There's a word-on-the-street maxium that says some of your best ideas and thoughts happen when you're least expecting them -- in the shower, right before falling asleep, when driving on the open road and the like. Any time when your mind can bring those twisty-turny thoughts more to the front and start to do some untying and solving.
I had one of those moments last night while drifting to sleep related to research.
With the new direction, I've been feeling a bit adrift and so have lost a bit of my researching mojo. I am still utterly fascinated by the Yuan dynasty era Mongols, so I'm not feeling a persona change or anything drastic. It's more that I haven't been able to dedicate myself to making a game plan on incorporating new information and approaches.
It's made it especially difficult to read the newer research information I've compiled because I've been struggling with where it "fits" in what I'm looking at. It feel both relevant and irrelevant to what I'm doing, and the ambiguity is sapping my ability to focus when I have the chance. The little voice in my back of my head says "and this helps you how?" and I'm having a time understanding not only the "why" of the question but actually answering it.
Last night, I think I solved it, but it requires some work to make a frame on which to hang everything.
The new direction is more than just looking at stuff out of the ground. I've oversimplified it because it's easier to talk about it that way, before refining the idea.
The new direction is a holistic look at the material and other cultural aspects of the idea of my persona. So, more than "what all did you wear?" it's also "what all did you eat? what would your social standing be? how did you get there? what's your religious background? what languages would you speak?" and other related questions.
So, instead of a deep dive into a narrow subject, it's a deep dive into a narrow time.
What came to me last night was a pretty simple, though somewhat profound, idea. Literally organizing Erdene's life into departments.
Just like a real department store, they'll bleed into each other like how activewear and formalwear are separate, but the connect through casual clothing.
What I've come up with so far is:
Food: What did he eat? With whom did he eat it? How often could he expect to eat? Would it have changed moving from the frontier to the heart of the Empire?
Faith: What would his religion probably have been? What other religions would he had been exposed to? How did they come together? Who celebrated what faiths? Would he have had a different faith than his neighbors? parents? siblings? What were the prevailing philosophies of the time?
Social: What social biases did he have? Would he have been considered a racist by modern standards? How would growing up on the Silk Routs have changed his view of outsiders? Would he be in an ethnically mixed environment, or would it have been homogenous? Who would he consider 'his people'? How would he identify his in-groups and his out-groups?
Government: How would he understand his government? Would the government be supportive or oppressive to his religious and other markers? What would have been his most probably role in government? Who're the major players in the government? What does the bureaucracy look like (since this is China)? Who is eligible to be a Civil Servant?
Material: What did he own? How would he have bought or gotten it? What are his clothes made of? How are they constructed? What does he live in? Is it portable? Is he still nomadic or has he settled?
Again, all of these topics and questions overlap each other and inform each other. Some can be answered by traditional archaeology, others will need historical study. But, by having the archaeological study background first, I can use that to do gut-checking on the historian's interpretation of social structures and customs.
