Yeah, no, that's really not how archaeology works at all.TWRule said:Maybe since the OP has a 'positive view', he ought to just go ahead and make the case he clearly wants to make?
I'll play devil's advocate. Archaeology is a pointless endeavor. It relies on a the notion that one is somehow acquiring 'knowledge' by digging up artifacts, when in fact it's the case that one had a story/hypothesis they made up in mind ahead of time (usually some variant of a conventional narrative) and ad hoc explain their findings according to that, or at most deviate just enough to be able to tell some coherent story that the artifacts are explainable through, in any case. At all stages, it is the archaeologist's construction that is doing the 'work', not any 'knowledge'. So why not just do "history" without consulting artifacts, if it's going to be arbitrary anyway - besides perhaps that arbitrarily checking our stories against 'artifacts' forces our creativity into (possibly) fruitful bounds?
That was 90% gravity.Brutal Peanut said:Because Buster Bluth is an idiot, but you know,..there will always be money in the banana stand.blackrave said:Da fuck?Brutal Peanut said:Just keep digging, just keep digging! Digging, digging, digging!
Why would anyone crack a skull?
No really, WHY?
[small]It's from Arrested Development.[/small]
Well, I think of people enthusiastically climbing down into pits in the desert to collect ancient feces, wearing head-to-toe plastic suits and facemasks to make sure that they don't contaminate the crap.Dirty Hipsters said:What do I think about archeology?
Does anyone think about anything else when archeology is mentioned?
Thanks for this constructive contribution to the discussion. Perhaps you can enlighten me as to 'how archaeology works' then?thaluikhain said:Yeah, no, that's really not how archaeology works at all.TWRule said:Maybe since the OP has a 'positive view', he ought to just go ahead and make the case he clearly wants to make?
I'll play devil's advocate. Archaeology is a pointless endeavor. It relies on a the notion that one is somehow acquiring 'knowledge' by digging up artifacts, when in fact it's the case that one had a story/hypothesis they made up in mind ahead of time (usually some variant of a conventional narrative) and ad hoc explain their findings according to that, or at most deviate just enough to be able to tell some coherent story that the artifacts are explainable through, in any case. At all stages, it is the archaeologist's construction that is doing the 'work', not any 'knowledge'. So why not just do "history" without consulting artifacts, if it's going to be arbitrary anyway - besides perhaps that arbitrarily checking our stories against 'artifacts' forces our creativity into (possibly) fruitful bounds?
I'm not here to listen to my perspective; I already know what that is.TWRule said:Thanks for this constructive contribution to the discussion. Perhaps you can enlighten me as to 'how archaeology works' then?thaluikhain said:Yeah, no, that's really not how archaeology works at all.TWRule said:Maybe since the OP has a 'positive view', he ought to just go ahead and make the case he clearly wants to make?
I'll play devil's advocate. Archaeology is a pointless endeavor. It relies on a the notion that one is somehow acquiring 'knowledge' by digging up artifacts, when in fact it's the case that one had a story/hypothesis they made up in mind ahead of time (usually some variant of a conventional narrative) and ad hoc explain their findings according to that, or at most deviate just enough to be able to tell some coherent story that the artifacts are explainable through, in any case. At all stages, it is the archaeologist's construction that is doing the 'work', not any 'knowledge'. So why not just do "history" without consulting artifacts, if it's going to be arbitrary anyway - besides perhaps that arbitrarily checking our stories against 'artifacts' forces our creativity into (possibly) fruitful bounds?
I know what my perspective is too, but I'm sharing it - and not because I want to contribute to a survey of views on the topic, but because I was under the impression we were having a discussion about it, toward which end, as I mentioned, I was criticizing a particular sort of conception of archaeology and its purpose.PainInTheAssInternet said:I'm not here to listen to my perspective; I already know what that is.
Firstly, I don't think it's "all just guesswork" - I apologize if I gave that impression. What I think is that it follows a certain method, and that every method has presuppositions which are constitutive to it. In other words, the findings a certain method yields are by and large a direct result of how that method is constructed. For this and other reasons, I am hostile to not just archaeology, but any science insofar as it is taken to yield 'fact', 'knowledge', 'truth', etc (these things are usually understood as somehow transcending the context of the theoretical frameworks in which they make sense). More precisely, I am not hostile to the sciences, but hostile to a certain way they are presented in the public consciousness.I'd have to ask why you have such a negative view of archaeology, though. What gives you the impression that it's all just guesswork?
How do you contribute towards the end of progressing humanity, then?lechat said:archeology? garbage.
i could give half a fuck what people did 200 years ago to make some pot that stored some shit that helped them better their life by .0002%.
how bout you study a real field that teaches people something that might progress humanity instead of focusing on how inefficient and miserable the world used to be or how cool it was to make something in 3 months of hard labor that a machine can make 10 of a minuet with modern technology.
(Not full quote)TWRule said:It relies on a the notion that one is somehow acquiring 'knowledge' by digging up artifacts, when in fact it's the case that one had a story/hypothesis they made up in mind ahead of time (usually some variant of a conventional narrative) and ad hoc explain their findings according to that, or at most deviate just enough to be able to tell some coherent story that the artifacts are explainable through, in any case.
So why not just do "history" without consulting artifacts, if it's going to be arbitrary anyway - besides perhaps that arbitrarily checking our stories against 'artifacts' forces our creativity into (possibly) fruitful bounds?
If there is a "moral" issue, it might be just an issue of how questionable the motivations and projects of someone who wants to go digging, pretending to be discovering truths as they go, so that they might either simply win fame/fortune for themselves, amuse themselves at trivial fetishistic curiosities, or hold their "truth" over the heads of humanity as something that they must accept and regulate their actions by.
And I'll start off by repeating that you've misunderstood my meaning, as I neither said that nor implied it. I've already explained what I meant; I don't understand why you want to insist I meant something I explicitly denied.PainInTheAssInternet said:I'll start off by saying that your post does call archaeology guesswork if not outright intellectual fraud.
I was not making use of the disciplines own definition of 'artifacts', but a popular consciousness notion which may attach additional meaning to them is why.I'm also confused why you put "artifacts" in quotations. The definition of an artifact is any object that has been manipulated by a human, I don't get how skepticism or sarcasm can be directed towards that.
I was not generalizing all archaeologist but speculatively listing possible motives for it. I once considered becoming an archaeologist myself out of a naive hope of adventure or some such, so it's not as though I am demonizing them.You also seem to have profoundly negative views of archaeologists, looking for personal glory rather than any academic or intellectual standard. I can tell you from experience that archaeology is far from a glorious field and there are far better and easier methods to accomplish that goal.
I'm not sure how this necessarily conflicts with anything I said. Sometimes when an anomoly is encountered, it will be explained by ad hoc hypotheses, other times the paradigm will be changed (I might have cited Thomas Kuhn here). My point of emphasis was that the paradigm is always a constructed interpretive scheme, not something 'discovered'. This is true of all the sciences, if not all human enterprises, in my view - which doesn't make 'facts' impossible, but does limit their effective scope to the context of whatever interpretive scheme they are situated in.Your perception of archaeology and science seems to be based on the notion that, as the eloquent Mr. Homes puts it, we twist facts to suit theories rather than theories to suit facts. There are things that make sense outside of the frameworks we currently possess. When data begins to contradict the paradigm we currently occupy, we change it. We are interested in truth, knowledge and the like and are willing to change our outlook and methods to accomplish that end. We've done so numerous times in the past century.
It's the 'understanding the past' notion I am critical of too. Again, if we're not taking ourselves to be capable of interpreting the past from some objective viewpoint and instead imposing our own values and creative imaginations upon it, or whatever artifice we choose to designate as relevant, then whatever we 'find' in the past will be more a reflection of ourselves than anything else. That's not to say there isn't some value to archaeology, but it can't truly be that kind of 'historical' value, in the sense of 'finding things out' about how the past was. Even texts found are of course subject to interpretation themselves.As for the use of archaeology? To be honest I'm not entirely sure myself. I know that many see it as culturally and personally significant to know they possess knowledge of their ancestors. I just find it an interesting field to work in. However, it is always useful to understand the past in order to understand the present and try to foresee our future, enabling us to see patterns within our minds that have been reflected throughout history. Just because something doesn't advance our society such as the physical and biological sciences doesn't mean it's useless or worthless. I'd like to point out that we're on a video gaming forum.