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Authenticity When we claim we are doing research, that is exactly what we do. Our group boasts two archaeologists specialising in the middle ages and one historian, focused on medieval art, plus loads of professional craftsmen - and a doctor! We literally go to the bottom with our enquiries, and study art in churches and manuscripts, read testaments, judicial documents and letters, as well as handle, measure and weigh original artefacts from our particular period. But we must not forget the problems facing all scholars and laymen - inaccurate interpretations and lack of sources. Whatever we interpret, be it a piece of armour or a recipe for baked chicken, it is only our personal interpretation, even though it is based on strenuous studies and supported by accredited research as well as on long hours of double checking. Furthermore, the sources themselves could be faulty. Nobody knows if the author of a manuscript was biased, if he plainly lied or if he didn't have sufficient knowledge of the subject he was putting on paper, and hence made a insufficient depiction of that matter. It is also impossible to know if a table spoon found together with coins minted in the 1370's actually is from the 1370's or if it's considerably older; another possibility is that the spoon actually is a sixteenth century one, and that it's owner collected old coins... That's why we always have as an objective to use two or more independent sources in the recreation of artefacts. Even when applying such rigid methods to our research we could still be wrong, and our equipment at risk of being incorrect reproductions. That is a problem we can never escape. Never the less we try to avoid it by making a general interpretation, put together by all impressions we have from the period in question. That way we are able to produce a synthesis of for example a pair of fourteenth century shoes. They won't be exact copies, but they lend aspects from thousands of other shoes, making a plausible interpretation of fourteenth century footwear.
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