Introduction to persona and documentation handout
Names
When you begin playing in the SCA, often people have two names. One is their everyday name, and the other is one that they use at events. You can even register your name with the College of Heralds so that nobody else in the SCA can register an identical name.
Often, choosing a name is the first step to developing a persona. It provides a skeleton to which you can flesh out with tidbits of information, such as what era, place, nationality or even religion your persona experiences.
Let's use as an example of how a name can influence your persona, we'll use my name, Ásfríðr.
The name is found on the Danish runestone DR4 [1] which is believed to date from the late 9th or early 10th century. [2] The name in full is Ásfríðr… dottir Oðinkars. [1]
From these three pieces of information about the name, it may be reasonable to assume that I'm a woman (as the rune stone says she is the daughter of Oðinkar), I may live in Denmark, and it is around the year 900CE.
Add a byname or surname, and you may be able to sketch in an occupation or family history.
eg.
Ásfríðr Oðinkarsdottir is the daughter of Oðinkar, so she already knows the name of one of her parents.
Paul Tyler might be an Englishman who fixes roofs for a living.
Daily Life
Daily life for your persona may also be another aspect you might like to explore-- what sort of house do you live in? What do you do for a trade? What are your daily chores? What do you do to amuse yourself? Do you have a pet? What would you wear? What food do you eat?
It is this final question that drives our next example:- How to research online.
Lord X. Ample enjoys creating culinary extravaganzas in the kitchen, and wonders if he could include it in his persona. He decides that he should look for information on 15th century French cooking.
So, he goes to Google Scholar [a] and types in '15th century diet France' and finds a bunch of journal article summaries:
- Camilla Dickson "Food, medicinal and other plants from the 15th century drains of Paisley Abbey, Scotland"
Vegetation History and Archaeobotany
Volume 5, Numbers 1-2, June, 1996 [3]
-
C. Polet and M. A. Katzenberg "Reconstruction of the diet in a mediaeval monastic community from the coast of Belgium"
Journal of Archaeological Science
Volume 30, Issue 5, May 2003, Pages 525-533 [4]
-
Koen Deforce "The historical use of ladanum. Palynological evidence from 15th and 16th century cesspits in northern Belgium."
Vegetation History and Archaeobotany
Volume 15, Number 2, March, 2006. Pages 145-148 [5]
All of them look pretty scary, but the Scottish article is probably off-topic, so it's discarded. Also, for some reason he has found results about Belgium. However, Lord X. remembers that Wikipedia says that 15th century France and Belgium had different borders than today. [6] Although Wikipedia is not usually considered a good resource for research, it is good for basic fact-checking.
At least on first glance, the article about diet reconstruction, which is based on an Abbey in Koksijde, it is on the border with modern France and may still be useful for his search.
By looking at the summary, X. is able to have a good idea of how useful the article is. But, all the journal has published online for free is the summary. Lord Ample wants to find the entire article.
So, he went to the Libraries Australia database[b], and searches for the name of the journal: "Journal of Archaeological Science".
By clicking on the title of the results, he sees that the journal is available at lots of different places, such as Melbourne university, Monash university, La Trobe university and the National Library of Australia. Living in Stormhold, he's a lot closer to the universities than Canberra, so the next step is to see if they have the same volume that he needs.
In this case, he needs Volume 30, and the only place that has that volume is Melbourne university. So, he might need to go down there one weekend and look up the journal himself, or he could ask someone closer to the city or who studies at the university to help.
In any case, he would need to have use all of the bibliographical information in order to easily find that article. Issue 5, May 2003, Pages 525-533.
This is why having a complete bibliography if possible is so ideal -- so that other people can use your research as a jumping-off point and look at the sources you used!
Using websites
But all that work and X. only has one article to show for it! He needs to broaden his search, so he returns to basic Google and looks for '15th century cook books' and finds a lot of links.
On one website he finds some links to 14th century French cookbooks and on another page some undated French cookbooks. Then he finds a 15th century cookbook.
Analyzing a Source
Du Fait de Cuisine,[7] says it was written in 1420, which places it in the 15th century. However Lord X. is unsure if the book is real, or fiction.
A quick google search brings up a French website with a photo of the original manuscript[8], which may indicate that it isn't something made-up. But X. Ample really needed a more trustworthy source. A published, physical book would be preferable, as it should have been fact-checked and revised before being published. Anyone can write a webpage without any editorial guidelines.
Libraries Australia comes to the rescue with a book called:
- Chiquart's On cookery : a fifteenth-century Savoyard culinary treatise
edited and translated by Terence Scully.
But, it's not available publicly in Victoria. He could inter-library loan it from another library, but that can be rather expensive.
Lord Ample notes down the book details and decides to ask his cooking friends about it later. In the meanwhile, he decides to use the two websites above for information.
Although neither site is from a respected source, like a .gov or .edu domain, and .com domain names are cheap to buy these days, they should not be automatically dismissed out of hand.
It appears that the oldcook.com website is using the Terence Scully transcription, and if X. spoke French then that website might be all that he needed. It will need to be taken on face value that the website has accurately transcribed the text.
However, Lord Ample doesn't speak French and has to rely on the English translation. Yet, he is aware why the source may not be the optimum available.
Let's look at what makes this source rather dodgy; there is no bibliography, and there is no parallel translation or link to the original transcribed French so that the accuracy of the translation can be assessed.
What is good though, is the footnotes, since they do indicate that careful thought went into translation. Other than this indication, there is no way of determining the experience or credentials of the translator. Critically assessed, this website is not the best, and the book by Scully would be superior however as it is the only available source, it should be used.
What does this mean for Lord X. Amples' diet? He may have raised more questions than answers (such is the thrill of research) but he has one journal article he can refer to, and a cookbook from his time period that can also give more clues. Hopefully he will have a better idea about 15th century French food and his possible diet.
All websites accessed 18th December 2007
Online Resources
[a] Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com
[b] Libraries Australia http://librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au
[c] Internet Archive http://www.archive.org
If a website link is broken, or the file is not found, the Internet Archive may have a cached copy. You can also try Googles' cache.
References used in examples
[1] Lis Jacobsen, and Erik Moltke, Danmarks Runindskrifter: Text (Copenhagen: 1942) col. 9, 14, 15
[2]Staeker, Jörn ‘The Concepts of imitatio and translatio: Perceptions in a Viking-age past’ in Norwegian Archaeological Review 38:1 (2005) 3-28
[3] Camilla Dickson "Food, medicinal and other plants from the 15th century drains of Paisley Abbey, Scotland"
Vegetation History and Archaeobotany
Volume 5, Numbers 1-2, June, 1996
[4] C. Polet and M. A. Katzenberg "Reconstruction of the diet in a mediaeval monastic community from the coast of Belgium"
Journal of Archaeological Science
Volume 30, Issue 5, May 2003, Pages 525-533
[5]Koen Deforce "The historical use of ladanum. Palynological evidence from 15th and 16th century cesspits in northern Belgium."
Vegetation History and Archaeobotany
Volume 15, Number 2, March, 2006. Pages 145-148
[6] Wikipedia: History of Belgium
[7] Du Fait de Cuisine. Translated by Elizabeth Cook
[8] Manuscrit de Maître Chiquart
