With apologies to all those archaeologists (and there are many) for whom I have the deepest respect, I could not resist this........ click to enlarge.
I did think of adding this: "Announce your results before you start your research. This will attract attention, concentrate minds, help you to define your work programme, and enable you to find crucial evidence even if there actually isn't any." But I ran out of space on the graphic........
It's all tongue in cheek and offered in good humour, but might there not be a grain of truth here?
Until the academics and other leaders in the field of archaeology root out bad practice, it will continue to tarnish the image of their subject. I am clearly not the only one saying that.
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PS. 4 Sept 2018. Thinking of the developing tradition of announcing your results before you start work, MPP and his merry band are starting work up at Waun Mawn about now. In the National Park "Coast to Coast" newspaper, MPP is on the programme (printed way back in the early spring) as doing two talks at Castell Henllys later in September with the title:
"From Brynberian to Stonehenge, New Discoveries in North Pembrokeshire". Join Professor Mike Parker Pearson to find out more about the new discoveries linking Brynberian to Stonehenge.
The title could -- and should -- have been "Investigations into the prehistoric stone settings of Waun Mawn". But that would presumably have been too boring -- and the NPA has to sell 120 tickets for two helpings of the same lecture, on successive evenings. So, in advance of any discoveries that may indicate a link between Waun Mawn / Brynberian and Stonehenge, MPP refers to "the new discoveries linking Brynberian to Stonehenge." Everything is gratuitously and opportunistically forced into the context of the quarrying / human transport hypothesis, even though no evidence that withstands scrutiny has been discovered thus far to support it. And so the teetering edifice, built in a Preseli bog, grows taller and ever taller........ without any foundations.
MPP's digs in September this year at Waun Maun (as also in 2017) are being financed by Grants from the U.S. - based Rust Family Foundation.
ReplyDeleteBrian did a Post on this on May 5th entitled "Waun Maun and the Invisible Dolerites".
If you don't remember what MPP was claiming, take a look at that Post. There are so many holes in MPP's claims, it's all looking rather like a colander or a very leaky bucket, Dear Michael....