Red Nose Archaeology

Today is red nose day - for Comic Relief a charity event organised by British comedians.

Archaeology is one those subjects traditionally associated with drinking, it was one of the few compensations for low wages, poor working conditions, and zero career prospects, although quite why well paid academics should be red noses has never been fully explained.

 Perhaps it helps you make sense of post-processualism and why projecting your own conception of what a dead person’s conception of things that only the dead person has seen is archaeology.

In New Archaeology, unlike necromancy, which in some ways it resembles, the dead are mute, but their thoughts and beliefs are communicated through the medium of post-processual archaeologists.  This allows archaeological plans of structures and landscapes to be annotated with perceptions of prehistoric people. Sadly it only works for prehistoric people, since most Classical and Historical archaeologists are just not that mental.

 As usual the joke is on the tax payers and the probably otherwise respectable academic institutions who gave them tenure.

Since I have been so disrespectful of ideas that might have originated from the greatest and highest paid minds in British archaeology, I will pledge 10% of weekly income to Comic Relief.