Ned Heite schrieb:
> I wrote:
>
> >> Moreover, no historical or artifactual source is totally reliable.
>
> Geoff Carver responded:
>
> >no, but much of historical/archaeological research deals with evaluating the
> >reliability of various sources of evidence
>
> My point is that "truth" is a very narrow path, out of which too often we
> are seduced by our theoretical position to stray.
>
yeah: but not sure if anyone (outside of a few really arrogant bastards who
don't really know any better and so mess things up for those of us who do) would
ever say they were dealing with "truth" in archaeology anyway - recognizing that
we're all just dealing with theories and conclusions which fit the data and let
us get on with our lives -
> A document, or other source, is a witness only to itself.
>
> If I find a tax receipt, it is objective evidence only that a person wrote
> certain words on paper. Using objective methods, I can authenticate the
> ink, the paper and possibly the signature, but I cannot independently
> verify the truth of the statements written on the receipt; that requires a
> leap of faith.
>
> I probably will assume that the receipt was written by a tax collector, to
> acknowledge payment by the named individual, at the time and place written
> there.
>
> When I make these assumptions, I endow the writing with attributes that are
> not strictly demonstrated by the evidence at hand:
>
> 1. I assume that the signer is actually the tax collector.
> 2. I assume that the signature is genuine.
> 3. I assume that the document reflects an actual payment, and not a fraud.
> 4. I assume that the person named actually was the one who was liable for
> the taxes.
> 5. I assume that the tax collector actually submitted the payment to the
> tax office.
> 6. I assume that the payment was correctly credited on the books at the tax
> office.
> 7. I assume that the receipt was actually given to the taxpayer.
>
> That's seven assumptions attached to the evidence when I write this sentence:
>
> "John Doe paid taxes in Nunsuch County for 1888 in the amount of $6.50."
>
i would rewrite that sentence to read something along the lines of:
"a receipt states that JD paid $6.50 in taxes"
you can then evaluate the reliability of the receipt by comparing to other
similar documents, looking at just how honest/reliable the tax collectors and
other such public officials, etc., were:
how likely is a forgery (why?); how likely was fraud by the taxguy?
> Of course, we accept such "reliable" evidence at face value all the time,
> and fabricate our version of "truth" on the basis of it. We must presume
> that our sources are not totally false, or we'd never write anything.
>
true - always heuristic answers, prone to revision - which is why so many of us
hedge our bets by saying "seems" and "could be interpreted thus" and other such
wishy-washy bullshit
> But we must always remember that a tax receipt does not "prove" that the
> person paid taxes, only that someone had obtained evidence of a tax
> payment.
>
agreed - all i'm saying is that we have to evaluate the reliability of that
evidence
> But what if I wrote:
>
> "John Doe was secure; his county taxes were paid for 1888."
>
> "Doe must have been in Nunsuch County in 1888, for he paid taxes there."
>
> "Doe was a taxpaying citizen of Nunsuch County in 1888."
>
> Now we have strayed farther from the "truth" inherent in the putative tax
> receipt. Each of these three sentences contains a statement of "fact" that
> we can't directly attribute to the evidence at hand. Yet we are still
> within the limits of assumption allowed by the ordinary practice of
> history, if only just barely.
>
yep: stretching it a bit there, making assumptions and deductions which are not
necessarily proven or supported by the evidence
> I'm sure that most of us will agree that "objective truth" is a boring
> subject, if it is limited to a mere cataloguing of the most humdrum and
> verifiable observations.
>
> So truth, as we employ it in our everyday lives, is of necessity flexible
> and subjective.
>
> If nothing is found in this test unit, I assume that nothing would be found
> in the adjacent unit I didn't dig. I don't know (as a certainty) that the
> adjacent unit is also going to be innocent of artifacts, but many years of
> experience has conditioned me to make certain leaps of faith.
>
> Theory is a tool that stretches our leaps of faith, sometimes beyond
> acceptable limits, and beyond the ready assumptions.
>
> On the other hand, if we rely too heavily on theory, we run the risk of
> losing track of simple truth and the relatively elegant assumptions that
> can be derived directly (or almost directly) from empirical evidence.
>
> A robust theory, well-founded on evidence and well tested, can be a useful
> tool. It can also be a terrible burden. Theories have life spans.
> Historians have embraced, in turn, the frontier, the economic
> interpretation, and cliometrics, as theoretical frameworks, only to discard
> them when new buzzwords came along.
>
buzzwords or... paradigms?
> Some of our archaeological brethren tend to over-interpet according to
> their particular theoretical bias.
some?
A bag of potsherds may or may not say
> something about class struggle, gender roles, or ethnic origins. A hundred
> bags of potsherds might give us a few clues, but will never make a
> definitive statement.
>
> But generally speaking, our first job is to accurately describe the
> potsherds, and hope that they will talk to us. Familiarity with theory and
> current buzzwords may help us organize our thoughts, but all the theory in
> the world must not be allowed to displace the authoritative voice of the
> raw data.
>
> Infatuation with theory too frequently tends to displace the skepticism and
> caution that should rule our interpretive work. I have even heard
> theorists proclaim that theory should be preferred over fact when the two
> appear to be in conflict. What arrogance!
>
agreed: like the german who drove his new mercedes into the canal last spring
because his onboard navigation system told him a bridge should be there - the
whole idea is that the evidence should be used to prove/disprove the theory
(don't they understand the process/logic of theory-building/testing?)
i really couldn't agree with you more - most of my work is in trying to
teach people to write good soil descriptions, not to confuse descriptions with
interpretations, to do good surveying and draw accurate drawings: how more
bloody-mindedly empirical/objective/descriptive could i want to be? if i'm going
to interpret something, i want to be clear about how i arrived at my conclusions
- and i would expect the same from everyone else who dared rank themselves
amongst the "gentlemen and scholars" -
"no historical or artifactual source is totally reliable" - but we can
control for that and evaluate our sources and go from there, taking this with a
grain of salt, discounting that altogether, etc. - where's the beef?
> Ned Heite _(____)_ CULTURAL EVENT ALERT:
> Heite Consulting /Baby '69| This weekend in Delaware,
> Camden _===__/88" Land || the Pumpkin Chunkin' contest
> Delaware | ____ Rover__ || directly conflicts with
> 19934 [||/ .\_____/ .\__| the Archaeological Society
> _____________ \__/_____\__/_____of Delaware annual meeting
> http://home.dmv.com/~eheite at Greenbank Mill. Choices!
i'd definitely go for the pumpkins...
geoff carver
http://home.t-online.de/home/gcarver/
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