THE BOOK
Some of the ideas discussed in this blog are published in my new book called "The Stonehenge Bluestones" -- available by post and through good bookshops everywhere. Bad bookshops might not have it....
To order, click
HERE

Saturday 23 January 2021

Interpretative Inflation and the media

 

On many occasions on this blog we have had a go at the shallowness (should we call it stupidity?) of media coverage of Stonehenge, and here is another example, from something that calls itself "ArtsNet News".  Headline:

The 10 Most Astonishing Archaeological Discoveries of 2020

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/best-art-and-archaeology-discoveries-2020-1930552

Note that whatever caution there may have been on the part of the authors / researchers who have written up their research and who have used the words "probably" or "possibly", that's all thrown to the winds, since journalists hate those words.  So as I have said before, these wretched people turn possibilities into probabilities and probabilities become certainties.  Almost everything in the piece reproduced above is wrong, but who cares?

And of course it's not just these incompetent and crooked journalists we have to worry about.  We can be quite sure that archaeologists like MPP care very much about getting into the Top Ten discoveries for each year, and will vastly inflate the importance of their research in order to get the media coverage and the kudos that they crave.  Objective?  Nothing less than the Number One spot!  To hell with the truth -- all that matters is a good headline.  Next up, we can be quite sure, it will be Waun Mawn and its fantastical narrative, announced by a fanfare of trumpets, a blizzard of press releases,  and probably a TV spectacular.  That will probably incorporate the MPP footage we have already seen as part of the NPA Archaeology Open Day back in November.  In a bizarre sort of way, I am quite looking forward to it............

MPP has already announced "forthcoming" papers, so we have some goodies to look forward to in the coming months......

And will there be any reference at all to my Waun Mawn article, published on 4th November 2020?


Not the slightest chance.........









2 comments:

Tony Hinchliffe said...

Send this Post to Susan Greaney of English Heritage, Stonehenge!

Tony Hinchliffe said...

One day, one day, brothers and sisters we will get to the Promised Land, where we are all judges faith-based upon the clear - thinking of our logic, and not upon the height of our headlines heaped up in sand along the seashore! Amen!