Re: New study challenges timeline | Forum

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VBB Dec 5, 2012 10:10:11

Replying to VBB

VBB wrote:

Littlestone wrote:

VBB wrote:

The former chair of the Avebury Society Alastair Service made the point in print about Silbury being white almost twenty years before this website existed, Foster made the same point in relation to Avebury in the 1920s, the point was already old even then, made in relation to barrows on Salisbury Plain and near Dorchester in the 19th century.

Fair doos... but the point, surely, is whether those observations were ever given much credence at the time (or for that matter for several decades afterwards) by the established archeo community. Remember, it’s within (some of) our lifetimes that Atkinson was calling the builders of Silbury ‘howling barbarians’.

It’s probably fair to say that our present, more ‘receptive’ way of thinking, has created a far more open-minded approach to archaeological research - and that has to be the value of forums such as this - always pushing at the boundaries slightly.

I expend rather a lot of energy promoting that given accessibility to learned argument the public can bring a wealth of personal and professional experience from all walks of life to bear on archaeological thought dominated by career academics and heritage professionals (that never having done anything else can be somewhat limited in their vision of what life is about); but that argument is somewhat undermined by tma masquerading such as the above examples as unquestionable fact without rigour or references, and furthermore as we all know, behaving in a fashion that encourages the impression that public enthusiasts are a rabble of egotistical loose cannons that converse as if holding a tired closing time pub conversation.

Reminds me of home when I was a kid, but it don’t suit everyone!

It seems my post could be misunderstood. It wasn't me having a pop at LS who knows this already: above I cited Alastair Service without giving details of the book in reference (because it was on the hoof and I didn't recall), then I mentioned someone called Foster (whose given name I think was Thomas) and I don't recall the name of the book but it was something about 'early man'. One doesn't look this stuff up just to make a point that would be accepted (which it was), but someone will then take that on and repeat it as fact without checking it. If I was wrong then everyone after gets it wrong. This is the trouble with guidebooks, where bollox conjured by 19th century vicars gets regurgitated as fact all over the web.

This and the playground stuff on tma... well, we are what we are!

E

Evergreen Dazed Dec 5, 2012 10:12:13

Replying to VBB

VBB wrote:

and furthermore as we all know, behaving in a fashion that encourages the impression that public enthusiasts are a rabble of egotistical loose cannons that converse as if holding a tired closing time pub conversation.

Hmmm. Rather wet. Anybody (archaeologist, heritage doodah, whatever) who is so woefully ignorant that they fail to understand how ALL public forums, at one time or another, descend into 'childish' argument is not worth listening to in the first place, as they must have been living under a rock for the last 20 years.

L

Littlestone Dec 5, 2012 11:26:16

Replying to VBB

VBB wrote:

I expend rather a lot of energy promoting that given accessibility to learned argument the public can bring a wealth of personal and professional experience from all walks of life to bear on archaeological thought dominated by career academics and heritage professionals (that never having done anything else can be somewhat limited in their vision of what life is about); but that argument is somewhat undermined by tma masquerading such as the above examples as unquestionable fact without rigour or references, and furthermore as we all know, behaving in a fashion that encourages the impression that public enthusiasts are a rabble of egotistical loose cannons that converse as if holding a tired closing time pub conversation.

If you’re referring to the beings of light brigade that occasionally pepper these pages then I fully agree with you (not that I entirely dismiss the idea of beings of light you understand, just that I wish those who engage with such beings would stop banging on about them here).

Some of your, and tiompan’s, earlier comments got me thinking however on the ‘seasonality' of ides. da Vinci’s helicopter is a good, though perhaps oversimplified, example of what I mean - the idea was there but it took 500 years to become a reality. We could say that was because the technology (science, materials etc) weren’t yet in place for it to happen (and we’d be absolutely right on that score) but we could also say, with equal validity, that a receptive ground for the idea to take root wasn’t there either.

That’s the point. We can keep going back to the year dot to illustrate that someone saw something before someone else but, unless the climate for the idea to take root is there, it ain’t going to happen. Put another way, you don't need an agricultural scientist to till the ground and grow a good crop.