18th June 2010, 03:46 PM
Here is the quite timely view of the HRP senior curator. http://tiny.cc/qgpm0
Haven't had time to really digest what she is trying to say - honestly promote the true stories about the stuff we interpret or to allow some embelishment (the Hollywood effect) of the truth? Perhaps it has a lot to do with the extent many archaeologists are willing to take the interpretation of their data. I know many who are quite cautious when it comes to the extent they are willing to take their interpretations while some charge off with the most incredible string of thought processes based upon the slimmest and flimsiest of facts. Don't want to batter them, but this tends to be the approach of Time Team and, sadly, I think this is their unfortunate legacy that has been assimilated up by the public and is now being fed back to them by other production companies - the misheld belief that major and knowledge-shifting insights into the past can often, repeat often, be derived from the simplest of evidence. Yes, the paradigm-shifting discoveries are there - I would suggest that the recent Staffordshire Hoard had overturned a number of basic assumptions about AS England - but these are most definitely not the norm. I don't think it is very helpful to archaeologists and our discipline at large to have a public with such a high expectation of our work. It is only, surely, making any advocacy work about the purposes and merits of archaeology, in the academic, museum, commercial and community sectors, even harder.
Haven't had time to really digest what she is trying to say - honestly promote the true stories about the stuff we interpret or to allow some embelishment (the Hollywood effect) of the truth? Perhaps it has a lot to do with the extent many archaeologists are willing to take the interpretation of their data. I know many who are quite cautious when it comes to the extent they are willing to take their interpretations while some charge off with the most incredible string of thought processes based upon the slimmest and flimsiest of facts. Don't want to batter them, but this tends to be the approach of Time Team and, sadly, I think this is their unfortunate legacy that has been assimilated up by the public and is now being fed back to them by other production companies - the misheld belief that major and knowledge-shifting insights into the past can often, repeat often, be derived from the simplest of evidence. Yes, the paradigm-shifting discoveries are there - I would suggest that the recent Staffordshire Hoard had overturned a number of basic assumptions about AS England - but these are most definitely not the norm. I don't think it is very helpful to archaeologists and our discipline at large to have a public with such a high expectation of our work. It is only, surely, making any advocacy work about the purposes and merits of archaeology, in the academic, museum, commercial and community sectors, even harder.