Wednesday 25 January 2017

All Mouth, no Evidence




I think instead of the ever-tedious 'born-on-this-day-and-here's-a-coin-peeps' dumbdown claptrap of the ever-expensive pseudo-outreach of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, letting the side down, why do we not have some substantive discussion of the heritage management issues, like whether the (old) plough scratch running across the face of this coin reduces its value as archaeological evidence. It messes it up as a collectable, but as archaeological evidence the plough scratch does less to reduce the evidential value than it being hoiked out of context in collection-driven exploitation of the archaeological record by an artefact hunter and collector.

FLOs, in every annual report since the sixth (I think) year of your Scheme you've been putting out the fallacy that artefact hunting is 'saving' information which is lost through plough damage and (you're not really sure, are you, which kind of) corrosion. Come on then, show us lots and lots of artefacts so damaged as to back up that mantric claptrap.  Come on, evidence to back up your 'alternative facts'.

No comments:

 
Creative Commons License
Ten utwór jest dostępny na licencji Creative Commons Uznanie autorstwa-Bez utworów zależnych 3.0 Unported.