23rd September 2010, 02:16 PM
Steven Wrote:Hi
Your quote stopped just before the actual key statement of that report which is:
What contribution to knowledge about the Roman period has that helmet given us, oh it's shown that someone had a helmet in the roman period, whoopse do! A pre-development investigation of a small Roman period settlement will supply so much more about the lives of local people, their diet, their health, their economic situation, their agricultural practices, the environment in which they lived, it may give us a glimpse into their belief system, it may show us patterns of activity shared with other people in places hundreds of miles from them, it can show us the geographical movement of individuals, the trading links etc......etc..
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On the other hand an excavation might well just tell us that someone dug a ditch in the Roman Period which later silted up. Whoopsee Doo.
Isn't Archaeology is the study of man though surviving material remains, of which this Helmet is one ? Presumably once the findspot has been identified Geophysical survey could possibly reveal an unknown Roman settlement, one that wouldn't have been discovered if not for the MD user.