OK, living history chums

[winterbadger]

Time to gnash your teeth. How many errors and misconceptions can you find in this piece on reenacting?

Comments

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Professor Martin wotsit reckons its nothing more than dressing up and running around? Oh dear... the re-enactors I've met and talked to are huge repositories of detailed historical knowledge about their period, from arms and battle tactics to religious and political details, hugely educational and fascinating and much more fun than sitting in a dry old office muttering about "those chaps in funny costumes".

[silme.livejournal.com]

First, a pet peeve. It's chain or it's mail. Chainmail is redundant. :)

Now, that that's off my chest, hmm. Professor Martin may not be aware of the amount of research some folks do. (I have a friend who advises a medieval restaurant in Estonia -- not a Medieval Tymes type of place -- and presents papers at Oxford on medieval cookery.) And as to bad food? Well, I've been to good feasts, I've cooked some good feasts and I've attended some horrible feasts. Oh, yeah, I know about the bad food. ;)

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

Well... the first part of the article was pretty good.

On the last bit, Prof. Daunton has a point, even if he exaggerated it - no matter how much research you do and how accurate physically any part of your life is while you're re-enacting, you're never really going to get inside the head of someone who lived what is now such an alien way of life. You're not really going to get killed. You're going back to work on Monday. You're in very little danger of starving next winter. You're very unlikely to take religion anything like as seriously as the people then. You probably don't think that your leader on the battlefield is anointed by God. Yes, we can learn a lot from re-enacting, especially if done in the absence of burger vans, but we're never going to really "be" medieval. And I say that as a role-player as well as a re-enactor.

[winterbadger]

I agree that one will never have the exact same sort of experience that a person in another part of history had, but I think the professor's overly snooty and dismissive attitude overlooks the extent to which that sort of activity *does* give one at least a glimpse of the sort of challenges and pleasures that existed in other periods of life, more than simply reading about them in a book. I rather imagine he feels threatened by the idea that people who are not Proper Historians can have any worthwhile insights.

He speaks as if all that goes into reenacting is putting on clothes, which betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the subject he's being asked to comment on.

[calcinations.livejournal.com]

It's not too bad for a mainstream media article. However the prof at the end annoyed a fellow re-enactor so much that he wrote him a letter:

http://livinghistory.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10310

SO we shall see what reply we get.
Of course the article still perpetuates the idea that medieval cookery was rubbish. Makes you wonder what people before then, when presumably cooking was even worse, were supposed to have eaten. Mud?

[winterbadger]

Makes you wonder what people before then, when presumably cooking was even worse, were supposed to have eaten. Mud?

Worse!

"If Baldrick gets his way, we'd be back to cavorting druids, death by stoning, and dung for dinner."

He's replied:

[calcinations.livejournal.com]

"Thanks for your comments - yes, I am sure you are right in chastising me! I
did say that I myself like visiting physical remains/locale such as coal
mines or factories or docks/naval ports (I am trustee of the National
Maritime Museum). I strongly believe that history is not only in books: my
first head of department when I was a stduent said the best tool for an
economic historian was a strong pair of boots to walk land and sense what
clay fields were like compared with chalk. I am very reassured by what you
say about going beyond dressing up - and instead entering theminds of
people in the past.

Martin Daunton"

Re: He's replied:

[winterbadger]

I gather from someone who looked into it more that he was, well, a very odd choice for them to interview, since nothing that they were touching on is remotely related to his field.

Re: He's replied:

[calcinations.livejournal.com]

Yes, it seems his field is 19th and 20th century history, so I'd love to know how they chose him. Is it a case of ringing up random historians, o picking people out of crowds, or what?