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9th December 2014, 12:43 AM
What peers, permanent in the landscape Not sure that I would want to be known for noticing that people drank water or that patterns repeat themselves. Besides it normally requires quite advanced maths to prove any of these coincidences and normaly there's more than one variable and an infinite number of unknowns and it's my experience that a lot of field archaeologists dumped maths somewhen around the age of 16 in favour of anything without maths init. Why they think that it might be the solution to their problems years later is a tale of misery. the things that happened at the fifty metre contour. prey tell
.....nature was dead and the past does not exist
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9th December 2014, 02:11 PM
P Prentice Wrote:and precisely where you might build your communal monument, totem, anchor to the ancestors, receptory for significaneces etc. i always imagine trackways adorned with messages and signposts - i'm always looking for the street furniture
Prehistoric Street furniture :face-approve: Sheer brilliance.
Though we mustn't put our assumptions on the past or what patterns appear in our limited data. Routes may avoid 'special/ritual/burial' places as taboo as much as they link them. Different peoples (tribes) will have had different rules/traditions.
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9th December 2014, 02:12 PM
Dinosaur Wrote:Seen Mike Bishop's Secret Life of Roman Roads?
Nope. Where is it?
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9th December 2014, 02:18 PM
Marc Berger Wrote:What peers, permanent in the landscape Not sure that I would want to be known for noticing that people drank water or that patterns repeat themselves. Besides it normally requires quite advanced maths to prove any of these coincidences and normaly there's more than one variable and an infinite number of unknowns and it's my experience that a lot of field archaeologists dumped maths somewhen around the age of 16 in favour of anything without maths init. Why they think that it might be the solution to their problems years later is a tale of misery. the things that happened at the fifty metre contour. prey tell
Patterns exist even in the limited data thusfar collected.
It is the remit of theorists and dreamers to propose ideas that may explain such patterns and their deeper meanings.
It is the passion of scientists and mathematicians to test these theories with data.
"You will not apply my precept," he said, shaking his head. "How often have I said to you that
when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? We know that he did not come through the door, the window, or the chimney. We also know that he could not have been concealed in the room, as there is no concealment possible. When, then, did he come?"
The Sign of the Four, ch. 6 (1890)
Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four (Doubleday p. 111)
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9th December 2014, 03:28 PM
Jack Wrote:Nope. Where is it?
Dunno, somewhere lost in the turmoil of the on-going library reorganisation? - i.e. in a heap somewhere
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9th December 2014, 03:30 PM
Marc Berger Wrote:...it's my experience that a lot of field archaeologists dumped maths somewhen around the age of 16 in favour of anything without maths init.
Good thing at least a few of us stuck it out to A-level then, the physics and chemistry come in handy too occasionally
Just a shame about the archaeology degree... :face-crying:
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10th December 2014, 02:40 PM
Jack Wrote:Though we mustn't put our assumptions on the past or what patterns appear in our limited data. Routes may avoid 'special/ritual/burial' places as taboo as much as they link them. Different peoples (tribes) will have had different rules/traditions.
how did neolithic and later people navigate the landscape? what were the trade routes? how was contact maintained? when pastoralist farmers drove their herds through the forest for sure they would have used the animal tracks which would have widened, the surrounding vegetation would be grazed down. were these areas the first fields and therefore the easiest way to get about the landscape? how did they know which route led where? what landmarks can be seen from the forest to navigate by? if they had a home range how did they signal their ownership? are communal monuments sign posts? were they to be avoided or were they where messages were left?
we know nothing yet
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers
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11th December 2014, 09:43 AM
Dino was that a BSc or BA archaeology? Care to produce any numerical data for these insights? As I have said just the change in pipeline easement width due to contemporary landscape features may have a significant affect on sampling let alone the significance of the route with the past and then there's the getting finds mixed up from one end of the pipeline with the other end affect on the wondrous record by preservation.
Prentice I don't expect to be able to see any of those things on your list in stuff descovered by archaeology although i dont mind listening in a bit but its mostly to look for current politics. The worry that I have is that if I don't join in should the society of archaeologists stop me digging-Why did you become an archaeologist (is that different to a field archaeologist). I just like finding things like in situ contexts and associations, descovery is enough for me. A lot of the questions that you seem to want answers to could also be said to be based in contempory anxiety. if you have a home range how do you signal your ownership. How do you maintain contact with society are you no in face book. ) Pretty standard museum studies excuse for why people who control museums decide to put on exibitions to entertain the public saying if we are to have places in which to keep stuff but have no curators who are archaeologists and so aren't museums.
I don't know a single reason why anybody might have dug a pit in the Neolithic, I have a cockchaffer hunting theory which Keeps me happy which I could develope into a full on Tribal religion but thats mostly dependant on the excape angle and slipperyness of the cut and not the fills although I mostly use the theory to show surprise that cockchaffers existed in the Neolithic all over the place even above the 50m mark although for that to work I would have to introduce you to the mega once every 13 year cockchaffer plague events of the neolithic and it's affect on tree ring calibration ..i also like the dilemma between cockchaffers eating the very roots of the Neolithic beer source and eating them as bar chop.. dam there goes my professorship. What I do have is a look anywhere this might be a pit approach which does not need a desk based assesment, with a pit being a self contained blob in plan which might also be natural, dam another few hours digging meaningless mud and finding nothing, not a don't bother looking there because the monument planning policy framework of the neo say that it was taboo to place pits anywhere between hills and valleys let's not do an evaluation because we haven't screwed enough money out of the client. The other thing with neo pits is that I tend to date them plus or minus the whole Neolithic period which is a bugger if you ever find two close togeather or could that be significant.
.....nature was dead and the past does not exist
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11th December 2014, 11:58 AM
Marc Berger Wrote:.
although i dont mind listening in a bit but its mostly to look for current politics. The worry that I have is that if I don't join in should the society of archaeologists stop me digging-Why did you become an archaeologist (is that different to a field archaeologist). I just like finding things like in situ contexts and associations, descovery is enough for me. A lot of the questions that you seem to want answers to could also be said to be based in contempory anxiety.
i dont know anything either but i enjoy the speculation as a means of avoiding my own anxiious world view. i like the dictionary definition!!
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers
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11th December 2014, 02:48 PM
P Prentice Wrote:how did neolithic and later people navigate the landscape? what were the trade routes? how was contact maintained? when pastoralist farmers drove their herds through the forest for sure they would have used the animal tracks which would have widened, the surrounding vegetation would be grazed down. were these areas the first fields and therefore the easiest way to get about the landscape? how did they know which route led where? what landmarks can be seen from the forest to navigate by? if they had a home range how did they signal their ownership? are communal monuments sign posts? were they to be avoided or were they where messages were left?
we know nothing yet
All brilliant questions/insights. Some of which lead me onto further testable questions...
Did pastoralist farmers exist in the Neolithic? Did they drive their herds through the forest?
Did neolithic people 'trade', what form did this trade take place?
Leading on to the big 4 (in my mind)..... What was the nature of neolithic settlement, agriculture, territoriality and inter-contact?
[h=1]
“Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.”[/h] - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
