A handbook for new diggers?

[P Prentice]

you could give us some examples of hard science knobbling unscientific theory - please

and to completely disregard oral history (myth) through lack of evidence is a wee bit blinkered

[Dinosaur]

:face-topic: One for the advanced tips section - don't let the boss 'upgrade' your office PC while you're working at home for the day, deader than a dead thing, hope the hard drive's salvageable :face-crying:

[Dinosaur]

Besides, many non-science archaeological theories/papers have been disproved (or at least discredited) by scientific evidence..........its just many archaeologist chose to ignore the evidence and to 'believe' otherwise.

Was reading a paper about a site with lots of IA roundhouses (drip-gullies anyway) at the weekend - the author had explained in the methodology bit that due to lack of time/resources they'd 'sampled' most of these by digging the terminals, a bit at the back and occasionally bits at the sides too.....a few pages further on was lengthy discussion about the 'structured' nature of the pottery deposition which seemed to mainly occur in the, errrr, gully terminals, round the back and occasionally at the sides, and what 'ritual' and belief system it all represented......think that roughly sums up what Jack's on about? :face-thinks:

Made me laugh though :face-approve:

[P Prentice]

yep there are alot of people writing all sorts of crap out there

[Jack]

you could give us some examples of hard science knobbling unscientific theory - please

coming soon..........another thread maybe?

But, off the top of my head........
Rachel Popes work on roundhouses conclusively disproved earlier 'cosmological' based theorising by presenting a huge database of evidence collected throughout northern Britain.
Pope, R. E. (2007) ‘Ritual and the roundhouse: a critique of recent ideas on domestic space in later British prehistory.’ In C.C. Haselgrove and R.E. Pope (eds) The Earlier Iron Age in Britain and the near Continent, 204-228. Oxford: Oxbow.
(But I think we've discussed this before?)

Heslop's own evidence in

Heslop, D. H. (2008) Patterns of Quern Production, Acquisition and Deposition: A Corpus of Beehive Querns from Northern Yorkshire and Southern Durham Yorkshire Archaeological Society occasional paper no 5

Disprove his own interpretations later in the book.

Often its as simple as understanding maths or stats.
I recently received a specialist report on a worked stone artefact quoting someone else as saying (I am paraphrasing to protect the innocent though) '30% of said artefacts recorded are broken, and the majority of these are broken over the socket hole showing a clear tradition of pre-burial destruction'.............goes on to link this as ritual killing of the object.

However a basic understanding of maths shows that given this evidence the over-riding pattern of 70% is for the artefacts to be buried un-broken. Surely then, this idea of a tradition of breaking them is silly, and anything else based on this presumption a flight of fancy. Especially as there was no mention of the physics: thermodynamic properties of the material, heat of funeral pyres, cooling rates after burial, stress fracturing, let alone post-burial pressures.

Might as well said that purple dragons were biting the artefacts to break them as part of a ritual sacrifice to the great egg in the sky (2000AD c.1990)

......and to completely disregard oral history (myth) through lack of evidence is a wee bit blinkered

I don't disregard oral history.........its very relevant to studying the changes in biases of those who write it down through time. Also, background information if cross-referenced is a type of evidence.
Been doing stuff on WW II in the north.........found lots of information from cross-referencing peoples memoirs. Although details on big stuff was often inaccurate as it was largely gained through urban myths, word of mouth etc. The background info is better. For instance 'there was a factory at X, I worked there from z to Y, my job involved etc......'
Or 'my father was in charge of the observer post at V, one night I remember.......' etc.

I suspect similar background information is embedding in ancient writings.............although in the ones that are written hundreds of years after the fact this background information is more likely to relate to how the writers considered those they are writing about...........see new age hippies (I mean pagans) writing about druids, Celts etc.

Also political, and fashionable bias applies........see the Greek writings about the 'Celts'.

However.............modern oral myths from say Mongolia, have absolutely no relation to say religious beliefs of people in the Iron Age of the uk...............(see the model described for evolution earlier).

[Dinosaur]

I recently received a specialist report on a worked stone artefact quoting someone else as saying (I am paraphrasing to protect the innocent though) '30% of said artefacts recorded are broken, and the majority of these are broken over the socket hole showing a clear tradition of pre-burial destruction'.............goes on to link this as ritual killing of the object

Yup, he likes his ritual killings, I've got a smashed and burnt one with the same conclusion appended to the report :face-approve:

Surely most querns (flat ones anyway/millstones) are going to break across the socket during use, its the weakest point :face-thinks:

[Kel]

I've often wondered how you might go about breaking a quern stone accidentally. They're pretty solid bits of kit. I'm not sure a "weak point" in a 2ft diameter, 5 inch thick (sorry I can't break the Imperial habits of my parents' lifetime) chunk of millstone grit would be susceptible to damage by one person winding a handle on it, even on the uneven suface provided by whatever's being ground.

[Dinosaur]

Thermal shock from a carelessly rested cup of tea?

[CARTOON REALITY]

Imprudent use as a frisbee?

[P Prentice]

yep i repeat
[INDENT]yep there are alot of people writing all sorts of crap out there

but just because some people use theory badly dosent make the theory bad
[/INDENT]