The Rise of Archaeologists Anonymous | Hacker News Reader

The Rise of Archaeologists Anonymous

unherd.com

18 pointssmitty1e17 comments

> Historian Wolf Liebeschuetz and archaeologist Sebastian Brather, to pick on just two, have both firmly insisted that archaeology must not, and cannot, be used to trace migrations or identify different ethnic groups in prehistory.

I didn't realize archaeology also had such "crimethink" kooks trying to censor reality.

I didn't realize archaeologists thought the nationalistic pseudohistorians cared what actual academics thought.

looking on the bright side: will anonymous science produce similar scenarios as Satoshi/Bitcoin, where personal gain is decoupled from discovery & invention? There is already a trend where scientific discovery is slowing, precisely because researchers are nudged into the acceptable / publishable middle, rather than working at the margins where breakthroughs happen. It's a shame for the individual academics, but perhaps a gain overall for humanity

> researchers are nudged into the acceptable / publishable middle

Researchers go where the funding, like water, is found.

But does too much drown the roots?

Possibly the breakthrough researchers are a sort of cacti in an intellectual desert.

cacti in the desert - what a great analogy!

It does not capture the pain we suffer there!

lol - I can imagine! But hey, cacti live for ever and can handle external conditions which would wither all other types of plant life, so there's that!

Good points, I love the "living forever". Indeed, it can be seen from the angle of creating a seed (new knowledge) that will live forever. Thanks!

Academia is an anachronism that survives due to network effects. Accelerationism makes sense here.

I follow archeology closely. I find the common reference to “common sense” interpretations to be pretty off base.

There probably were queer Vikings, borders probably were diffuse, conquest was complicated and probably didn’t affect the lives of most people most of the time. The archeology of that is really clear.

I think academias job is to find accurate answers and that requires challenging “common sense”. If that means asking if there were queer Vikings seems like the type of consensus defying questions worth asking!

This person sounds like a revanchist, looking to go back to a past that no longer exists.

> There probably were queer Vikings

To state that there were zero instances of homosexuality in ancient Scandinavia is to go too far. How would one know?

But one might also ask:

- Why would one care?

- What difference would it make?

It's valuable for young people to realize that Christian lies about the Eternity of heterosexuality Are in fact just lies. It actually is valuable for young people to know that there were people like them in history

Homosexuality is mentioned in the Bible. The nature of your argument is unclear.

Yes it's really positive about homosexuality and also there's no academic ambiguity about if it was really referring to homosexuality or if that's actually a translation artifact of the middle ages

> - Why would one care?

Why would one care about anything in the sciences?

> - What difference would it make?

As much difference as a lot of other form of pure scientific progress.

Perhaps more, in fact, depending on which political groups run with it.

Ah, "political groups".

The article does not blame archeologists for challenging common sense, it simply explains that the mainstream in archeology is far removed from common sense, because otherwise, a story about archeologists needing the protection of anonymity to discuss seemingly common sense ideas would not make any sense.

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