Google...
 

Question.. if a start page has DirectoryIndex somefile.shtml (ie no index.html), will Google's crawler spider the website properly?

And if not, is there a workaround?

It will hit any html page that has people linking to it. Are you meaning http://www.domain.com/ has somefile.html as the default instead of index.html when you hit http://www.domain.com/ or http://www.domain.com/foo/
If so, that makes absolutely no difference to google, and it will work. :)
ZoiNk

rightly said :thumbsup