Hello Jens!
You say "researchers"?!
What are researchers?
Is a collector who reads a few books and had a look at a few examples a "researcher"?
I think not.
I think a researcher is one who spends some time in India, visiting museums and talking to curators and historians. Asking them questions about specific traits, for specific weapons, for specific geographic regions, for specific time periods, for specific religions (Islam/Hindu/Christian).
Visiting private collections and talking to the collectors. Asking them the same specific questions.
Then, after accumulating sufficient experience, formulate some hypothesis and proceed to verify them... in the field, again talking to museum curators, historians and collectors.
Then, draw the conclusions and put them in a thesis, or book... to be published and face the scrutiny of other researchers, museum curators and collectors.
But this would span over several years and would require a lot of money... as travelling never comes cheap.
So I think there are very few genuine researchers.
Elgood may be one of them. However, reading his books I sometimes find them sometimes very anecdotical. For example in his "Arms of Greece and Her Balkan Neighbours..." he consistently fails to provide arguments as to why a certain Yathagan is considerd to be from Bosnia and not from Turkey, Greece or else. Based on what characteristics (materials used, shape of the hilt, shape of blade, decorations, written text, etc.) does he make his assertions. Is it based on a rigurous analysis of the characteristics, or is it based on the information he got from the owner?! Then what if he is wrong? How can I, a novice collector, verify his asertions or use his book to identify and correctly locate a blade in space and time.
Dubito, ergo cogito!
My two cents...
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