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How is Rock Art aged?
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Evergreen Dazed
1881 posts

Re: How is Rock Art aged?
Dec 17, 2012, 12:46
tiompan wrote:
Evergreen Dazed wrote:
tiompan wrote:
Evergreen Dazed wrote:
Evergreen Dazed wrote:
tiompan wrote:
Evergreen Dazed wrote:
tiompan wrote:
Evergreen Dazed wrote:
tiompan wrote:

No mention of the the lack of evidence for anything hallucinogenic from any beakers or pottery found in Neolthic


Just a small point, and its obviously GW, but even though Balfarg is somewhat 'out on its own', just because it has yet to be found elsewhere, doesnt mean it wasn't happening more widely.




Balfarg was shown not to be an example years ago . So there is no evidence .
It's odd that the myth about it has hung about so long yet it didn't take long to point out the original study was flawed .


Not to be an exmaple of what?



Maybe I have misunderstood but I assumed that you were talking about
evidence for hallucinigens on pottery .


No, you understood correctly, I just hadn't read about the re-analysis.
Dear oh dear, marks off for me!


I'm going back again now..

Having fully read the paper, it is not the case that Balfarg has been shown not to be an example at all, more that the attempted replication did not prove it.

"It is possible that the residue differed markedly in pollen and macrofossil content across the sherd and this explanation may account for the small cache of henbane seeds identified in the first study (Moffat 1993)."

It seems there is the possibility that the first study correctly identified black henbane, but the 2nd could not confirm it.

Fair?

The conclusion was "Although palaeobotany has the potential to be used in support of theories of hallucinogenic drug use in prehistory in statistically reliable ways, it has not succeeded in doing so at this site."

I was speaking to someone involved with the second paper recently ,and their reaction was one of disappointment about the results .
What is interesting is that the original was 1993 it was refuted in in 1999 yet we only hear of the 1993 comment ,the refutation has been around twice as long .


Well, as you'll know, the more sensational discovery is obviously going to receive more attention on the average megalithic site, thats just the way the world works unfortunately.
It would be nice if things were balanced in that sense, but I suppose its a lesson in choosing sources carefully.
I hadn't read about the 1999 study, but that may be because it was fairly early on in my interest in the subject. But its a shame, info on the re-analysis should be as obvious in any search as the initial claim is in blogs, news sites etc, without having to seek out the individual papers.



Yep, nobody is interested in " war doesn't break out " .


Ha, v true!
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