So, my question is sparked by my last undergraduate thesis about Cyril and Methodius' translation missions in Moravia and Pannonia. Nearly all of the primary sources about their mission are totally devoid of important details about their mission (e.g., translation techniques, what is Cyril's Glaglolitic Alphabet based on, etc), yet many of the monographs and secondary sources that I consulted made huge grasps at trying to answer these questions, and always ended their analyses with "so, basically, if you read these books + these primary sources, you can maybe come to this conclusion. But more research needs to be done, lol".
Obviously, I am not trying to undermine the research of the particular Slavic historians that I was researching upon. But, if I am being honest, I find a bit academically disingenuous that historians will consistently try and answer the same questions with equal levels of inconclusiveness. At a certain point, their independent research turns into their own theories about how events played out^1 and future readers have to consult more reading material than is necessary to figure out how events actually played out. In the end, this over-theorizing becomes unproductive and inflates the information surrounding the event in question, which can not only be frustrating but confusing (as I found myself to be since I consulted over 15 books (read two twice over), 5 secondary sources and 7 primary sources for a 15 page paper).
Maybe my case is awfully specific and I am feeling a bit disappointed with reading the same stories over and over again to just compare and contrast the minutae of wording that leads to the same conclsuion in the end. But I think another good example is that according to Wikipedia, there are over 200 theories as to why Rome fell. While I am sure they are all valid, that is way too many theories, and I would bet that a lot of them have overlapping ideas that could easily be merged.
Anyways, all this to say, when do historians look at a topic that has documentation, but not enough to ever reach a definitive conclusion and say "yeah that's it; we can't do anymore?". Or similarly, are there instances where historians have effectively done that? Thank you.
1: A good example of independent theories are trying to trace the origins of the Slavs. You will notice that there is no conclusion as to where they come from, yet in Alexander Schenker's The Dawn of Slavic Philology he notes that there are various theories as to where they come from, and they are highly speculative at best, if not flat out wrong at worst.
When do historians look at a topic that has documentation, but not enough to ever reach a definitive conclusion and say "yeah that's it; we can't do anymore?"
Not a medievalist, but this happens a lot when the sources are scarce. It's a commonplace that a lot of 18th c. Americans are known only by a few lines in some tax records and possibly a marriage announcement, and there's little chance of getting more than that. (So, want to know the thoughts of a gunsmith in Jefferson County Virginia in 1789? Good luck with that...) Now, maybe that's just details, small stuff; but those gaps in the sources also occur for bigger questions. A fire in the US Patent Office in 1836 burned pretty much all the written records and all the models. Lost were therefore all the notes of the discussions of the first patent commission in 1791, as they tried to figure out what to do about three rival steamboat inventors. That commission included Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall, so almost certainly there were some very interesting things said, questions asked. From the complaints of two of the inventors, it seems likely that they shrugged and granted all of them a patent for everything- essentially, a non-patent. And that decision seems to have partially stifled interest in steamboats for the next 20 years, so it's pretty important. But, barring the discovery of a new diary or something, there's nothing to be done about knowing more.
However, just because we're willing to walk away from something doesn't mean we- or some of us- aren't willing to talk about it and show how smart we are, as there's often a large audience waiting for the answer.... For example, I think a lot of medievalists would be happy to walk away from King Arthur questions. There's little good evidence for his existence ( and some would say none). Yet the Arthur questions keep getting asked, books sold. The late Leslie Alcock did a good summary of the sources, was maybe one of the first to bring in archaeological data, but apparently got tired of the subject. (Perhaps very tired....one obit recounted how he noticed expectant throngs waiting at the fence surrounding one of his Wiltshire digs. Alcock went out and bought a plastic skeleton for the crew to dig up once a day, so the audience would have something to see.) So, as long as somebody wants to read about Arthur, there will be someone willing to write another book.
So as you may have guessed, historians just don't know how to quit. But I'd like to add another reason why; there are new techniques but there are also new ideas and methodology. I'd take my field/research as an example: transvestite women who became monks. It's something you find since the beginning of Christian monachism (4th c BC)* going all throughout the Middle Ages and even the modern era (see: Sylvie Steinberg). And since the start, there is only one question: but was is true, tho? For modern era, the answer is pretty obvious because these women were emprisonned so we have the prison's records but for the more ancient periods, people are more uncertain because the only sources we have is the tales of saints/martyrs (and as we know, those don't hesitate to be fictitious).
That's where new ideas come in. A very old specialist of the Egyptian monachism is Ewa Wipszycka who writes that women were too physically weak to "impersonate" monks. But with the development of women/gender history, we reconsider the sames sources but with a new angle. As in: the women tend to lie about their physical weakness because the laws (made by men) were in favour of physically weak women. Another last example is that for a long time historians (men) believed ancient Greeks (men) who said that any public woman was a prostitute. And of course, if you count all the public women in the sources, you'll find there were too much prostitutes. So, reading the same sources, we found two differents things because we focused on two different things.
To put it simply: historians never quit also because they are trying or waiting for someone to have a new idea/new methodology that would lead to the "eureka!" moment.
*I don't have my notes rn but 3 examples in the Apophtegmata Patrum, two in Moschos book.