Tony Buxton (University Oxford, UK)

The broader academic environment in which we conduct our research tends towards segmentation into distinct areas of enquiry, with the focus, parameters and methodology broadly and collectively defined. Some framework for research is essential, but the world we investigate is not so neatly compartmentalised, and the constraints of one particular discipline may impede a comprehensive investigation; the development of inter-disciplinary studies illustrates this point. This paper examines the desirability of free ranging enquiry, crossing disciplinary boundaries, in the context of a study based on the evidence of early modern probate inventories investigating the relationship between people and their material culture in the domestic domain. As a documentary source probate inventories are resourced by local historians, employed as evidence of patterns of production and consumption by economic and social historians, and as supporting textual evidence of material culture by historical archaeologists. Is it possible to draw selectively on diverse disciplines – history, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, archaeology - to construct a methodology tailored to an individual study? Does an interdisciplinary approach enrich the study or lead to loss of identity and direction? Just how possible is it to construct a methodology focussed on the individual enquiry which has wider applicability, and which communicates effectively with other scholars in a loosely defined field? It is suggested that such an approach is indeed possible, if posing problems of identity and focus, but relies on a continuing and evolving engagement with the central purpose of the enquiry.