Since we're reminiscing...the pebble issue reminds me of a residential
dump site we collected and analyzed a few yrs ago.  But more
importantly, while excavating, crew members had the forethought to
collect....a handful of small (25 cent pc size) pebbles, found in
various locations within the discarded trash...situated on the upper
slope of a knoll...of solid bedrock.  WHY would pebbles be up there?
They would have been collected from the river area down the hill.
Well...what do kids (or men?) Like to do at dumps...with shimmering
glass bottles tempting them?  Shoot them as targets!  But if you're a
kid...and don't have a firearm at your disposal...use a sling shot...and
pebbles for ammo.  Breaks glass and dishes just as well.   :o)
But, who knows if that is the real function of the out of place pebbles.
??  
Maybe they were alligator gizzard stones (ha ha; sorry inside
side-joke).

-----Original Message-----
From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
geoff carver
Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2009 4:51 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: problems with deriving meaning from archaeological remains

[just one of those things which sort of makes me despair of ever really
making any sense out of archaeological data; I mean: what would anyone
say
if they had found these 3 objects while excavating; they'd probably all
be
thrown away, unrecorded...]

Lecturing at the London Institution in 1876, Ruskin held out both his
hands
to his audience. On his right palm lay "a little round thing" and on his
left "a little flat one." The first was a pebble and the second a
sovereign.
The latter launched him into the themes of empire, value and the
economy.
The former, the black pebble, led him to recall a meeting with the great
geologist James Forbes - a man seemingly made of mountain flint in his
inaccessibility and taciturnity. To these two objects, Ruskin added a
further black pebble, one that "used to decorate the chimney-piece of
the
children's play-room" in his aunt's house in Perth when he was seven
"just
half a century ago." With this third pebble, Ruskin exposed the bond
between
two types of time: the human span of time evoked by the image of his
self at
age fifty-seven and his self at age seven, and the mineralogical span of
time that forms the life of the pebble. The span of time invoked by the
memory of his own childhood was, of course, a mere flicker by comparison
with the mineralogical time of his pebbles. But childhood - his own and
that
of others - was more than a rough and emotive yardstick in Ruskin's
discourse; it was a framework for the emotional management of time
(Pointon
1999: 199-200)


REFERENCES CITED

Pointon, M.
1999 "These Fragments I have Shored against my Ruins". In The Story of
Time,
edited by Lippincott, K., pp. 198-201.  Merrell Holberton, London.