materials, a written source by itself does not show what an object looks like and the aspect that an archaeological find has today may not be the same as when it was built and used.
Let's make an example of cross-sources. You have a very ruined archaeological find of an object. You don't know its use because the shape has no parallels in contemporary society, nor what social class it may have belonged to. The iconographic source shows you the same object not only within the context of use, but also how it must have looked new. Understanding what it is for, you now know which written source to look for and you can find out all the information about that object in the society (how much it was worth, who used it, who built it).
Some tips for your research:
- Keeping in mind the social background of the character you are representing look at sources from the historical period chosen but from a larger geographical area to have a general picture of the historical period.
- Start comparing your chosen area to the fashion trends you've traced, observing points of contact and peculiarities. These two steps will help you understand where the influences come from in your area and what is native of the place.
- Find out if there were laws regulating luxury in the place and in the period you chose. It's an excellent starting point to understand what was popular, what was forbidden and, for example, which social groups could afford to circumvent the laws by paying.
- Avoid unicums. There are items of clothing/pieces of armor/objects with particular shapes worn and used by a specific character. The fact that a thing existed doesn't allow you to use it with any character. If you decided to represent a non-specific character, avoid specific items.
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