… for research, text analysis and academic writing.
Here are some important questions that all of us who wishes to delve deeper into a scientific approach should try to respond to, as we study the source material.
1. What is the personal history of the author(s)?
2. Who is he teaching to?
3. Why is he teaching this and how will the knowledge be used?
4. In what contexts would this knowledge have been used?
5. What are the connections to other authors, before and after?
6. What are the differences and similarities to other authors that are not directly connected?
7. What other research has been done on the material. – This needs to be studied and analyzed in depth.
Methodology for experimental archaeology is still being defined in the scientific community and in our case we need to use it combined with text analysis. For all this we need to consider the following topics, as we prepare our presentations.
1. The structure of our text.
2. Other research.
3. Purpose, research method and execution (Hermeneutical approach seems the most fitting).
4. Meeting criticism in advance.
7. How to present and use the results.
All these have formal academic requirements on how to handle them in our writing. For instance, a personal “tone”, using a personal pronoun like “I” is not allowed in an academic text. It has to be neutral.
There are several ways of writing references, but they have to be strictly followed.