I have been complaining about this for years, especially regarding archaeologist's use of secondary, tertiary and even greater removed historical sources (ie, Smith cites Jones, who cited Brown's interpretation of Green, which was wrong to begin with). It's so common however that I fear no one really cares...
 

 

Carl Steen
 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: geoff carver <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Thu, Jul 21, 2011 7:51 am
Subject: scholarly standards


I've just been reading someone's PhD dissertation, where second-hand
references are made to Foucault, Heidegger, Husserl and a philosopher by the
name of McTaggart (about A- and B-series time).
None of these seems to have been consulted, just referenced via other
archaeological texts. I've noticed basically the same thing happening with
references to Lyell, Darwin, Hutton, Steno, etc., and wondered what other
people think about this. Should we take some other archaeologist's word
about what Heidegger meant, or even what was published in a possibly bad
translation of Heidegger, or should we expect archaeologists, as scholars
and as people who dig things up, to go to the original source, if only to
confirm that the accuracy of the secondary source?