18th June 2010, 10:17 PM
Greetings all.
Just back from a spot of diggage and nursing gravel knees. Have been gagging to comment on this Channel 4 offering since I squirmed my way through the episode.
Seems to me, that both YAT and UCLAN have deemed themselves to be immune from the rightful acknowledgement of another specialists work. This work was carried out back in 2004, has been the subject of numerous newspaper articles and has been presented in lecture formats ever since. YAT and UCLAN have literally lifted the work of others, draped it in the clothing of child-like sensationalism, spoon-fed a pantomime to the unwitting viewer and hoped that no-one would notice.
Quite a few of us out here in the real world have noticed. Verily.
I was lucky enough to cast an eye over the original report as I know the specialist author who carried out the analysis. Here`s a few questions for either YAT or UCLAN...
1. Not a single individual from the entire assemblage exhibited healed blade injuries. How likely do you think this would be for career gladiators?
2. The individual with bite marks was strategraphically uppermost within a single cut containing three individuals. This would enhance the potential for scavenging by dogs etc. Why was this not discussed?
3. The individual with the cut to the knee was said to have no other evidence of trauma. He was in fact decapitated. Trauma enough? Why was this not discussed?
4. Why was decapitation mentioned for only one individual when the majority of the assemblage had been decapitated?
5. Two of their six individuals had unhealed post-cranial blade injuries. There were in fact only about four individuals like this from an entire assemblage of 80 people. Why portray this trait as a common phenomenon within this assemblage? When it`s not.
6. The guy with changes to his clavicle was touted as the net-swinging blokey. On that basis, as a high proportion of the assemblage also had this trait- were they all net swingers? A high proportion of individuals from the Towton medieval site and the Mary Rose exhibited the same. Did they all swing nets?
Seems to me that a perfectly sane specialist carried out some fine work on an important assemblage and made some astonishing discoveries. The original specialist chose not to support the gladiator interpretation based upon the factual evidence. After about four years to allow the dust to settle after the first television debut of this assemblage, YAT seems to have asked someone else to assess the data. UCLAN made no new discoveries in their analysis and in fact, their data is (suspiciously) literally identical to the original to the millimetre. How then, is this "ground breaking" and "internationally important" in 2010 but not in 2005?
What`s going on?:0
Just back from a spot of diggage and nursing gravel knees. Have been gagging to comment on this Channel 4 offering since I squirmed my way through the episode.
Seems to me, that both YAT and UCLAN have deemed themselves to be immune from the rightful acknowledgement of another specialists work. This work was carried out back in 2004, has been the subject of numerous newspaper articles and has been presented in lecture formats ever since. YAT and UCLAN have literally lifted the work of others, draped it in the clothing of child-like sensationalism, spoon-fed a pantomime to the unwitting viewer and hoped that no-one would notice.
Quite a few of us out here in the real world have noticed. Verily.
I was lucky enough to cast an eye over the original report as I know the specialist author who carried out the analysis. Here`s a few questions for either YAT or UCLAN...
1. Not a single individual from the entire assemblage exhibited healed blade injuries. How likely do you think this would be for career gladiators?
2. The individual with bite marks was strategraphically uppermost within a single cut containing three individuals. This would enhance the potential for scavenging by dogs etc. Why was this not discussed?
3. The individual with the cut to the knee was said to have no other evidence of trauma. He was in fact decapitated. Trauma enough? Why was this not discussed?
4. Why was decapitation mentioned for only one individual when the majority of the assemblage had been decapitated?
5. Two of their six individuals had unhealed post-cranial blade injuries. There were in fact only about four individuals like this from an entire assemblage of 80 people. Why portray this trait as a common phenomenon within this assemblage? When it`s not.
6. The guy with changes to his clavicle was touted as the net-swinging blokey. On that basis, as a high proportion of the assemblage also had this trait- were they all net swingers? A high proportion of individuals from the Towton medieval site and the Mary Rose exhibited the same. Did they all swing nets?
Seems to me that a perfectly sane specialist carried out some fine work on an important assemblage and made some astonishing discoveries. The original specialist chose not to support the gladiator interpretation based upon the factual evidence. After about four years to allow the dust to settle after the first television debut of this assemblage, YAT seems to have asked someone else to assess the data. UCLAN made no new discoveries in their analysis and in fact, their data is (suspiciously) literally identical to the original to the millimetre. How then, is this "ground breaking" and "internationally important" in 2010 but not in 2005?
What`s going on?:0