what is the point of doing medieval archaeology anyway?

[P Prentice]

its boring, predictable and nothing interesting ever turns up

[kevin wooldridge]

As my friend Alex Baylis might say that statement is 'A complete load of Bollocks'.....

[gwyl]

its boring, predictable and nothing interesting ever turns up

it provides prehistorians with a handy structure to understand the past.
at the top is the chief, who with the assistance of the priestly class, exploits the rest of the population,under strong political control (Anyolduniprof 1856-2011), in order to, for example, drag stones from the Presselli mountains to build Stonehenge, an 'indicator[s] of human presence and activity, while Egyptian obelisks and Breton menhirs, through their striking verticality, are assertive of life and again of human action' (Manyoldprofs 1997)... bit like *cough* cathedrals, don't you think old bean?
(although all those menhirs and obelisks and spires are a bit phallic, i should think)

[Relictor]

Maybe we should just machine it all away as some have advised ............

[P Prentice]

it provides prehistorians with a handy structure to understand the past.
at the top is the chief, who with the assistance of the priestly class, exploits the rest of the population,under strong political control (Anyolduniprof 1856-2011), in order to, for example, drag stones from the Presselli mountains to build Stonehenge, an 'indicator[s] of human presence and activity, while Egyptian obelisks and Breton menhirs, through their striking verticality, are assertive of life and again of human action' (Manyoldprofs 1997)... bit like *cough* cathedrals, don't you think old bean?
(although all those menhirs and obelisks and spires are a bit phallic, i should think)

catch up - prehistorians dont speak like that - havent done for a generation. thats the trouble with you medievalites, you think nothing changes cus nothing does

[P Prentice]

As my friend Alex Baylis might say that statement is 'A complete load of Bollocks'.....

and my friend Alex might also say 'show me just five examples which make this a lie'

[gwyl]

catch up - prehistorians dont speak like that - havent done for a generation. thats the trouble with you medievalites, you think nothing changes cus nothing does

well, apart from the fact that my quote was from the British Academy or some such from 1997, not a quite a lifetime even by the short brutal conditions of medieval life, the problems with prehistorians are manifold...
just the one, or two...
starting with too much tummy gazing due no doubt to be being shovel-dodgers - oohoh a flint, easy sheila... and a bit of mud that looks like pot, NO it is pot! best get my best toothpick out... that pot is undoubtedly Neolitihic - actually probably early Neolithic - to late Iron Age - just as a rough guess - tho of course round here your Saxons *cough* made the same grotware : hmm
'so' says poor benighted and profoundly ignorant med digger (MD) 'you don't know?'
'no, no, not at all, of course we know it is typical local grotware', prehistorian hastens to contradict,
'but it could have been anytime in the past 5500+ yrs' (MD),
'no - the radiocarbon date will clarify that' smugly asserts prehistorian... 'and anyway what's 250 years that long ago... and anyway what's important is the whole ontological phenomenoligacly experiential landscape of deliberate depsoitions locating intervisible parts of the experienced world and the mapping of that experience onto the material culture...'

i can see why they can't go for a walk without tripping over the distended navels seeing continuity everywhere - poor loves

how about a bit of discontinuity, eh? how about they did a bit of stuff in the distant past and then buggered off for 1000 years, only to come back briefly on their peregrinations (aaah a lovely medievalist's concept, which we'll lend to you impoverished prehistorians, otherwise it'll take an eternity to discover it, along with fire, decent pottery and indoor sanitation...) to do even less stuff and off again... a non-stop roller-coaster of legging it after the next bit of brunch involving a lame animal and some berries

[Jack]

Now this is a truly entertaining life of brian-esq 'discussion'.

To gwyl...................as a prehistorian I feel your arguments are unsound, the reason why much 'grot-pot' is undated is due to the lack of routine multiple-determination radiocarbon dating and use of Baeysian statistics to refine the dating of recognisable forms. Many projects are working on sorting this out but it takes time and money. Also plenty of medieval pottery is just as useless for dating due to the same reasons. I'm forever getting pot back from the specialists as early 13th to late 14th maybe 15th century date! - just as 'useless'.

Medieval archaeology has just as many gaps in knowledge as prehistory.......as you should know........for instance where are all the early medieval settlements in East Yorkshire to go with all the cemeteries?

To pick a specific (modern defined) period and say its all rubbish is just silly. After all these 'periods' didn't, don't and never will actually exist.

I'm fairly convinced that the Iron Age Britons on the 'arrival' of 'Roman Civilisation' didn't suddenly sigh contently and say. 'Ah its all right now, prehistory is over!'

Its all one long continium segmented by those things we call years.....any other definition is arbitrary.

[P Prentice]

@ Gwyl - thats the second post of yours which shows you dont know what to radiocarbon date - god, if it aint written on a coin you haven't got a clue. and from your syntax i would suggest that you have slept tooooooo long with unit

[gwyl]

@ Gwyl - thats the second post of yours which shows you dont know what to radiocarbon date - god, if it aint written on a coin you haven't got a clue. and from your syntax i would suggest that you have slept tooooooo long with unit

that'll be why i keep getting my c14 samples by return of post; and why the pot monkey keeps asking what's with all the charcoal...
any sovrins you find, i dropped em, awright...

@Jack; no neither do i; indeed my suspicion is that settlement in prehistory is less fixed than we might like to think; hence my excitement on the mother-thread of this thread about the potential of Bayesian stats to tighten chronologies, and indeed leave big gaps of nothing between occupation phases.

i have this problem at the moment, although i'll tell you about that later, in which my LBA/EIA field-systems, which overlie one another, are punctuated by a 30m diameter timber post enclosure; the problem is the pottery is all much of a muchness and only strat sorts it all out, and the strat is very thin on the ground - boomboom - horizontal strat with longhouses and poss cult building are indicative but with only one or two exceptions are ther physical relations

so there you go.

but if you want to talk medieval smithing, well...