And the journals quickly recognized her expertise. John Humphrey, the editor of the Journal of Roman Archaeology told the Wall Street Journal: ”I could tell even from the first version that it was a very serious piece of experimental archaeology which no scholar who was not a hairdresser—in other words, no scholar—would have been able to write.”
Interests, professions, hobbies, and traditions all bring valuable insight that cannot be ignored in historical research. For archeologists and historians, to reach out to a specialist is wisdom; to have a specialist reach out to you is a blessing.
This is why reenactors, who are generally frowned upon by desk-only historians, serve a useful purpose.
You can’t pay someone to try out a tool or method for a couple of months, you need some kind of very special idiot who will not only do it for free, but who will also look at it critically and go “this sucks, let’s do X instead”, and then continue having fun with it.
My personal favorite
Interests, professions, hobbies, and traditions all bring valuable insight that cannot be ignored in historical research. For archeologists and historians, to reach out to a specialist is wisdom; to have a specialist reach out to you is a blessing.
This is why reenactors, who are generally frowned upon by desk-only historians, serve a useful purpose.
You can’t pay someone to try out a tool or method for a couple of months, you need some kind of very special idiot who will not only do it for free, but who will also look at it critically and go “this sucks, let’s do X instead”, and then continue having fun with it.
The editor, casually reading the paper and then realizing that 100+ years of translators have fucked up because they weren’t also hairdressers