The Life & Times of Charlie Thunderbird-Jones

I felt it was high time someone gave academics the sort of clap that they so richly deserve, although I am still working, if only to rob Universal Credit of another victim, However, as a birthday present to myself, {& in lieu of everything}, I have spent the last month working on a Major New Motion Picture Presentation of a Novel Graphic Pictorial Novelette Cartoon Video.

What started as a couple of dozen pocket cartoons has got out of hand, and developed a life of its own, or rather several bizarre and somewhat unpleasant lives of their own.
Now view on . . . .

...............................................................................................................[insert 4th wall here].......................................................................................................

TSA is proud to present:

The Adventures of Charlie Thunderbird-Jones 

– [Archaeologist Ordinaire from the infamous University of Tyneside].

This full colour mini-series was the departments attempt to persuade Dr Thunderbird-Jones to retire, however, the Corvid19 outbreak has effected their plans.  Paranoid Pictures have dropped the project and what we are left with a digitally compressed mini- box-set of the original story board, now sponsored by among others Granny Boogol Foods, Grizzled Maxwell Models, Gold Head Associates, and the Magic Mount eBank.

Warning; contains adult humour and scenes of an archaeological nature.

NOMINATED FOR 

THE

UNIVERSITY OF TYNESIDE 

DIGITAL GURNER PRIZE  

for meaningless Art

UT ARTS

NOTES.

The Life & Times of Charlie Thunderbird-Jones

The events depicted in this Cartoon are entirely fictitious and any 

resemblance to person and events, real or imagined, is entirely 

malicious,  made with duplicitous intent to ridicule, vilify and abuse 

persons who shall remain nameless, notwithstanding the inherent 

mendacity of this statement above & below, which lacks veracity, being 

wholly without any basis in fact.

While individual cases should be judged on their merits, it is clearly to 

be misunderstood that any / no { delete as appropriate} implication that 

any member of a University staff is a deceitful dishonest double-

dealing moron with the wit, intellect, moral veracity and genetic 

potential of a bivalve mollusc is entirely intensional or not as the case 

may be; period. 

By Watching this video {Insert name here} you are assumed to agree and 

fully support the to the following; a unanimous loss of all personal 

rights, privileges, privacies, personal data, medical history, 

embarrassing photographs, voting record, internet history and the 

complete exoneration of any persons associated with the University of 

Tyneside in any conceivable space, before, after or during any time 

specified.

No insult was intended to any Gods, God, Goddessess, Personal Deity, 

invisible friends; Divine, Celestial or Supreme Beings, Beings of 

light {excl. ectoplasm}; Members of the Heavenly hosts including 

‎Cherubs, Seraphs, ‎Archangels and Angels, {incl. Guardian}, Spirits, 

Demons {excl. personal}, {& excl. Ghosts & Jinns }, Avatars, Sages,  

Saints, Prophets {excl. Joseph Smith / Bob Dylan}, miscellaneous 

miraculously conceived Beings, real or imaginary.

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.

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.

Inside the mind of a New Archaeologist

In my view, the inability of conventional archaeology to interpret the majority of the excavated evidence from prehistoric sites, in particular postholes, has led to development of “New” archaeology, where academics study and become experts in those aspects of culture we don’t find.  In those countries like Netherlands and Germany, where their archaeology is better understood, their narrative of the Neolithic is generally  about agriculture, while in Britain it is more often expressed in terms of the perceptions, beliefs, rituals, personhood, and cosmologies.