Just spent two glorious days at a conference organised by the British Museum covering Ceramic, cuisine and culture: The archaeology and science of kitchen pottery in the ancient Mediterranean world. Now I can’t imagine many here would be interested in the details of this as it was quite specific however something struck during the sessions and discussions that on reflection I wasn’t surprised at after all.

Although I am interested in archaeology and classical history I am not an academic and don’t usually go to these sort of events. To be honest academics are not the best presenters of material in the world and you really need to be interested in the content to cut through some turgid monotones. During the question period though, many would ask of the speakers what they thought about this or that and without hesitation, they would say We don’t know or There is no evidence to confirm it one way or the other. It wasn’t that they seemed reluctant to suggest what their pet theories were, it was more like that they had hit a wall and simply couldn’t go any further for the time being. It simply did not occur to them to have a opinion. Further, a couple of times speakers mentioned how dangerous it was to do that, presumably they had dropped clangers in the past and suffered for it perhaps.

They were able to construct hypothesis where appropriate and sometimes different data supported more than one but yet again, they would stop at that point and wait for further evidence. The frustrating thing for many of them was that once their project finished there may be nothing planned to take the study forward that would likely produce the evidence needed however they still wouldn’t be drawn. It was as if they were working on behalf of everybody else and the data they were accumulating did not belong to them, they were simply the observers and had no right to cloud the landscape with unwarranted opinions.

A really enjoyable time both for being immersed in the subject I love but also to be around professionals doing there jobs to the best of their abilities. I can’t see how anyone could possibly doubt that this painstaking process which of course is replicated throughout all of science, could be anything other than successful. Heady stuff.

John

Spearthrower wrote:Sounds absolutely fascinating to me, but I've always been interested in the ancient med.

One thing to note on your comment of them not forwarding their personal opinions is that anth and arch are both plagued by sniping and back-biting enmities that last entire careers. They're understandably reticent to give their detractors any ammunition.

You may be right but I never noticed any of that here. Everyone seem to realise they they were all dependant on each other's work and results in order to further their own studies.

There were a couple of guys who seemed a little more confrontational than the rest but when people back-up their opinions with evidence rather than wishful thinking it makes it harder for an argument to development. When challenged they just said "I don't know" which tends to take the wind out of the sails of someone trying to start and argument.

John