Persona/period research...

[LIB_IMC at centum.utulsa.edu]

Now that I'm back from vacation, let's see if I can come up with
something that's of any use.

<"Pug" <pug at arlut.utexas.edu>>
>Well my lady and myself have finally decided to narrow things down on
>our personas (besides - oh, somewhere in England near Wales somewhere
>near the 11th - 14th century). We'd like your help in this endeavor.
>Well we believe we've narrowed it down fairly well, and want to do
>further research on it. Now the question is, where does one find
>*good* material for this?...The time is roughly 1066 - 1150...

Finding "Good" material is both a loth easier and a lot harder than
it often seems at first.  You say that you've found "Life in a Medieval 
Village", but that it's a few centuries later.  This seems to be a standard
problem with finding common items of day-to-day material, since we may
not actually HAVE information on what people used the 50 years before
and after 1100.  Also, one of the hardest things to deal with is that
learning this stuff can be a real ongoing process, with spending *years*
developing your knowledge and sources as best as you can, only to have
it all trashed by a single archaeological dig, or discovering a new and
more reasonable hypothesis.  How to learn to find *good* information is 
very hard for me to describe, since, to me, it's like learning any skill 
or craft.  It's not something that you can just be given (I know, you
weren't asking that).  So, keeping this in mind...

You have two major tools at your disposal, those being the bibliography
in "Life in a Medieval Village" (and if it DOESN'T have one, I'll be
surprised, since I think the Gies' wrote that one, and they are pretty 
good about that sort of thing); as well as the CIP ("Cataloguing-in-
publication") data on the verso of the title page (Older books won't have
this, but it's very common in more modern materials).  The CIP will give
you subject headings to start with, as well as suggested call numbers 
(both Library of Congress and Dewey), although these may take some practice
to use (I'll be happy to teach anyone how to use them, if you would like).
Since you want to deal with a specific era and region, learn about the
era *before* that, in this case Anglo-Saxon England as well as Wales,
since changes at the common level rarely take place at a rapid pace.

You also have a different tool at your disposal, although it's only useful
as a guide to other things, and terribly solid all by itself.  The Brother
Cadfael series is set in Shropshire (a whole county to the north of where
you are looking) c1100.  It may be possible to backtrack the sources that
Ellis Peters/Edith Pargenter used to create her fictional world.

You might see if you can find a copy of "The Archaeology of Medieval England 
and Wales" by John Steane (Which, btw, has no CIP, even though it's a 1984
publication date).  HE, in turn, suggests A.L. Poole's Medieval England (Oxford,
1958), which is, itself a revision of F.P. Barnard's Companion to English
History (Middle Ages)(Oxford, 1902).  I have not actually SEEN the latter
two books, so can not verify their use one way or the other.  Each chapter of
the Stearn has its own bibliography.

There is a technique known as "Pearl diving" in information where you
may find a single pearl in a bed of rocks, but that pearl should be used
to lead you to other material, even if that pearl is only an author's
name, a new subject heading you haven't checked, a new article title,
etc.

IN essence, what I am suggesting is that you shouldn't be afraid of looking
at "less than perfect sources", if they lead you on to *better* information.
NO sources are perfect.

I'm sorry if this isn't specific enough, but it's really not my area.

Diarmuit Ui Dhuinn