Oh dear.  

I seem to have rediscovered my latent talent for opening up cans of worms.

Joking aside (and Ned Heite, you forgot the International Criminal Court),
the last time we had this metric - Imperial discussion (for 'Imperial' is
what much of the rest of the world calls what Americans insist on referring
to as 'English'), which was only last year, I seem to remember arguing....

A) Since almost all of the rest of the world has converted to metric (the UK
has a special exemption from the EU for road miles and pints of beer only),
the rigid use of Imperial measures by many US historical archaeologists
often to make US historical archaeology less accessible to students and
professionals in the metric majority of the world.  I've had several
Australian students who've recently found this to be a problematic issue.

B) That said, I fully accept the argument that it can be helpful for
historical archaeologists to measure artefacts (note the correct un-American
spelling) according to their original unit of construction for technical
purposes.  Any discrepancy between the need to use metric or Imperial in
technical reports is easily addressed by using both: stating the measurement
in metric, and then putting the Imperial equivalent in parentheses
immediately thereafter (or vice versa as appropriate).

Hypothetically speaking, however, I'd dispute Marley Brown's suggestion that
it will always be in the best interests of our future archaeologists to use
contemporary measurements for report writing.  It may be of technical
interest in professional reports for our archaeologists in 2402 to record
inches and ounces, but I very much doubt they'd do so in a popular report,
except to explain to our far-off descendants that their ancestors were
insane enough to use a system of measurement whereby 288 gallons = 144 pecks
= 36 bushels = 4.5 quarters.

Americans, metrication is patriotic and in the true Jeffersonian tradition!
Thanks to your Founding Fathers, you had a metric currency long before we
Whinging Poms/Limeys did.  Or perhaps you think it's more naturally
'intuitive' to struggle with pounds, shillings, and pence?   Erm, let's see,
1 pound equals 20 shillings, one shilling is 12 pence, and 1 pence is 4
farthings; meanwhile, a guinea is 21 shillings, a crown is 5 shillings, a
florin is 2 shillings, and a groat is four pence - you're still with me,
right?  So if I'm charged £5.10.6, and I have 6 guineas and 4 crowns in my
pocket, that means...  I'm confused?

No measurement is naturally more intuitive than another - 'intuitive' is
simply what you're taught as a child.

Alasdair

PS: I almost certainly won't read any responses to this - I'm leaving for
the USA tomorrow.  Gently argue with me in Providence instead.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr. Alasdair Brooks
Department of Archaeology
La Trobe University
Plenty Road
Bundoora VIC 3083
Australia
Phone - 03 9479 3269
E-mail - [log in to unmask]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The buffalo tastes the same
on both sides of the border"
Sitting Bull 





on 7/1/03 2:18 am, geoff carver at [log in to unmask] wrote:

> I've had trouble understanding this (and several other arguments), and about
> a month ago I had asked my local group of anthro grad students if anyone
> knew of other examples where the old "imperial" (sinister connotations
> there, too?) system was still in place - I can only see non-metrification as
> hurting the US economy, since that means american stuff can't be exported to
> the rest of the world... Similarly, no one else wants to buy gas-guzzling
> american SUVs...
> Now, I don't want to see this descend into some kind of
> ideological/political debate here on the revered pages of histarch, but this
> does sort of remind me of a lot of the assumptions we make as archaeologists
> about what is the most "logical" or economical or otherwise best strategy
> for exploiting resources or building widgets or... Whatever...
> But obviously that isn't always the case, and the reasons people have for
> doing things are not always the most "rational" - then we build
> rational-sounding "just so" stories to support our conclusions... I'm sort
> of reminded of durkheim's assumption that societies were inherently
> conservative and resistant to change receiving "scientific support" from the
> first law of thermodynamics sometime back in the 50s or 60s, despite thomas
> malthus, darwin, and all other evidence to the contrary...
> My personal opinion is that we tend only to give lip service to the idea of
> uniformitarianism, and give our elegantly modelled theories precedence over
> projecting what we know about the present into the past...
> You can imagine that if it was just liberia that the chinese wouldn't bother
> tooling up their factories to produce two sets of product: imperial and
> metric...
> 
> geoff carver - SUNY buffalo
> [log in to unmask]
> http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~gjcarver/
> "The rocket bombs which fell on London were probably fired by the Government
> of Oceania itself, 'just to keep the people frightened.'" Orwell, 1984.
> 

> 
> It's a good thing Dr. Brooks is safely away from the U.S.
> 
> What liberal, commie, left-wing, anti-American heresy! You would immediately
> be placed on John Ashcroft's list of undesirable subversives under 24/7
> surveillance.
> 
> Like other forward-looking nations (I believe Liberia is the only other one
> at the moment.) our Fearless Leaders have decreed that the metric system is
> bad for the economy, which puts it in the same category with the global
> warming treaty, anti-missile treaty, Saddam, Yasser, and the Euro.
>  
> At 10:21 AM +1100 1/6/03, Alasdair Brooks wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Well, for one thing, I can guarantee you that they won't be measuring
>> in inches and ounces.
>> 
>> Alasdair Brooks
>  
> 
> Actually, kidding aside, archaeologists will probably keep using feet and
> inches when measuring historic artifacts. It makes good sense to measure
> objects in the system that was used by their makers. So in fact, if the
> future archaeologist has his wits about him (or her, or it), the engine
> block will be reported in inches and thousandths of an inch, providing you
> can still find those neat electronic calipers that give results in both
> systems.
> 
> 
> --
> +++++ [log in to unmask]
> 
> Sitting here, sipping diet mead from my auroch-horn flagon,
> I wonder that my contemporaries all look like a bunch of old folks.
>