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Re: Time Team R.I.P. ?
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mascot wrote:
Not fully in agreement on two points here:

1) While there is a lot wrong with the "I'll just google it" view of research I'd hardly describe what Google/Autonomy/Other search software does as "just boolean". The level of "fuzzy logic" and "learning" software is forefront of pattern recognition and it anything but a boolean in it's nature - sure at the core all IT is just 1's and 0's but modern search engines are at the very smart end of spectrum. I'm more concerned about how they are being programmed to operate than anything else (i.e. generate advertising revenue first and foremost).

2) I'd with tiompan on defending TMA, it does turn up new stuff and by publishing existing sites and promoting rock art interest generates footfall in the areas most likely to contain new art. I've only found one panel but many people here have found and published lots of new rock art. Obviously TMA started by publishing existing well known sites but I think it's grown to become more than just a list of existing rocks.


I also think TMA is a great educational tool as well. The original Cope book was unique, one might even say revolutionary, in its ' antiquarian' perspective on prehistory. In many ways Julian Cope said look at these things with your emotions and not necessarily as monuments to be recorded as numbers and dates, Faerygirl has said elsewhere that you can no more date the house that you live in by the objects you have in that house, this is so true..... Digital photography - such a recent innovation - has given a great many people the opportunity to record what they see, and there is so much enthusiam here on TMA to go out and find these places.. AND I still love his essays, one of the quotes at the beginning he gives;
"The English Landscape itself, to those who know how to read it right, is the richest historical record we possess"
W.G.Hoskins - The Making of the English Landscape.
Subjectivity is no bad thing when it elicits an emotional response to the landscape, we learn to see the world differently, in the end it teaches us to respect and be humble at the achievements attained in prehistory...


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moss
Posted by moss
15th January 2010ce
11:58

In reply to:

Re: Time Team R.I.P. ? (mascot)

1 reply:

Re: Time Team R.I.P. ? (StoneGloves)

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