Icons of the Iron Age: The Celts in History
She says "um" a lot. Whenever I focused on the word "um", I was too destacted to pay attention to the actual narrative. It is interesting how you can simply plot out an overly repeated word.
The story here is primarily an archaeological history. We hear a catalog of artwork and styles, with a little bit of linguistic analysis. What is lacking, however, is a narrative of the Celts and how they lived and evolved. Part of this may be caused by the lack of detailed knowledge of their life. (And this is compounded by arguments over who is actually a Celt, with the Irish and British Celts seemingly not originally being Celts.) The stories of warlike people may be exaggerated, due to the "war" settings in which they were encountered. (Similarly the "feminist" and pro-gay views may also be exaggerations or extrapolations based on limited or potentially misleading data. In the end, we really don't know a whole lot about them.
Showing posts with label Susan A. Johnston. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Susan A. Johnston. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Myths and Mysteries in Archaeology
Frauds, Myths, & Mysteries Science & Pseudoscience in Archaeology 4th EDITION
These lectures provide a fairly balanced approach to "mysteries" and pseudo-discoveries in archaeology. She does a good job of presenting why science thinks some "stories" are false, yet still admits that there are still plenty of unknowns.
However, she is not afraid to come down hard on people that seem to show intentional ignorance of facts that they know. (Many "popular" writers and alien conspiracy theorists would fall in to this group.)
She spends some time covering Atlantis - which she sees as one of Plato's morality tales that somehow got twisted in its interpretation. Early residents of America were given a balanced treatment. The land bridge hypothesis seems fairly clear, but there are a lot of unknowns regarding various sites. There may have been other people that made it to America before Columbus. However, there is minimal proof for any other than the Vikings. (And for the Vikings there is another mystery of a Minnesota rune-stone.)
Stonehenge and Easter Island provide additional mysteries. Some studies have shown that they are possible. But there are still questions of "why?"
All in all, it is a good look at mysteries and frauds from the past and present, as well as an analysis of how science works and some of the deficiencies of scientific analysis.
These lectures provide a fairly balanced approach to "mysteries" and pseudo-discoveries in archaeology. She does a good job of presenting why science thinks some "stories" are false, yet still admits that there are still plenty of unknowns.
However, she is not afraid to come down hard on people that seem to show intentional ignorance of facts that they know. (Many "popular" writers and alien conspiracy theorists would fall in to this group.)
She spends some time covering Atlantis - which she sees as one of Plato's morality tales that somehow got twisted in its interpretation. Early residents of America were given a balanced treatment. The land bridge hypothesis seems fairly clear, but there are a lot of unknowns regarding various sites. There may have been other people that made it to America before Columbus. However, there is minimal proof for any other than the Vikings. (And for the Vikings there is another mystery of a Minnesota rune-stone.)
Stonehenge and Easter Island provide additional mysteries. Some studies have shown that they are possible. But there are still questions of "why?"
All in all, it is a good look at mysteries and frauds from the past and present, as well as an analysis of how science works and some of the deficiencies of scientific analysis.
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