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New study challenges timeline
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Rhiannon
5291 posts

art and science
Dec 03, 2012, 15:25
Isn't archaeology one of those awkward disciplines that won't fit into art or science though? That some archaeologists are doing lots of painstaking physical evidence-collecting of types of soil, bits of pots, remains of people's dinners, using new technology to analyse these things in new ways etc. That's the science. The interpretation of those results, that can be all statistical and sciencey too. But because archaeology is the traces of people, and people do things other than just live and exist in a certain place (with their ideas and their cultures and their societies) that just talking about types of bones isn't enough to describe what might have been going on. So you have people like Darvill who try to imagine the workings inside the mind perhaps, to try and imagine how someone would interpret abit of landscape at the time.
But both those approaches are trying to use evidence, or hints of evidence, to tell us about the past.

Whether you personally had a weird experience somewhere is neither here nor there. That's just a one-off anecdote (interesting though it may be to someone who likes stories about fairies, I'm not knocking weirdness). But weirdness is only really relevant if a place drums up weirdness for most anybody visiting that place - surely?? Like if it has a strange sound. Or unnatural-looking sculptural forms. Or does something weird in the landscape (like the silbury game aforementioned). Or is something weird in the landscape.

That is why archaeologists don't want to engage with weird anecdotes on forums, most of it isn't a lead about what really happened in prehistory, and if you're going to write a paper*, you'll be wanting some firm evidence.

*no papers = no money = no papers.
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