5 ms·
I'd be much more forgiving of archeology and archeologists if they admitted what they didn't know, rather than presenting theories as facts. "Ritual Purposes"
by marcus_holmes 8y ago
I'd be much more forgiving of archeology and archeologists if they admitted what they didn't know, rather than presenting theories as facts.
"Ritual Purposes" is the poster child for this. Site reports I've read from early medieval digs on artifacts rarely say "purpose unknown" or even "probably art", but instead say "ritual purposes".
I understand that creating a theory for, say, early American migration, is useful and a good thing, as long as everyone understands that it's not "what happened". It's the current theory, and can be disproven at any time by better evidence.
- aaaaaatttuyy 8y agoArchaeologists are constantly aware of what they don't know and cannot know, and make these things very clear when they publish. Seems like you are taking pseudoarchaeologists at the word when they make accusations about legitimate archaeologists without any basis for such nasty claims. 'Ritual purposes' is indeed a trope, a trope that was recognized in the 1980s and that is now shied away from because it was applied uncritically. If ritual purposes is cited as an object's raison d'etre, then it is almost always described tentatively as such, like "probably for ritual purposes", or "under the circumstances of our limited data thus far, we describe it as such", because you are correct, there is very little way of knowing what actually happened. And that's true of all archaeology, really. Archaeologists create the best narratives we can based on the limited evidence we've got. There is no single and knowable truth about the past, only our best attempts at understanding it. Archaeologists have accepted this for decades, you just seem out of the loop.
- marcus_holmes 8y agothat's entirely possible. I left re-enactment 10 years ago. Things could have changed since then.