19th November 2014, 02:17 PM
Dinosaur Wrote:How safe is the 'absence of evidence'? I've recently had occasion to point out at the end of a lecture that, based on the current archaeological evidence, for a large chunk of Yorkshire the Roman period by-and-large only actually occurs in a 150m wide strip [the Roman Rural Settlement project looks like it's going to bear this out, judging by what I've seen of their 'spots on maps'], but of course this may or may not be entirely due to 90%+ of the archaeology in the area in the last 75 years having been done on a single on-going road improvement...that would have been the view in the civilised south 30 years ago bu since then we have looked very hard and there are places we can be confident they didnt use pot or live in recognisable settlements between the 7th an 9th century
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers