Deconstruct This!

Dr. Martin Rundkvist of the excellent blog Aardvarchaeology plants his trowel deep in the guts of "post-modernist hyper-relativism, and twists it.

"I am confident that south Levantine archaeology knows a lot about the area's Iron Age. I mean, intelligent scholars have been working there for ages. There can be no need to wipe the slate clean and "begin to develop new and alternative interpretations". Because, you see, the main task of a scholar is to find out what the world is or has been like. I don't care if an interpretation is new or alternative: all I want to know is if it is well supported by good data and likely to be correct. There is no value in heaping conflicting interpretations upon the data without weeding out false ones. We are not art critics.

A structural engineer who cannot say if a bridge is likely to survive the weight of a train should not be paid. An ichtyologist who cannot say if a certain fish species likes high salinity should not be paid. An archaeologist who cannot say what life was like a long time ago should not be paid. Because archaeology is not art criticism. It is about a real material record left behind by real people who lived in a single real past."

For one compelled to suckle at the dry teats of Derrida while at University, this is delicious stuff.  Read the rest of Martin's post here.

Comments

[GreenmanTim]

My pleasure. I thought you tackled that overwrought article with just the right measure of straight on common sense and unpretentious scholarship.

[Martin Rundkvist]

Hey man, thank you!