Readers need not be reminded that an abundant literature exists concerning the techniques for recording and interpreting field work data; indeed, oral sources have been subjected to the most rigorous textual and literary criticism and we are even beginning to see what one observer calls ‘schools’ of oral history. All of this has been to the benefit of African history, as the many fine monographs of the last decade attest, while the proliferation of oral history projects in other areas of history attest to a general acceptance of oral data (except in the very darkest corners of the discipline) as a valuable source for the historian. But the concern with interpretation has been carried on largely to the exclusion of other fieldwork related issues. I would like to take up a number of these here, with the cautionary note that it is obviously impossible in this format to discuss them in the detail and with the variety of views they deserve and that my motivation in raising them at all derives from an interest to stimulate some debate on the topic of field work rather than to arbitrate what is correct or incorrect procedure. A further point is that, although my observations are first hand and therefore obviously limited, I believe they represent problems which are more widespread than the examples which follow.