Research Standards
A public research project should make it possible to see not only what it concludes, but how confidently it can conclude it.
Before It Was a Diet is narrative nonfiction, not an academic research project.
But the historical, scientific, and cultural claims behind the book still need to withstand scrutiny.
The public Research Notes follow a few simple principles.
Get as close to the event as possible.
Primary sources are preferred when they survive and can be located.
A sixteenth-century chronicle, legal record, map, or contemporary advertisement does not become infallible because it is old. But it tells us something different from a story repeated centuries later.
Later scholarship remains essential for interpretation, context, and discovering where to look next.
The two should not be confused.
Separate what was observed from what it might mean.
A row of old olive trees can be observed.
Its agricultural origin can be investigated.
What that surviving geometry suggests about cities, inheritance, or adaptation is interpretation.
All three may belong in the same investigation, but they should not quietly become the same kind of claim.
Treat a plausible story as a lead, not a fact.
Historical narratives often become cleaner as they travel.
A person acquires a precise role. A location becomes more specific. A story repeated often enough begins to look documented.
When the surviving evidence supports only part of a familiar account, the narrower claim wins.
Leave uncertainty visible.
Not every question resolves cleanly.
Sources conflict.
Documents disappear.
Names change.
Later writers borrow from earlier ones without saying so.
When the evidence does not support a confident answer, the Research Note should say so.
The unresolved part is often where the next investigation begins.
Correct the public record when the evidence changes.
Research Notes may be revised as new sources appear.
Minor additions may simply update the page.
A change that materially alters a conclusion should also appear in the note's Updates and corrections section.
The goal is not to preserve the first answer.
It is to leave behind the best-supported one.
Keep the evidence traceable.
Research Notes identify the sources behind significant claims and distinguish primary material from later scholarship where useful.
Images, maps, and archival materials are credited separately, with licensing information recorded when they are reproduced on the site.
The source trail is part of the work.
Label first-party work only when it is first-party.
A page can say it comes from a field observation, a photograph, an archival visit, a transcription, a map comparison, a market shelf, an interview, or data collected for this project when that is what happened.
Writing a note from published sources is research. It is not, by itself, original fieldwork. Those pages stay unlabeled.
Do not confuse research with the manuscript.
This website publishes evidence around the book: discoveries, sources, maps, images, field observations, corrections, and questions still being pursued.
The book is where those materials are selected, connected, and turned into narrative.
The research can remain open.
The manuscript cannot.
If you have a source, correction, or piece of evidence relevant to the investigation, it is welcome.