that no-one is omnipotent and we're all just human
True, which why 'academics' pretty much never say anything is 100% certain (even climate change scientists use a 95% probability, even though they all certain of mans effect on the climate). In Time Team, Tony Robinson used to joke that Mick and the others used to qualify everthing. He was right, but so were they. We cannot know everything, so 'might be' is a decent way of saying something without looking like an idiot.
In fact, the number of academic archaeologists I've known that live in an 'ivory tower' is tiny (now Classicists and Egyptologists, thats a different story
). Most are trying to get teaching done whilst do research that will please the Research committee and get stuff published as often as they can. And just because your crunching a lot of numbers does not mean your out of touch either - that information is incrediably valuable (OK, so thats what I did...but I admit I'm not that great at digging).
There are loads of hands on experiments around, for all periods. If your a Roman military specialist, then the Roman Army reenactors are very useful - if only to find out the actual way someone would have laced up their armour. Flint knappers can generally be recognised by their wounds, and there is a shed load of ethnographic research going on for all sorts of periods - from Iron Age farming through to 19th century mining.
We are approachable people, no different from 'practical' people (we are practical too!!)... of course different people with different skills bring different information to research. It's not just a divide between academics and non academics, it's just 'different areas of expertise', like an archaeologist vs a bushcraft expert versus a geologist vs someone who works in forestry.
Well said. Asking sail makers and circus people how to cover the Flavian Amphitheatre makes perfect sense. If your an archaeologist, your seldom trained in engineering - you know from the sources how they
might have done it, but you need someone to look at it from an expert angle.
And of course the evidence from experiments has to be examined - 'does that way of making bronze arrow heads match what we found from actual sites?', etc. No good archaeologist ignores evidence from other areas or disciplines - in fact archaeology is pretty much a magpie - taking what it needs from all areas.
And its worth pointing out that while many think that archaeologists tend to either wear tweed or look like Indiana Jones (I should be so lucky), in reality most excavators tend to look like people who work on a building site (it used to mostly be surplus, but these days probably Primark and Screwfix), whilst most desk bound people wear T-Shirts with things like 'Archaeologists Dont Dig Dinosaurs'
http://www.cafepress.com/shovelbums.107762035 or old sweaters/sweatshirts with holes in them. Think more
Big Bang Theory than Howard Carter. In fact my wife has complained to people that I still have my Institute's Roman Department T-Shirt for 1993, and
still wear it (Ok, so its seen better days
). Some habits are hard to break!
Of course there is no money in archaeoloogy, which might explain the fashion choices...
Archeologists here and in the UK appear to have the view that if they can't find it then it didn't exist.
John Fenna got there first - "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"
In fact most prehistorians are pretty open minded when it comes to stuff like shelter types, etc. Its really tough finding prehistoric remains of such transiant and easily destroyed structures, so until someone recognises one, its difficult to know what your looking for. However, now that people have got their eye in, a lot more seem to be found.
On the other hand, you need some evidence in order to make an argument - just saying 'there could be' isn't quite enough, unless its Theoretical Archaeology, but thats a different story.
