Vorkosigan

Romans were much more advanced than Vorkosigan led you to believe with his earlier response.

Amen-Moses

No dates on buildings? Strange that the British Museum is full of them then isn't it. The NE equivelent of my church date is the "Erected by Emperor x in year y" or similar. History provides the dating from comparison of the reigns of rulers in different lands linked by letters from one to the other or wars they fought for example.

Trade goods and bills are also a great dating tool
in the NE, the Egyptians and Romans were sticklers for red-tape and many disparate sites can provide a framework of dating which is then used to date contextually linked objects (like ceramics) and those objects are then used to give relative dates to other sites where distinct dates cannot be derived from incriptions.

Coins are extremely good at giving barrier dating and where enough finds accumulate (especially in trading centres where foreign coins are found) statistical analysis can give an upper and lower bound to a strata pretty accurately.

Carbon dating is less accurate than dendro dating although wood remains are hard to find intact in NE sites. Carbon dating also only gives the date at which the animal or plant died (with an error bound equalling the life span of the organism, don't ever try dating mosses accurately!) not the date at which the product was used, this is especially important in the case of Papyrus or Scrolls. One case in point was when the Time Team wanted to recreate a Medieval inscription using techniques of the time they replicated the ink, writing style and used the same implements that had been discovered at the site (an Abbey IIRC) but used an animal skin that was only a hundred years old from a specialist company. When someone discovers this in a thousand years time they will be extremely confused by the erroneous (apparently) carbon dating compared to the stylistic/technical dating of the inscription.

All in all dating is only concidered accurate if different methods all agree otherwise all that can be safely used is the latest date derived.

Amen-Moses

[ August 05, 2002: Message edited by: Amen-Moses ]</p>

King Arthur

I had in mind particularly the ancient history of Palestine and surrounding areas where you would be more hard-pressed to find something like this, though it does happen.

I mostly agree with the rest of what you wrote.

It is much easier to date things in Egypt and Rome because they were larger civilizations with better records. Sometimes these records can be found when they haven't succumbed to weather conditions. It's not as if you're gonna find some piece of papyrus (a bill or whatever) in Egypt every time to dig, however. In the Palestine area, it is even more difficult to find anything like this. This is why the DSS were such a major find. Papyri don't last long in that climate.

Anyway, my whole point from earlier is that you seem to know enough to recommend a book, unless you are simply unfamiliar with the ones I recommend. There is no reason you should not be able to recommend a reasonable and unbiased text for introducing someone to archaeology. As a matter of fact, it sounds as if you have no problem sharing information. Is your information better than that gleaned from an expert's book?

Currid has an excellent book to introduce someone to archaeology. Whatever his ideology, I doubt that being the scholar he is that he would lead anyone astray from the basics. Give me a break.

[ August 05, 2002: Message edited by: King Arthur ]</p>