8th December 2010, 02:55 PM
(This post was last modified: 8th December 2010, 02:58 PM by Stuart Rathbone.)
Well on the stone balls, those are exactly the sort of things that an infinite number of explanations can be applied to, without much real hope of understanding them. I think it was in Past a few years ago that they were explained as the heads of Japanese style morning stars or flails! The geometry of the more complex ones is seriously complicated though and there's whole books that could be written about how the secrets of absolutely everything are coded into the lumps and bumps. The very spherical ones are well known in Ireland as they occur in passage tombs. Noticeably they have been associated with the carved basins in the Boyne Valley Tombs and two depressions in the tops of the basins (not underneath in groves!) are thought to have been where they were placed. Strange thing to do to a ball bearing. Out of interest did they state how many they needed to move the stone? I bet it was more than are normally found in any one location, but hey this project is quite the definition of media-science. Look at the front pages of New Scientist for endless amounts of these sorts of stories...
Whilst it's not surprising that the general press gets the wrong end of an archaeological story, it really annoys me when the specialist press does it badly. A personal favourite was this from the news section of Current Archaeology, who I normally find to be excellent in their coverage. This was about the controversial M3 motorway that ran close to the Hill of Tara. A complex issue surely due some careful consideration and informed debate?
“Political protest and legal action failed to halt the motorway. But work nevertheless ground to a halt within 24 hours of the bulldozers moving in when the site of a large wooden henge was found along the route at Lismullen”
So that second sentence contains four 'facts'. Well lets clarify that a bit; work never halted, there were no bulldozers involved, it wasn't a henge and it had been found 2 years previously. So that would be four out of four incorrect facts in one sentence!
I guess that's what happens when you print verbatim a press release produced by a protest group...
Whilst it's not surprising that the general press gets the wrong end of an archaeological story, it really annoys me when the specialist press does it badly. A personal favourite was this from the news section of Current Archaeology, who I normally find to be excellent in their coverage. This was about the controversial M3 motorway that ran close to the Hill of Tara. A complex issue surely due some careful consideration and informed debate?
“Political protest and legal action failed to halt the motorway. But work nevertheless ground to a halt within 24 hours of the bulldozers moving in when the site of a large wooden henge was found along the route at Lismullen”
So that second sentence contains four 'facts'. Well lets clarify that a bit; work never halted, there were no bulldozers involved, it wasn't a henge and it had been found 2 years previously. So that would be four out of four incorrect facts in one sentence!
I guess that's what happens when you print verbatim a press release produced by a protest group...
