1st February 2012, 11:24 AM
kevin wooldridge Wrote:....but there is a tendency for 'real' archaeologists to fall into the same trap as the 'speculation-mongers' when approached by and asked to sit up and beg for the mass media. I can think of any number of occasions (female gladiators, Roman princesses, dead vikings, child murder in countryside brothels, cannibalism, voyages across the Pacific) when I have been embarrassed to watch or read media hype on supposed properly and conscientiously recovered archaeological data.
Often that says more about the media than the archaeologists, or any other specialists interviewed on camera. I have heard various people report the same story that they were asked the same three questions in different ways for two hours until the producer got the soundbite she wanted and told the cameraman to pack up.
I don't know about all of your examples, but the excavator of the site (Tony MacKinder) was acutely embarrassed despite not saying anything except the facts of the excavation, the MoL (and by inference, Bill White) were slandered by the acusation that a piece of pelvis that would have proven the skeleton was female had been lost, and the closest thing to an authoritative voice the media could wheel out in support of the theory that gladiatrixes existed was, iirc, Camille Paglia.
You're right though, some archaeologists are so obsessed with the media (and perhaps its funding) that they'd do anything to get on the telly. Naming no names.