Re: Breckinridge: Plan "B" Artifacts
Rant Alert !
Hi Docmann
Pardon me for not having addressed the question you asked
Docmann said:
Have any of you ever given thought to just how many members of a camp or band were involved in shaping points/ tools? Do you suppose that there were just one or two craftsmen within a band or family who produced tools, or perhaps, was this a craft taught to all when arriving at a certain age? Was, perhaps the task of projectile points given to a few, and other tools to others yet?
It's kind of a long story. What it boils down to is Franz Boas, who hijacked what could have been an intelligent study of prehistory. By declaring archaeology a branch of "anthropology," and dictating what "anthropology" was and was not, what its operating assumptions were (like that genetics plays no role in human/societal differences) and so on, he reduced archaeology to a red-headed stepchild, obliged to validate the conclusions about human nature he had determined in advance.
This is where you get the never-ending hobby horse nonsense about "egalitarian bands," "gender roles in paleolithic society" and similar rubbish. For none of which even a particle of evidence exists. Or ever will. "Anthropology" deals in these, so archaeology must as well, whether it has any foundation to do so that critical readers of ordinary intelligence wouldn't laugh at or not.
The basic stuff of archaeology is stones, bones, ivory and charcoal. From there, secondary or derivative patterns like tool forms and technologies, their probable uses, cultural ranges and time frames, etc. are pretty well grounded in empirical evidence. If archaeology would restrict itself to what it can do, and do well, in conjunction with geology, pollen analysis, genetics &c., it would be a great improvement. (Jack Webb voiceover : "Just the facts, ma'am.")
But in the mean time, with attention diverted into arguing lunatic scenerios like Paleolithic hunters supposedly exterminating the mammoths, there is simply too much energy going into conceptual rat holes.
Case in point : no low-technology society has ever passed up an available food resource. But for 50 years it was obligatory to go along with the official gag that Clovis, Folsom, Scottsbluff et al. people had followed the herds of megafauna around, ignoring everything else edible, with the
Archaic era beginning the generalized foraging survival strategy. Assumptions like these, especially when they're, for all practical purposes, articles of faith in a belief system, quickly become irrational insistances. With the professional inquisition, heresy trials and persecution for heretics following as a matter of course.
Archaeology is partly absorbed in fruitless pursuits because it still regards itself as a branch office of Boasian Anthropology. If it would step off that bus -- stop chasing daydreams impossible to come to grips with from the evidence it has -- and get down to business . . .
I know.
Wish in one hand . . .
Thank You. I feel much better now.
lol
