Archaeologist Johan Normark fights back against cranks

[Welsh Andy]

er... Arthur exists..

Well, to be fair.

[quintaine]

Coins? Gravestones? Scientific dating?

Coins= can be minted any time with the stamp grossly out of date, and are often used for political reasons (at the time)
Gravestones= can also be made at any time. There's one I believe that was completed 100 years after the body was interred. Name any person today who got a gravestone placed the instant they were placed in the grave. The stone mason would want to work fast and the cemetery wouldn't allow placement unitl the subsidence period is through
Scientific dating
C14 dating: semi-inacurate-even with medieval sites
Dendrochronology: slightly more acurate but harder to find viable material to date
Stratigraphical dating: almost useless in urban areas when used alone

those solid foundations don't look so solid now do they?

[quintaine]

What a lot of drivel.

I am reminded of a joke by Tim Minchin: "What do you call alternative medicine that has been proven to work? Medicine".

That's what we like to see reasoned argument rationally put. My, my, you're having a go at alternative medicine now. Just deride anything you don't understand. So much for respecting other cultures and even your own.

[quintaine]

Sorry but that's mince. Words have meaning and social context. Someone who has thrown a couple of stones off a ledge to see which hits the floor first is not a physicist. They may call themselves that but it still won't be true. Similarly someone sat in a pub spraffing about the ills of society is not a sociologist, or a stoner laying in a field at night watching the milky way pass over head thinking about aliens is not an astronomer.

Show me the definition of an archaeologist? Is there one that specifies qualifications or dare I say it, social background. Anyone can call themselves an archaeologist as long as they are engaged in:
"the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes (the archaeological record). "

Just because you are comfortable in your rigorous cage of convention do not try to imprison everyone else in it. Live and let live, or is that too rad?

[quintaine]

Crystal gazing, dowsing and making shit up however are not archaeology as the results they claim to produce, at best, are no better than chance.

Town and village councils today in Austria, parts of Germany, Hungary, Ireland and yes even in the U.K. employ dowsing as a method of finding groundwater to sink wells. It's cheap, cost effective and quite successful. Perhaps you can write and tell them it's a lot of shit. Perhaps, as an archaeologist, you could do a bit of research before trashing it. I am not saying everything is true, I am quite sceptical about a lot of methods but you are all so quick to lump everything in together into a black and white world, it's astonishing.

[tom wilson]

That's what we like to see reasoned argument rationally put. My, my, you're having a go at alternative medicine now. Just deride anything you don't understand. So much for respecting other cultures and even your own.

Quintaine, you seem very angry (I'd rather call you xxxxxxx do you mind?). I don't think all your attacks on archaeologists, in general or in particular, are helping your argument much. Just saying.

As for your comments directed at me, reasoned arguments have been put to you, rationally, but you have declined to engage with them, instead making sarcastic non sequiteurs (very much like the cranks who are the subject of this discussion). Why should I trouble myself to make further reasoned arguments? Why should I even bother to justify my previous comments in the face of ad hominem attacks?

Goodbye xxxxx; good luck in your future endeavours.

Tom

[P Prentice]

quintaine - you seem to be missing the point
an archaeologist will by nature try to understand the history of a propounded theory and test a new evidences and models against that theory - in a kind of scientific way. sometimes an archaeologist will be at odds with a prevailing orthodoxy and this can be both interesting and stimulating.
a crank will propound a theory that dismisses prevailing models without domonstrating an understanding of accepted orthodoxy and this is worthless crap
one day a crank will get lucky and get something right but mostly we will laugh at them and tell them not to waste our time

[Wax]

I would have more sympathy with pseudo archaeology if most of it wasn't a cynical cashing in on the vulnerabilities of people. Much of it is commercial cash cows that are quite deliberately milked by a bunch of Snake Oil salesmen. Yes the world is far more complicated that we can possibly know and understand and there may well be some strange and inexplicable (currently) things out there.

People can belive what they want to believe but do not expect those of us who work in a discipline that at least has to be notionally rational to go down the route of the outright crazy. Though of course we might be persuaded along the route of profit and it is always nice to think you are the holder of arcane knowledge forbidden to mere mortals}

[quintaine]

Quintaine, you seem very angry (I'd rather call you xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, do you mind?). I don't think all your attacks on archaeologists, in general or in particular, are helping your argument much. Just saying.

As for your comments directed at me, reasoned arguments have been put to you, rationally, but you have declined to engage with them, instead making sarcastic non sequiteurs (very much like the cranks who are the subject of this discussion). Why should I trouble myself to make further reasoned arguments? Why should I even bother to justify my previous comments in the face of ad hominem attacks?

Goodbye xxxxxxxxxxx; good luck in your future endeavours.

Tom

What is the point of having usernames if you are going to use real ones on the forum? Why would you rather use my real name? Checking if I actually had those degrees? It's a bit late to ask me about using my name, don't you think? This is what I would call a personal attack and proves that you are the one who has anger issues. I answered every point that was put to me and some that wasn't and I didn't dismiss them out of hand. Goodbye to you.

[quintaine]

quintaine - you seem to be missing the point
an archaeologist will by nature try to understand the history of a propounded theory and test a new evidences and models against that theory - in a kind of scientific way. sometimes an archaeologist will be at odds with a prevailing orthodoxy and this can be both interesting and stimulating.
a crank will propound a theory that dismisses prevailing models without domonstrating an understanding of accepted orthodoxy and this is worthless crap
one day a crank will get lucky and get something right but mostly we will laugh at them and tell them not to waste our time

First off, I am not a proponant of "pseudo archaeology" I would just like to see each method tackled on its own merits or lack of them and I am more than a little concerned that the boundaries of "pseudo archaeology" seems to be encroaching into other areas that were accepted up to now but because of their association with the druid cult are lumped together.

To answer your point re the differences between archaeology and pseudo archaeology, do you think there is an archaeologist out there in the commercial sector who, at one point or another, was not "urged" to dress a theory with appropriate finds (or lack of them) by the company that employed them? It's much the same in the academic world with pressure to get results, just look at Prof. Shinichi Fujimura formerly of Sendai University. The differences are not as great as one might think. It's not just a matter of black and white.