SC - Definitions and Examples: Period, Peri-oid and OOP

[Catherine Deville]

O.k...
I've been learning a lot while here, but I also note that many things which
were excepted as true when I was young and unseasoned (and an active
member) have changed.  It may simply be that some of those things are
better researched now than they were then, it may be that the focus of the
SCA has become more focused on authenticity or it may simply be that this
list is overwhelmingly peopled by serious scholars (and just for
clarification, that was a compliment, not an insult <s>.)

To try and be clear where my confusion lies, there seems to be a feel on
this list that if I can't find it printed somewhere, then they didn't do
it.  Which seems to me to be a practically untenable position when we're
discussing the availability of information on something which was poorly
documented, where texts are subject to translation error and where the vast
majority of the people of the time simply did not *write things down*.  It
has always been my impression that the small number of primary sources
available to us to tell us what people ate "in period" was often
insufficient for us to draw firm conclusions, so the best that we could do
is make educated guesses. (or as my mother put it when I joined the SCA, no
one *knows* what things were like "back then", we just have our
understandings based on the available information, which is often minimal
due to the level of illiteracy "back then".)

Part of what was stressed to me in my early training was that this was the
Society for _Creative_ Anachronism... that we should be creative in our
research. I'm getting the feel from the list that if it isn't based on a
retraction (hopefully one which will pass muster) of a recipe from a period
source that it's not period, it's peri-oid.  Is this correct?  I had always
been taught that inventing a recipe in a period style based on research
that demonstrated that this is how they might have done it was also
considered "period" (since surely cooks didn't only rely on the few books
that we have.)  In other words (just as an example) , if I have 3 examples,
from 3 different books in 3 different periods and or from 3 different
cultures  which show that people cooked meats (say, poulty, game and beef)
with fruits and what we now consider "sweet" spices, then it would be
acceptable to experiement, create my *own* recipe for "rabbits in plum
sauce" (just off the top of my head) which was made similar to those
recipes and which used period ingredients and was cooked in a period style
and that would have still been considered period.

So, to clarify, the impression that I'm getting is that if you can't point
to a documentable redaction *and* support your reasons for having made the
decisions that you did in making that redaction based on the documentation
available to you, the it's not period, it's "peri-oid".  If you create
something from generally accepted period ingredients, or in some cases
modern ingredients which mimic period ingredients and in a period style
(which you can document) then it might be peri-oid, but it's not considered
"period".  And if you make a decision based on deductive reasoning (they
did 'this' therefore it's reasonable to believe that they may also have
done 'that') then it's generally considered OOP.  I'm I getting close?
What do folks think?

 (and, btw, "in period" is defined *how*, now?  it used to be 600-1650 with
some dispute of it's being 600-1600... but it was in an official document
(I thought the Corpora, but don't have my old docs so it could have been
any of them, including Meridies Kingdom law.)  I checked the current
Corpora and By-Laws and they now refer only to "pre-17th century"... so
what dates are commonly conceived to be "in period" now?)

I remain, in service to Meridies,
Lady Celia des L'archier