what is the point of doing medieval archaeology anyway?

[gwyl]

catch up - prehistorians dont speak like that - havent done for a generation. thats the trouble with you medievalites, you think nothing changes cus nothing does

well, apart from the fact that my quote was from the British Academy or some such from 1997, not a quite a lifetime even by the short brutal conditions of medieval life, the problems with prehistorians are manifold...
just the one, or two...
starting with too much tummy gazing due no doubt to be being shovel-dodgers - oohoh a flint, easy sheila... and a bit of mud that looks like pot, NO it is pot! best get my best toothpick out... that pot is undoubtedly Neolitihic - actually probably early Neolithic - to late Iron Age - just as a rough guess - tho of course round here your Saxons *cough* made the same grotware : hmm
'so' says poor benighted and profoundly ignorant med digger (MD) 'you don't know?'
'no, no, not at all, of course we know it is typical local grotware', prehistorian hastens to contradict,
'but it could have been anytime in the past 5500+ yrs' (MD),
'no - the radiocarbon date will clarify that' smugly asserts prehistorian... 'and anyway what's 250 years that long ago... and anyway what's important is the whole ontological phenomenoligacly experiential landscape of deliberate depsoitions locating intervisible parts of the experienced world and the mapping of that experience onto the material culture...'

i can see why they can't go for a walk without tripping over the distended navels seeing continuity everywhere - poor loves

how about a bit of discontinuity, eh? how about they did a bit of stuff in the distant past and then buggered off for 1000 years, only to come back briefly on their peregrinations (aaah a lovely medievalist's concept, which we'll lend to you impoverished prehistorians, otherwise it'll take an eternity to discover it, along with fire, decent pottery and indoor sanitation...) to do even less stuff and off again... a non-stop roller-coaster of legging it after the next bit of brunch involving a lame animal and some berries