03-10-2011, 09:55 PM
Quote:ScipioAsina post=284909 Wrote:I took an introductory course to archaeology a few semesters ago and was quite disappointed. Analyzing the breakdown of pottery sherds over the course of several centuries simply does not have the same value to me as, say, reading Homer.You went to the wrong university, my friend! Where I come from, Roman archaeology is a lot more than pottery sherds. :wink:
Indeed...I wish my course were as easy as looking at sherds!
I feel I must stand up for archaeologists here (being one myself!). Certainly all the archaeologists I have come into contact with & also what we are taught in our degree is to NOT make assumptions on finds alone and try to couple it with some primary evidence before making any interpretations of the finds. I am not familiar with the example given but just in general at my university reading Homer etc, as someone mentioned, is a part of my degree course. Many modules we attend with Ancient History students alone. I originally started my degree as Ancient history and changed to pure Archaeology because I often found that "historians" were all to quick to rely on primary sources and disregard finds or interpretations of finds, but one thing that has been drilled into me is to remmeber that just because someone wrote something at the time does not make it true. We must remember about biases in primary evidence. That is why I like archaeology because an artefact is pure...true we can make the wrong interpretations about it but to me an artefact is real history...yes Homers words are history but holding or discovering an artefact from the actual time...:mrgreen:
I think the points people have made about the media need to be remembered as well. Take Time Team for example...enough said! Its the chinese whispers syndrome I guess...the media will pick what they want to create the story they want.
Point is historians and archaeologists both are guilty of "wishful thinking" in my opinion but that is simply progress and development of the discipline. We are constantly learning and developing so to expect anyone to get something right first time seems a little idealist to me!
Go easy on us :wink:
