Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 16, No. 285.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 06:13:18 +0100
From: Patricia Galloway <galloway@gslis.utexas.edu>
Subject: Re: 16.277 the archaeological imagination?
Professionally-trained archaeologists take a dim view of intuitional
site-finding and tend to depend upon various methods of remote sensing
(from satellites to magnetometers) as well as historical evidence. They
also take a dim view of hacking around to find gorgeous objects at the
expense of a whole site-full of vernacular architecture, rubbish pits,
and broken pottery, which can yield far more information. Classification
activities tend to use numerical taxonomy. VR reconstructions are
generally done very much after the fact and on the basis of measurements
made on the ground, and are always plainly labelled as reconstructions.
See Clive Orton's various works for the basics. Pattern-finding has by
now been so objectified that an archaeologist doesn't have to be
especially gifted with some special sense to do good work.
Pat Galloway
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