BrianJ

It is impossible for archaeology to answer the 'why' question. It can 'suggest' plausible scenarios that archaeologists/historians can mould into a hypothesis, but that is all it can do.

What archaeology does especially well is it show the plausibility of an event, and it is far easier to use archaeolgical data to disprove an alleged event than it is to use it to 'prove' that event, though, of course, no theory about an historical event is ever proven.

Hex

Actually, this depends on the sheer amount of evidence, what kind of question is being asked, and how much of it contains writing that actually pertains to the occurance. The 'why' of why the Mimbres civilization 'disappeared' has been answered. A change of climate made it impossible to grow crops, thus, the area would no longer support human habitation at the scale needed to keep the economy and other interactions going.

Sure it's a hypothesis, but all the archaeological evidence works toward it. With no challenging evidence and no better hypothesis, does that not count as answering the 'why' question?


Well, to a point that's true. Plausability goes both ways. Look to the preludes to any number of the Dirk Pitt novels by Clive Cussler. He takes a historic wreck - ships, planes, trains - and builds a more or less plausable story around them. Some of his stories have been disproved by science. 'Raise the Titanic' for example, lost it's plausability as a story when it's hull was found broken into two pieces.

As to never being able to prove any theory about a historical event, well ... I would definately agree that the farther back in history one goes, the harder it would become. But with ethnoarchaeology, or even historical archaeology, hypothesises about historical events of the last few centuries -can- be proven, at least to within a reasonable doubt.

Hell, look to the the We never went to the moon
thread. Evidence is everything, and sometimes well documented events do not provide enough proof for everyone ...

gregor

Um, well then isn't this entire thread merely your reliance upon a Dever review of a book you've never read?

Julian

First of all, while I do not agree with everything in Hex's opening post, I did find it excellent and useful. Why? Because it made me think about stuff I had tucked away as resolved. I love having my assumptions shaken up. Nothing better than being shown where you might be wrong because, whatever the outcome, you will end up as a more knowledgable and, hence, better human being.

I would really love it if Hex could (would, had the time, inclination, whatever) read The Bible Unearthed and write some direct observations on the actual text. This mostly because I found TBU very convincing and have relied on it a number of times. It seems that maybe I shouldn't have done so quite as readily (which is always true for all things and all knowledge but I forgot in this instance mostly because archaeology is not my field). TBU did sound a little bit too good to be true. That being said, I am certainly not willing to throw out the baby with bathwater. I know that many things in that book are correct, probably most things. So where does it have problems? What are the severity of those problems? This is the reason for my desire to see Hex comment upon this topic in more detail.

Also, I am surprised that spin hasn't voiced his opinion here.

Anyways, just wanted to comment on what I thought was an excellent opening post and some good follow-ups.

One major objection to the OP is that I do not find it to be true that archaeology would have a problem with the 'why' of most things. People being people coupled with a general understanding of the time period would allow for some accurate guesses as to the 'why's and 'wherefore's in many cases. While I am not a student of archaeology, I do read a lot of military history, much of it from the ancient world and most times, the 'why' of a situation is quite obvious, even if the details are fuzzy.

Julian

Larsguy47

Nice thread, Hex!!!

Larsguy47

Hex

No, not exactly. I did say reviewS ... And I -have- actually checked out some of the book (the search on-line feature of Amazon can be really useful ), and I've read things by these authors before.

And there are more reviews out there (eg. Whitelam, 2003 in the Journal of Palestine Studies) that back up the weakness. It's just that Dever gives a more colorful review that, in my opinion, paints the authors appropriately from what I know of them outside this work.

It is interesting to note, for example, when the work in question is cited in articles it (in my scans of citations and in articles where I've noted it) is often used as a work to be challanged on it's dating. In otehr articles it is not actually cited in the text, but included in the biliography, indicating that it was used 'in general', as an overall picture of what's going on, but not of critical import to the study. In these cases, it's important to think about -why- it's not of critical import.



In light of all this, though, I'll throw it on my reading list. Mind that it's well behind a Neil Stephenson book, a work on London's Victorian Underworld, and a couple of others. But I'll see what I can do and give a more critical summary if everyone would like ...

Larsguy47

Here's a direct quote from Finkelstein regarding the dating of the 'Solomonic' palacial levels at Megiddo in relation to Rehov City IV:

In the book, The Bible and Radiocarbon Dating, Archaeology, Text and Science (or via: amazon.co.uk), Israel Finkelstein contributes "Chapter 17, High or Low: Megiddo and Tel Rehov". Under the subheading "Megiddo and Tel Rehov" he says:

"Megiddo and Tel Rehov
Our central claim, which will be discussed below, is that Tel Rehov IV--not V--is the contemporary of Megiddo VA-IVB (contra Mazar, in Coldstream and Mazar 2003). This mean that the new Tel Rehov readings actually support the Low Chronology system, according to which the Megiddo ashlar palaces date to the early 9th century BCE."

He goes a bit further though and says more specifically (page 307): "Megiddo VA-IVB is the contemporary of Rehov IV. And both were destroyed in the course of the conflicts between Aram Damascus and the Northern Kingdom, ca. 835-830 BCE (Na'aman 1997)."

LG47