Dumbing down the past.

Dumbing down through abstraction.

In two previous posts, [ 1 + 2 ] I have demonstrated that one of the central images of British Prehistory, the Wessex Roundhouse, is a construct which does not accurately represent the evidence.  It is not a discovery, or rocket science, I just read the relevant reports and looked at the plans and sections.

While I am happy to call these roundhouse constructs dumbing down, what to call the scholarship they generate presents a problem, since it represents the application of presumably perfectly acceptable theory to an imaginary data set. 

Archaeology is often at its best and most incisive when it has borrowed from other disciplines, but left to their own devices some academics have wandered off through the dewy system to delve into ideas about the relationship between people and built environments. But perhaps sometimes they just look at the pictures.

It is possible for anthropologists to study the relationship between people and their built environments; the humans can be questioned and observed, and the spaces inspected. In such a study, we might also wish consider factors of age, status, and gender, as well as more complex issues pertaining to the ownership and creation of spaces.

In anthropology, a theory, a set of ideas or a cosmology which explain the patterns of behaviour associated with particular places can be developed through the study of people and spaces. 

However, in Archaeology the people we study are dead and their spaces destroyed, or they usually are after we have finished with them....

Debunking the Iron Age Round House

Is Prehistory is more or less bunk ?

In 1916, when archaeology was in its infancy, the industrialist Henry Ford expressed the view that History is more or less bunk, so what he would have made of Prehistory would probably have been unprintable.[1]  However, perhaps as an engineer, his concerns were elsewhere, solving the problems in the present and helping to mould the future.

In his remark, we might perceive a fundamental dichotomy of science v arts, but while this is clearly simplistic, there is a certain resonance for archaeology which sits, sometimes uncomfortably, between the two. Much of what is important, incisive and certainly less bunk in archaeology originally came from outside, from the borrowing of scientific techniques from other disciplines.  Further, in Henry Ford’s prejudice one might also perceive a divergence between practical v theoretical, or practitioners v academics; for archaeology, the latter are often from an “arts background”, and by creating the past in their own image, have divested Prehistory of its engineers, architects, builders; a prehistoric built environment fabricated almost entirely from bunk.

In the West, Archaeology is fairly new discipline, not much older than the motor car, but prehistory is not vital, and so nobody cares if you get it wrong or make it up. Unlike engineering, archaeology can be a faith based study, with objectivity, and even the evidence being secondary, what is important is belief in the narrative and its institutions.  In archaeology things can be true because people believe them, not because they are supported by the evidence. 

This is hard concept to grasp if you come from another discipline, or importantly, if you believe in the intellectual integrity of archaeology, but ideas about ancient building are a classic case in point.

Is Post-Processual Archaeology a New Age Cult?

I recently suggested that post-processual archaeology was a faith-based approach that mystifies the evidence, but on reflection, thinking of it as a religion, is probably to exaggerate its objectivity. This time, I’m looking at the messages we're getting about, and apparently from, the past, and asking if this new archaeology a New Age cult?

I shall do this with the help Neil Oliver’s BBC program, History of Ancient Britain, which has, through no fault of its own, been singled out to be my Auntie Sally. His program is more than just a warm glass of intellectual Drambuie on a Sunday night, but actually reflects some state of the art archaeological thinking, as one might expect of the BBC.[1]

For the sake of balance I will try to explain why some archaeologists have painted themselves into the corner of their yoga mats, and readers should be warned be there maybe some intellectual cartoon violence, and outbreaks of Kermodian ranting.

23.Uncovered; Prehistoric Building Regulations

I want to show you something quite remarkable about prehistoric buildings that nobody ever noticed before, so you are going to be the first to know.

The previous article, which I’m sure you’ve read, looked at the roof geometry of circular buildings, and using simple theoretical models, demonstrated that large 16-17m roundhouses are probably at the technical limits of the design. We shall extend our simple model to include a theoretical longhouse, and compare the two forms to try and understand what advantages this challenging form of roof construction offers, with interesting results.

18. Credibility Crunch Hits Iron Age Building

The story of the Iron Age building boom of the later Twentieth Century starts with one man, Gerhard Bersu [left], driven to these shores by that most clichéd of archaeological plot devices, the Nazis. It is his initial speculations and concept of a roundhouse that has dominated thinking for seventy years. The concept has become an article of faith for many archaeologists, who, perhaps unwittingly, show a near religious belief in the veracity of his ideas about buildings.

However, religion and archaeology are unsatisfactory bedfellows, and anyone who has read articles 1-9 on this site will realise that I think it is time to return to the evidence and common sense, and to prick this aged speculative bubble.

8. Who would live in a house like this?

Since roundhouses were first defined 60 years ago, a consensus has emerged as to how these buildings were built, and how they should look. Physical reconstructions have become quite common. Since prehistoric post-built roundhouses never survive above floor level at best, on what are these reconstructions based?

Visualising the past: Which is which? Roundhouse or African mud hut?