Michael Braddick (professor and pro-vice-chancellor for the faculty of arts and humanities at the University of Sheffield) ass:
'Will the study of archaeology soon become a thing of the past?" Guardian (Higher Education Supplement, Feb 19th 2013.Certainly the current emphasis in archaeology's misguided "outreach" focussing merely on the glittery gold-and-silver (with its antiquitist fascination with narrativisation of loose decontextualised artefacts found by non-archaeologists with metal detectors) will do nothing to aid real British archaeology in defending itself from Philistine cuts. Perhaps it deserves its inevitable fate.
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2 comments:
Actually, archaeology will need more outreach with programs like PAS to remain relevant. Why should anyone support a couse of study that only benefits and caters to a select few?
It seems "Cultural Property Observer" has completely misunderstood what I said, but in doing so illustrated perfectly my point. Insted of seeing archaeology, CPO sees "relevance" in the "narrativisation of loose decontextualised artefacts" which is a TOTALLY different thing from real archaeology.
I think the Philistine will consider that on the surface many academic academic disciplines "only benefit and cater to a select few" (molecular biology, quantum physics, Latin philology, ethnography, ethology etc. etc).
Obviously I am of the opinion that archaeology, properly done, is of wider social and cultural (and more general) benefit than the antiquitist invention of stories about artefacts based on extra-source information and speculation. That is no more than mythmaking (which is not to deny the latter a role too in various contexts).
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