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No srsly Commercial Archaeology Sucks The debate thread - mididoctors - 19th March 2010
brazier Wrote:mididoctors
The questions are of a similar nature, but not of the same type, but that's a philosophy of science debate.
Aren't you ignoring that "if any"? "If any" distinguishes the question from being presumptive - it is asking for one to search for negative evidence for the hypothesis. It probably should be phrased more clearly though, first, stating the presumption, and then, asking for that presumption to be tested by archaeological "experiment". Is that, roughly, what niggles you about it? That it lacks rigor?
I would tend to agree with your interpretation of "any"
but in practice this is not followed for two basics reasons
1. the person tasked with the analysis does not make use of the word "any"
2. the person tasked with the analysis is discouraged or actively told not to pursue such lines of inquiry
the second does and has taken place about this very question and is clearly a management issue
the use of negative evidence was attempted for this very question and was blackballed by a presumed best in class archaeological unit... because its remit was too wide.
No srsly Commercial Archaeology Sucks The debate thread - brazier - 19th March 2010
I think (but I won't presume too much) mididoctors raised a specific issue of interest though - the "loaded question". I can see that the example used is not a rigorous hypothesis, it is more familiarly phrased - "if any". But it does sound slightly dismissive! To be fair, as full an excavation as possible is practically impossible to achieve, but it should be the overriding concern if PIS is not feasible (step forward the battery of tests to disprove that...).
No srsly Commercial Archaeology Sucks The debate thread - mididoctors - 19th March 2010
Steven Wrote:
I thought you wanted site specific analysis instead of more general research aims because they produced bias? I think your contradicting yourself a lot here chap.
It might really help if instead of writing enigmatic sort-of theory statements you actually say how you would do it different!
what we should do differently...i have already said that
we should reevaluate what we are doing as we go along like any rational person would
I can demonstrate that but its lengthy... because i did make a reevaluation and decided to do it differently or at least attempted to its not rocket science!
once upon a time there was a model of Roman London population Change....
http://www.jstor.org/pss/526107
which along with several key sites
transformed into what we will call the Perring model (which may or may not be right doesn't matter)
real world example follows if you are up for it
yes or no?
No srsly Commercial Archaeology Sucks The debate thread - mididoctors - 19th March 2010
brazier Wrote:I think (but I won't presume too much) mididoctors raised a specific issue of interest though - the "loaded question". I can see that the example used is not a rigorous hypothesis, it is more familiarly phrased - "if any". But it does sound slightly dismissive! To be fair, as full an excavation as possible is practically impossible to achieve, but it should be the overriding concern if PIS is not feasible (step forward the battery of tests to disprove that...).
The cynic could ague it was designed to curtail inquiry but knowing the culture that generated it and the priorities those responsible for drafting it up have I put it down to sloppy thinking and a example of how middle managment optimisation has relegated the search for knowledge..
limited thought is put into this stuff.. capable intelligent and once upon a time passionate human beings are reduced to jaded idiots who lack self awareness...
the system grinds you down
No srsly Commercial Archaeology Sucks The debate thread - GnomeKing - 20th March 2010
i think i have seen enough failures of imagination to share midi's basic sentiment.
Steve is right that in many regards archaeology is better placed in the public and officail program - however there are problems within the conduct of ,notabley, field archaeology, but also related roles/proffesions,- Problems also exist with the rentention and effective use of skills/potentials... with 'satisfaction'...and with pay...
midi (and others in the past) have tried bravely to elucidate complex and elusive processes of human behaviour in , which frankly would require several docterates to decipher clearly and in full rational respect of the facts...but they have tried, and just because the words of a statement might not always be universally clear, it is still possible to entertain some of the sentiment therein ...
i think commercial concerns have impacted negativley on progresive research, whilst creating large bodies of factual data derived from excavtions (some of which is only minimally passable, and some of which is just poor). for me, this is an issue at the heart of job 'satisfaction' - but i think it is also closley related to Conditions, Respect, and Pay...
In the past my Union were fairly open about being unable to deal with archaeological issues of a technical nature - and rightly, a Proffesional or Monitoring Body would be expected to do just that. However, since there are no easy 'day-to-day' lines of comunication between 'site-staff' and eg IFA Comittees (not like union rep structure for example),intermideate routes maybe useful - perhapes needed. Additionaly there is inevitabley a political tension between the high level operations/'judiciary' and grass-roots ambitions, especially if the 'leadership' appear to be interferring dircetly with individuals/smaller groups - unions and the IFA exist to faciliate and respond to thier membership, particualry by responding to 'action groups'...there are limits to how far Monitoring organisations can respond to, eg, standards of data collection in excavtion, or conditions - without the existence of networks and groups presenting Reasoned, Subatantive, and Common concerns, it is hard for Monitoring Organisations to do anything other than defened against the worst of potential breaches. These organisations need concern/action groups to pile evidence high, so that nobody can be unsure of the position.
So, this is a way forward perhapes...starting with more representative and widespread memberships of several allied 'umbrella' organisations...
[...and, within a strong union framework, a loose and hard-to-define networks, capable of championing and promoting collective solutions and developments, and ready to help expose bad practice, as-well-as affronts to the Common Good...http://www.napak.com/honey_badger_02.jpg]...
(all that said - and not to throw stones in glass houses - but what, prey tell is "srsly" ? - no, hold that - i'm not sure i like it, not at all, sir, 'tis the very barbarity of Englands tounge!)
No srsly Commercial Archaeology Sucks The debate thread - mididoctors - 20th March 2010
Steven Wrote:
"can produce a case study (if you wish) where the sub contexts of a data set has been missed meaning that the data has been interpreted in a profoundly different way from and an alternative manner... moreover the meaning and context of the data is frozen by research agendas imposed by said middle management."
Mainly I'm worried because I don't believe it makes any sense whatsoever, what do you mean "a profoundly different way from and an alternative manner"? That's just weird, sorry but it is!
OK lets address this weirdness
What evidence is there, if any, for the decline in activity on the site in the mid-2nd century?
where does this research question come from? lets choose one major source Marsden’s and West’s Population change in Roman London
The basis of their ideas is that there is dearth of late Roman pottery in the assemblage and this must represent a decline in population and economic activity. The Decline in Roman London is portrayed as quite dramatic occurring sometime in the mid 2nd cent with some sort of minor recovery to levels that never match Londinium at its hey day which is assumed to be around 120AD. Their argument was presented graphically thus
[ATTACH=CONFIG]414[/ATTACH]
On the left is the distribution of Roman pottery found disposed of in Rubbish pits which show a marked decrease after 150AD. At the time counter arguments were made that the late Roman assemblage was truncated out of the record by medieval and later activity.
Marsden and West’s insightful rebuttal was to analyse residual roman pottery in medieval rubbish pits which truncated the Roman levels. Their argument goes that if late Roman activity is truncated away by subsequent eras then the distribution pattern of Roman residual pottery in medieval pits should show a marked different profile than the Roman Rubbish pit profile after all this missing late Roman pottery has to go somewhere and the closest in time features should display this late assemblage. Well the medieval profile on the right doesn’t show a marked change and the argument that the pottery assemblage the Romans left is displayed by later residual assemblages is pretty compelling evidence that Roman activity declined post 150AD.
now what is the context of that pottery data? ... well there are two, Residual roman pottery in medieval pits and Roman pottery in Roman pits
The use of pits is a broad context with unstated assumptions. is the pottery in the later Roman pits actual thrown away or is that by some other mechanism for instance.? there is no attempt to sub divide the assemblage into parts from different types of contexts. Among the unstated assumptions is that the dominant mechanism does not change in time also there is an assumption that the roman assemblage can only be truncated by processes outside of the Roman period rather than the Romans truncated there own assemblage
Within the Roman period pottery in pits far outweighs pottery in other context types so on a site by site basis even when all the pottery is amalgamated into one data set and presented in a Pivot table the pottery vs time profile (PTP) you get pretty much the same story
a Gresham street site
[ATTACH=CONFIG]415[/ATTACH]
this pattern repeated all over the city. Lion Plaza
[ATTACH=CONFIG]416[/ATTACH]
what is the context of the pottery? all the pottery on said site or in the case of the city all the pottery in the city
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same story
However what happens if we sub context and divide the data up by some sort of interpretive type? (truth vs facts and all that theory sh1te?)
if we can find a site were the movement of roman pottery by latter truncating events was limited could we divide the roman assemblage for that site into two basic sub contexts. at GSJ06 (the blue graph) the dating was contained in discrete spikes by context which means the pottery had not mixed too much by date and residual pottery could be traced in plan to its source with some degree of confidence. this was attempted and then divided into two basic groups classified by MECHANISM
1.pottery someone had collected and thrown into a pit for disposal called mass disposal
2. pottery that had drifted on the surface and accumulated in the record by accident ie the bit of the assemblage that never made it to the bin... we will call this casual disposal
the casual disposal assemblage at GSJ06?
[ATTACH=CONFIG]418[/ATTACH]
ok well somewhat a different story. The amount of pottery being dropped on the ground is actually going up!
combined with a conservative analysis that over represents early pottery this sub division of the assemblage creates a disturbing alternate view point.
at this point we wanted to compare other sites but the site specific criteria and lets face the money thing stopped that in its tracks... I was told in not so many words not to pursue this line of inquiry because attempting to place this site in context with the greater whole of the londinium record was outside the remit of site specific goals.
then how do you answer the question? if you predicate that a lack of post 2nd Cent culture artifacts is an indication of declining population then you are always going to find it because there is a lack of late roman material
your trapped in a circular argument. if you are confined to analyzing the site in a vacuum what answer do you get?
This context can be thought of as a real entity that can be identified in the record. In this instance we are looking for the mechanism for bulk disposal. This mechanism is a “thing “or piece of “data” as important as the volume of some certain dated topology of pottery. Attaching a numerical value to a certain volume of material is in of it self an incomplete analysis of that volumes meaning. But here is the thing, the context or meaning of the volume data in this essay may only be apparent after an investigation that includes the entire Roman city and its environs as the study area. Consider this. A study that is site specific will in all likelihood always produce a pottery profile that shows a dearth of later material and the intellectual expedition to search for the mechanism for later Roman waste disposal may not be a salient issue in the mind of those responsible. Why should they think bulk waste disposal is an issue they need to address? There is a unstated almost subconscious assumption that these sorts of activities or mechanisms are located “somewhere else” off site. Therefore the dearth of late roman pottery equates to a decline in the population of London. Criticisms of site specific surveys seem to end with the admission that it produces a reduced view or an incomplete view. Rarely, in fact never is it suggested that this site specific methodology will produce and reinforce the wrong conclusion or as in this case produce a polar opposite conclusion
SAME DATA two different ways of interpreting that data.. TWO DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE CONCLUSIONS
a real world example...not some airy fairy theoretical mumbo jumbo and its a problem that will not go away
I was specifically told not to pursue this as it is blowing the budget (not a personnel fault of anyone more a systemic failure of resource procurement and allocation)
but I did anyway
casual investigation reveals several game changing facts relating to context
they main one is that the bulk of all the late roman pottery is casual in source and there appears to be no rubbish disposal mechanism on par with the back filling of early quarry features
if you look across the entire city and realize this missing mechanism does not exist anywhere the argument that the lack of pottery equates to a decline in population and economic activity falls on its head.
why?
Because for the PTP to equate at both ends of time to some roughly liner realtionship to activity above ground and the mass disposal mechanism must be in action at both ends. The late roman pottery disposal method must be there for us to see.This mechanisim must have been deliberate area dispersion akin to disposing of dirt down their togas like POWS from "The Great Escape" ie absurd!
The different scale of study area and context produces a diametrically opposite conclusion.
now is that proven? NO but there is a lot of evidence already published to suggest we ought to be looking into it
But we don't because a reinvestigation of other sites data ist VERBOTTEN and all the published reports have not collated the data in a useful manner because they where all strait jacket by the same issues.. even a PHD student with a fat grant is going to be hard pressed to untangle this mess in 6000 lifetimes.. commercial archaeology simply is not reflexive enough to address this sort of issue which if properly organised could build the data up incrementally rather han bury the data leaving future generations the almost impossible task of data mining the relavent "facts"and you are going to be trapped in a circle where you are going to left asking is the absence of evidence evidence of absence?
[video=youtube;1UIVPC8gcl4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UIVPC8gcl4[/video]
I strongly suspect that in hindsight our liner thinking that all too often assumes changing quantitative data has some direct one to one relationship to changing activity above ground is going to appear so comically childish.
No srsly Commercial Archaeology Sucks The debate thread - brazier - 20th March 2010
And rubbish could have been disposed in a different ways, by river, probably by barge, right? Or crushed up and reused for other materials? Makes sense.
No srsly Commercial Archaeology Sucks The debate thread - mididoctors - 21st March 2010
brazier Wrote:And rubbish could have been disposed in a different ways, by river, probably by barge, right? Or crushed up and reused for other materials? Makes sense.
the host of options is really wide including combinations ...it helps if you are up more on the background
the common rebuttal is where is all this missing stuff then? my reply is HTF should I know!
I think we need to know but finding out is problematic because the way everything is organized and funded makes even working out what sort of things we should be doing to investigate this issue nigh on impossible. the whole system is taking us in opposite direction we may need to go and there appears to be little we can do about it! Thousands..no millions of pounds being poured down the drain..
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a short bit on corroborating issues and contradictions that highlights how much we don't understand and also why different scales of thinking are required.
A parody of the sort of thinking in favour of 2nd cent decline applied to other epochs other than Roman produce similar readings we know to be untrue... eg The city of London clearly goes into decline in the 18th cent and its inhabitants leave to move into a new london in the west end like the Saxons
was the pottery assemblage ever a reflection of the population... sometime in the late 2nd cent the local pottery industry shuts down..again used as a argument for sudden decline but what if the pottery was taken out of town into a hinterland and the pottery we see early in the record just is a by product of that... the pottery industry shutting down may or may not have anything to do with population.. to test this probably requires some nationwide survey of the national assemblage just to answer a question whether the lack of pot on some site in London is evidence of population decline!
or how about this..... on some sites there is an increase in the assemblage in the latter Roman period which in the dogma is a sign of recovery in late Roman London...but if we look at this data in terms of mechanism what i suspect we will find is the notion that perhaps the mechanisms for waste disposal are becoming less efficient and the increase in artifacts represents a decrease in population! yet another problem.. the whole thing gets turned inside out...black becomes white.. dogs and cats living with together... vampires out in the daytime...
volume tempo analysis... how many people think about this.. what percentage of time does the strat represent? if i total up the actual formation times of the inert strat what percentage of the total time represented by the start and end points of the sequence is that? does it matter? How about this... there are some big late Roman mass disposal assemblages to be found.. the big study groups in the 3rd century waterfronts which while sizable in themselves do not increase the late Roman assemblage substantially so in effect undermine the notion that all the late Roman pottery is casual in nature and thus there is some hidden mechanism at work.. However the problem there is the whole waterfront was probably built in less than a year... the dendro dating matches the pottery dates of the backfill which means there is a dam good chance all this pot appeared in real time... there is not some massive pile of residual pot from recycled strat thrown in there... it all appears out of thin air when the need arises! Where are the big assemblages from the year before or the year later or any other of the 99 yrs of that cent! that waterfront's estimated volume? 640m long by 10m or so wide by 2-4m tall 12000-25000m[sup]3[/sup]! if some sort of 100% retrivel dig could be made of a slice of it perhaps we have a better idea of the total movement of the economy. that idea went down like a lead balloon.
Here's a big contraction. there is no evidence in the roman cemetery data of any 2nd cent decline what so ever. in fact the opposite... . this has been swept under the carpet for a long long time.. the data suggests population expansion at about the same time as the pottery and industry disappeared.. no body is trying to put those two together.. the amount of pottery analysis gained an early lead over the cemetery data and has kept this dominant position.. a disposal mechanism argument can resolve this contradiction if proved correct. not only that this sudden change in data from these different types of assemblage also marks the period the wall is built....
what we need to be doing is testing ideas that coalesce contradictory data... if you have a theory that doesn't account for everything do you have a theory that accounts for anything?
[video=youtube;5Uid98mc8Vc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Uid98mc8Vc[/video]
No srsly Commercial Archaeology Sucks The debate thread - GnomeKing - 21st March 2010
thank you midi - i think i may have learned something (and i have worked in the City) - thanks for taking the time....
i am not particuarly knowledgeable in this subject - but i am hotter on formation process and rationale/scientific methodology - i think some of these problems are wider/re-occuring and lead to poor consideration of factors and evidence that should/could be bread&butter to proggresive/advanced 21st c. archaeology...
in my experience, any 'early periods/phases' are rountinley subjected to increased risk of Commercial methodological stupidity....but the piont is that the same kind of daft thinking can affect material of any period...unfortunatley, such interlectualy shoddy work also routinley meets 'minimum standards', and as such is beyond imediate reproach...
No srsly Commercial Archaeology Sucks The debate thread - brazier - 21st March 2010
Interesting, understand your point about the range of disposal mechanisms being very wide and in varying combinations (oh no sudden recall of N- C- and P- transforms!), was airing few possibles since slight lag in responses to your post occuring. And (am no expert) I don't know about the parallels that could be drawn across the whole romanised urbanised world, as has been said would require several doctorates and much time and number-crunching research, but primarily having the imagination and capability (which clearly dependent on how data is presented for variety of stats models and, unfortunately, may not be presented in sufficient quantities/types of data to be analysed for stat sig results - and also poss copyright issues yes?) to test out the variety of models of urbanisation which could account for decrease in pottery/other products in late 2nd, eg periphery becoming core, core becoming more sporadically residential (ok, big generalisations); or/and change in city laws over waste disposal, zoning of industry/residence/etc; or/and shifts in preference culturally for materials used for storage/culinary/transport/etc within zones flagged by decline mentioned. Yes, all old ground I'm sure I'm going over....thanks for taking the time to elucidate the issues mididoctors, really good to hear them again. Almost inspired me to dust up my stats learning, but aware of hideous complexity of it all.....!