"In common use. . .?" Was: SC - French toast?

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Jennifer Rushman wrote:
> 
>      I've seen some interesting ideas of 'period things' however there is often
> no mention if an item was 'in common use' or not.  Maybe is is a personal goal
> or ideal but shouldn't we be looking to recreate the things that were more
> common not bizzare or out of the ordinary. 

Yes ;  ) .

Adamantius

P.S.: All right, I'll come out with more. We're supposed to be teaching,
in our way, about everyday life in our period. While it may be a
disservice to state flatly that, say, New World Beans were never used in
period, because it isn't entirely true, I think it's considerably worse
to harp on the question of whether chocolate as an edible, solid
confection existed in period and was known to Europeans (and evidence
suggests it was, although I wouldn't call it a typical period European
foodstuff), and leave people with a wildly inaccurate view of period
European life. 

Too few people view history as a sequential timeline, and for many
history is a huge mushy lump of "the past". From a SCAdian's
persepctive, to have to state, in an unqualified fashion, that
chocolate, kidney beans, coffee, whatever, are "period", leads
inevitably to the real educational disservice of having Vikings with
handguns, eating Snickers bars. Hey, Vikings, chocolate, and handguns
are period, aren't they?

But I really like Xena duking it out with Ares with one hand and Julius
Caesar with the other, with a bunch of generic "Celts" cheering in the
background...    
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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