Concerning the Paradox of Paradata. Or, “I don’t want realism; I want magic!”

Traditional written historical investigation and analysis have from the beginning consisted of a sometimes unstable mixture of fact and conjecture, hard evidence and inspired imagination. To encourage 3-D modelling of cultural heritage artefacts to be taken seriously as historical scholarship this inevitable and ambiguous balance can be highlighted and to a significant degree documented and modulated by London Charter principles. This enhances the scholarly integrity of these models as examples of serious research based historical investigation, and helps avoid the dangers of inflated or unverified “media hype” which can compromise or discredit such work