Trying to protect an archaeological site with incorrect and false information will never work.
I am not sure if I can justify this principle but it is a basis for my criticizing people who understand a part of the picture, maybe, but who are naïve about the breadth of phenomena and the significance of certain features. Too much incomplete interpretation may be harmful.
Sometimes I get a little superstitious. It is enjoyable. So, while a scientific argument might be made that falsehoods and incomplete truths won't hang together logically so as to compel understanding and belief about a site, a more superstitious argument might be that a site has its own defenses, built into its underlying truths, and those defense can only be engaged by being seen and understood. [These arguments are equivalent.]
Add that: I sometimes think Pratt Hill might have been saved had it not been for the questionable "archaeoastronomy" from Mavor and Dix.
ReplyDeleteThey tried to show the mounds on the hilltop, visible from the Upton chamber, were there to break up and articulate a horizon for viewing stellar events. That may have been too subtle to capture anyone's belief - to the detriment of the site's protection.
I've never bought into the idea that the Upton Chamber was built as a foresight for the stone mounds on Pratt Hill, a mile away.
ReplyDeleteIt makes no sense whatsoever. There are problems with cloud cover, tree obstruction, and visual acuity that Mavor and Dix
never address in Manitou.
When is our interpretation ever "complete"? (About anything!) Archaeological arguments are almost always made on the preponderance of the evidence, rather than absolute determinations. This is even true of radiocarbon dates, which are billed as "absolute" but not only have a range of error built into them but which can be altered by any number of contamination sources.
ReplyDeleteGood question but someone wanting to be minimally conversant with a subject like rock piles ought to know the basic alternative functions that have been proposed for rock piles. When I read the same old tropes about donations and alignments it riles me slightly. Those cases are very far from "complete". After all, the burials seem more important to me and central to understanding most of the other types. Let me propose a list:
ReplyDeleteBurial
Alignment
Effigy
Pathway
Platform
Seat
Boundary
Doorway (open/shut)
Here's my list:
ReplyDeleteRemembrance Pile (formal cairn)
Rock Pile (general)
Stone Row
U-Shaped (prayer seat)
Chamber
Standing Stone
Split-Filled Boulder (pathway?)
Balanced Rock
Marked Stone
Petroglyph
Stone Circle
Effigy
Mound
Platform
Enclosure
Niche
"Unique Structure" (none of the above
Good. We can discuss these categories. I am mainly annoyed at articles that begin by assuming most rock piles are agrarian and follow with the revelation that some may be native American - eg donations (recorded in ethnography) and alignment (acceptable archeoastronomy concept). Writers of such articles are not experts.
ReplyDeleteThat's why the first chapter of my book is entitled "Science, Pseudoscience, and Scientism". Scientism is the conviction on the part of people who have advanced degrees (Piled higher and deeper) that they are in fact the experts.
ReplyDelete>> a site has its own defenses
ReplyDeleteI truly believe this.
Though I still will not share lat/long info which goes into a database with no guarantee the site will stay private and protected.
How does a site have its own defenses? I've seen some features destroyed or radically modified by those who know nothing
ReplyDeleteabout what they're looking at.
.
Menotomy -
ReplyDeleteMy database will only be shared with THPOs and SHPOs. Those offices have statutory authority to protect sites (though not all of them agree to use it).
Otherwise, locational information will be presented as 1 km diameter squares or circles to protect sites from vandalism. Is that a sufficient guarantee?
Norman -
ReplyDeleteI believe that the best defense sites have is for local people to be aware of them and to see to it that they are not developed. This has worked well, for example, in Acton and Sharon, Mass., where local activist groups have placed conservation restrictions around sites or even, in the case of Sharon, voted in town meeting to purchase a threatened parcel out from under a developer using Town funds. I've also successfully used this argument in my own (Ashland MA) town meetings for enlarging our Town Forest, which contains a big cluster of stonework sites.
It wasn't clear to me what Metonomy meant by the comment that a site has its own defenses. By themselves, sites are defenseless, unless they are on protected land, or if they are known to the authorities in the town where they are located as being culturally significant. Of course sites should be protected and defended, and education, to me, is the best way of achieving this.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair Curt, I overlooked your
ReplyDeleteniche
enclosure
donation (remembrance)
I am not sure how to classify boulders, standing stones, or stone walls. I wouldn't call them "rock piles" but I suppose that shouldn't matter. I think it is a legitimate question whether chambers are part of the same spectrum. For example, there should be chambers in the southeastern US, where I presume many of the other types of structure are common. I never heard of a chamber in Georgia. As for marked stones and inscriptions, I am not much aware of them where I explore.
Peter -
ReplyDeleteI actually do have 3 chambers located in Georgia. Rare, but not absent. The variety of structures in the Southeast definitely seems impoverished when compared with the glaciated Northeast - it almost exclusively consists of rock piles.
I have, however, come to the conclusion that isolated chambers, unaccompanied by other structures and without significant azimuths, are indeed not "part of the same spectrum". The same is true of inscriptions, but not of petroglyphs.