Well having worked on a landscape project that cost several million
pounds (The Raunds Area survey) and lasted a decade - a major problem is
its actually very hard to do interdisciplinary rather than
multi-disciplinary research. I did the historical research for the
project over 12 months and I suspect most of my archaeological
colleagues never really understood what I was doing. For the most part
the managerial, political and financial pressures meant that most people
got on with their bit, kept their heads down and the original reserch
design was defunct long before the end. I found it a thoroughly
depressing experience and very nearly joined the Inland Revenue and was
only amazed how good the finished results were. The first of the
medieval period volumes - the survey overview is due out from Oxbow in
July (15 years after I submitted my chapters) and I think will be very
good. However, interdisciplinary teams are a potential hotbed of
friction and politics - the key is getting people to talk to each other,
create some mutual good will and aim for some structured result. One
major problem I have when working as a historian (rather than an as
archaeologist - my other hat) with archaeologists is that the archies
will normally give me 20 things to solve and I will immediately state
that I am unlikely to solve any of them. I then usually propose
approaching the project from 2 levels- looking for specific refs such as
when a building was built or who lived in it if they are available and
secondly putting the research in a wider contextual setting - it is
often the latter that is most successfull at least for pre C19 periods.
I always hate working for people the first time when you may go off and
find absolutely nothing though I have a pretty high score of totally
reinterpreting whole projects from the documentary evidence but you
never know in advance.


paul courtney
Leicester