Archaeology Is Easy
Sunday, October 26, 2008 at 06:53PM It's easy to take a cheap shot at something about which you know almost nothing, so I think I will! I did it a couple of weeks ago with baristas, and it was fun, so I'm doing it again.
I'm suspicious of archaeologists and their methods. A while back The History Channel had one of those glossy TV specials about a recent ‘dig', and I thought that if you took away the announcers' sonorous voice, the dreamy look of the 80mm film, and the left-over X-Files music, what would you have left?
A big bunch of assumptions, that's what you'd have left. And let's face it--isn't that what scientists do? An apple hits Newton on the head, he assumes one of his kids threw it, and discovers the hickory switch. Being a scientist is almost as easy as being a barista. Archaeologists spend months, even years digging up someone's foot, or an old cereal bowl, and if you give them long enough they'll tell you that the owner of the bowl dropped it on his foot after finding out his wife voted Democrat in the 1860 presidential elections. I have my own cereal bowl ready for throwing next Tuesday.