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20th September 2011, 06:25 PM
P Prentice Wrote:@ dinosaur & jack aka pedentry f****n corner
you throw rubbish away but you keep a midden
But they didn't keep it, they just left it lying there! Is there meant to be something deeply meaningful in ancient beach-combers leaving their trash in a pile, other than that they can't have possessed a sense of smell and were immune to botulism? (assuming you're right and they were actually living on top of the reeking heap) - suspect the real reason they heaped the stuff up was cos sharp broken shells don't make a good flooring in their well-trodden living areas elsewhere, speaking from painful personal experience (4 stitches in the sole of the foot can spoil one's day, although I'm sure in the more enlightened Meso they got a local jab first)
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20th September 2011, 06:33 PM
Sparky Wrote:Perhaps you should learn the meaning of 'taphonomy'.
Can we have a definition please? (ok, on here imagine we'll get about a dozen, but it should fill the next page or three) - when I was at Uni it was regarded as dangerously avant garde so barely mentioned in hushed whispers and not really meant for the grubby undergrads, you meaning what happens to stuff after it gets buried, resulting in the selective subset of data available to be recovered during excavation? - in which case I agree that Jack may have cast his net a little wide
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20th September 2011, 10:18 PM
Strictly speaking, Dino, taphonomy is concerned with the study of the changes to biological material from death to retrieval but I'm just being a pedant and I'm sure it doesn't really matter.
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21st September 2011, 01:12 PM
Sparky Wrote:Strictly speaking, Dino, taphonomy is concerned with the study of the changes to biological material from death to retrieval but I'm just being a pedant and I'm sure it doesn't really matter.
Cheers for that, that actually rings a distant bell somewhere at the back of my memory :face-approve:
Have clearly been bamboozled over the years with all the people using it to refer to other stuff - have to admit it's one I've never bothered using in a report, along with many other words, since I suspect the average client prefers things explained in plain English in reports (but never dumbed-down, they don't like that!). Might have to work it in to one sometime, not used a good word yet this year (last year's high point was 'frustum')
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21st September 2011, 03:56 PM
Sparky Wrote:Strictly speaking, Dino, taphonomy is concerned with the study of the changes to biological material from death to retrieval but I'm just being a pedant and I'm sure it doesn't really matter.
Hooray for the pedants!
Wasn't that what I meant then?
Maybe should have stuck with formation processes
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21st September 2011, 06:34 PM
Just a brief interjection - of no real import - but, I have been enjoying this thread, as it smacks of a site hut discussion of old. Perhaps the real love of discussing archaeology is not yet leached away from us! It is heartening!
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21st September 2011, 06:36 PM
For true authenticity someone at the back should be throwing in random crossword clues!
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21st September 2011, 09:04 PM
Dinosaur Wrote:For true authenticity someone at the back should be throwing in random crossword clues!
I've got one for you:
Heavily laden postman.
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22nd September 2011, 12:05 PM
How many letters?
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22nd September 2011, 12:32 PM
LOADS!
(this message has to have 10 characters for some reason)
