9th October 2010, 09:46 PM
(This post was last modified: 9th October 2010, 11:17 PM by Stuart Rathbone.)
again, thanks for your comments.
Something Tim Darvill has discussed recently is a sort of 20 year cycle between empiricist trends and more relativistic (for want of a better term) trends that goes on within the 'soft' sciences. The whole CSA thing isn't supposed to be a war on either academics or the application of theory, its supposed to be my attempt, hopelessly futile obviously, at nudging things back towards the empirical.
The use of language is a different matter all together. the use of abtuse writing is such a shame. I feel it betrays one of the fundamental principles of archaeology, dissemination. Previous to the current trend the best British Archaeologists were well respected public figures and the books of Wheeler, Childe, Piggott, Wooley, Glyn Daniel etc used to sell in large quantities. Currently only Francis Pryor, and to a lesser extent the excellent Stephen Mithens are selling (non-text) books in any quantity. And that's a failure of archaeologists who at times seem to specialise in making the very interesting very dull, and the reasonably simple monstrously complex. And you point out that other branches of archaeology have their own coded languages, quite true. And it's equally annoying. I would like to see environmental reports use common names alongside the Latin for instance. But then all I need to do to understand an environmental report is pick up a pocket guide to plant species. To read some modern archaeology I need to complete a course in the 20th century philosophers of eastern Europe. Not quite the same scale of problem.
"the intellectual equivalent of a bunch of hairy arses" I may be stealing for a slogan!
Something Tim Darvill has discussed recently is a sort of 20 year cycle between empiricist trends and more relativistic (for want of a better term) trends that goes on within the 'soft' sciences. The whole CSA thing isn't supposed to be a war on either academics or the application of theory, its supposed to be my attempt, hopelessly futile obviously, at nudging things back towards the empirical.
The use of language is a different matter all together. the use of abtuse writing is such a shame. I feel it betrays one of the fundamental principles of archaeology, dissemination. Previous to the current trend the best British Archaeologists were well respected public figures and the books of Wheeler, Childe, Piggott, Wooley, Glyn Daniel etc used to sell in large quantities. Currently only Francis Pryor, and to a lesser extent the excellent Stephen Mithens are selling (non-text) books in any quantity. And that's a failure of archaeologists who at times seem to specialise in making the very interesting very dull, and the reasonably simple monstrously complex. And you point out that other branches of archaeology have their own coded languages, quite true. And it's equally annoying. I would like to see environmental reports use common names alongside the Latin for instance. But then all I need to do to understand an environmental report is pick up a pocket guide to plant species. To read some modern archaeology I need to complete a course in the 20th century philosophers of eastern Europe. Not quite the same scale of problem.
"the intellectual equivalent of a bunch of hairy arses" I may be stealing for a slogan!