P Prentice Wrote: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)
P Prentice Wrote:......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).