11th September 2012, 01:06 PM
RedEarth Wrote:Exactly, archaeology is far more complicated than science!
Nah, neither are as complicated as people want to make out.
Basic principles are the same.
I find that archaeology is like a battelground between 'science-lovers' and 'science-haters', almost as vicious as the creationists and scientists. I think this is due to the way in which subjects are taught at schools, collages and universities.
Some end up in archaeology through science, others don't.
Often the science backgrounders are wary (or even hostile) towards non-science-based theories and vice versa. The irony is both sides use the scientific method to argue it out.
Many arguments I have come across are still embedded in the disagreements between processual and post-processual archaeology, though these days the environmental-determinists have surfaced.
The odd thing is that these factions are often so embroiled in their private arguments (struggles) that they don't see that they are mirroring the wider world of the so-called hard sciences......
With the 'string theorists' now emergent after 60 (or so) years of exile......though now, the advocates of loop quantum gravity are fighting back...the two theories are locked in a head to head battle to the death with paper countering paper, theory attacking theory.