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Romans may have destroyed Moray metal-working site

bbc.com

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Re: Romans may have destroyed Moray metal-working site

#21

Post by diogenescynic »

ggm wrote: post #3
jandrese wrote: post #2

It may have also been torched by the workers before they fled to prevent it from falling into Roman hands.

It's my belief, iron and ironstone being high value, they'd have taken what they could with them, the inputs. Charcoal aside, the remains otherwise are more marginal value, you can do Iron in a mud brick hearth, there wouldn't have been a lot of immovable fixed infrastructure to take really. The charcoal is a pain to make, time consuming. Maybe they burned that to avoid the romans having access, but I tend to think t…

>Not an archeologist. The best way to get good input is to post bad input and wait to be corrected!

This is so true. If you ask for help, people will ignore you. But... if you post the wrong answer--people will fall over themselves to correct you. It's like a hack for human behavior.

Re: Romans may have destroyed Moray metal-working site

#22

Post by ThatGordo »

toyg wrote: post #14
kaon123 wrote: post #13

What have the Romans ever done for us?

Apart from roads, sanitation...

All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Re: Romans may have destroyed Moray metal-working site

#24

Post by klyrs »

hgazx wrote: post #17
klyrs wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a boring, overplayed, anti-science trope. The uncertainty is even visible in the title: "Romans may have destroyed..." It's a headline to draw interest to the story about a dig. Journalists need a hook. Nobody clicks on "Archaeologists found a pot on Tuesday."

Calling something “anti science” is a boring overplayed trope by itself.

> This is a good example of why archeologists shouldn't be believed.

Sometimes, a spade is a spade. What I responded to isn't just a shallow dismissal of the article, it's a shallow dismissal of an entire field of study based on a malicious interpretation of an article's title. That's anti-science.

Re: Romans may have destroyed Moray metal-working site

#25

Post by klyrs »

sandworm101 wrote: post #16
salmo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re reading journalists, not the actual archeologists. They saw evidence and suggested a hypothesis, not a conclusion. I personally have never read an archeologist state a conclusion they didn’t directly observe. Sometimes they’ll note loose threads for further study. Scientific literature has gotten terrible about drawing conclusions from too few points and over reliance on flawed statistical analysis. Bu…

How exactly is an archeologist ever to directly observe anything? Short of tardis tech, all they can ever do is pull logical conclusions form evidence. A worksite quickly burned and abandoned? During a time of strife with Roman armies? Valuable objects left untouched. It wasn't aliens or a dragon attack.

Archaeologists directly observe artifacts. For example, there's a class of artifact that have been called "storage jars" but there wasn't any evidence of what was "stored" in them. Some hypothesized that they were used as chamber pots, but they're too large to sit on. Recently, an archaeologist directly observed the eggs of a human fecal parasite inside of such a "storage jar," evidence in favor of the chamber pot hypothesis. They further hypothesize that these "storage jars" were housed in a wooden frame so that people could sit & do their business -- an ancient port-a-potty -- with little expectation that such a wooden structure would have survived the millenia. And, note the title "ceramic pot was probably a portable toilet."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/02/this-ancient-roman-c...

The criminal justice system works in the same way. Detectives look for evidence that a person was at the scene of a murder, and evidence linking the person to the murder weapon, and establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt even though no other living person directly observed the murder.

Re: Romans may have destroyed Moray metal-working site

#26

Post by sandworm101 »

klyrs wrote: post #25
sandworm101 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly is an archeologist ever to directly observe anything? Short of tardis tech, all they can ever do is pull logical conclusions form evidence. A worksite quickly burned and abandoned? During a time of strife with Roman armies? Valuable objects left untouched. It wasn't aliens or a dragon attack.

Archaeologists directly observe artifacts. For example, there's a class of artifact that have been called "storage jars" but there wasn't any evidence of what was "stored" in them. Some hypothesized that they were used as chamber pots, but they're too large to sit on. Recently, an archaeologist directly observed the eggs of a human fecal parasite inside of such a "storage jar," evidence in favor of the chamber pot hy…

Yes but the "direct observations only" crowd, which includes various conspiracy theories, would have them only report on evidence without drawing any other statements. Some historians would have archeologists do only dig reports, leaving everything else to historians. Conspiracy nuts would have police only create evidence reports, leaving everything else to lay juries.

Re: Romans may have destroyed Moray metal-working site

#27

Post by ketralnis »

diogenescynic wrote: post #21
ggm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's my belief, iron and ironstone being high value, they'd have taken what they could with them, the inputs. Charcoal aside, the remains otherwise are more marginal value, you can do Iron in a mud brick hearth, there wouldn't have been a lot of immovable fixed infrastructure to take really. The charcoal is a pain to make, time consuming. Maybe they burned that to avoid the romans having access, but I tend to think t…

>Not an archeologist. The best way to get good input is to post bad input and wait to be corrected! This is so true. If you ask for help, people will ignore you. But... if you post the wrong answer--people will fall over themselves to correct you. It's like a hack for human behavior.

And actively harmful in implementation. It spreads bad information, confidently posted for others to trust and duplicate.

Bad information labelled with an appropriate confidence rating can be useful as a starting point to others. ("I'm not sure but this looks sort of like a rail spike nail, maybe start there?") But labelled as good, to others that can't label it themselves, it just degrades the average value of the other information and also the confidence in it too.

HN loves this "hack" and often tells others to use it but then unironically complains about the quality of answers on Stack Overflow and the overconfidence of Dunning Kruger

Re: Romans may have destroyed Moray metal-working site

#28

Post by diogenescynic »

ketralnis wrote: post #27
diogenescynic wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not an archeologist. The best way to get good input is to post bad input and wait to be corrected! This is so true. If you ask for help, people will ignore you. But... if you post the wrong answer--people will fall over themselves to correct you. It's like a hack for human behavior.

And actively harmful in implementation. It spreads bad information, confidently posted for others to trust and duplicate. Bad information labelled with an appropriate confidence rating can be useful as a starting point to others. ("I'm not sure but this looks sort of like a rail spike nail, maybe start there?") But labelled as good, to others that can't label it themselves, it just degrades the average value of the o…

I feel like your comment only further proves the point I was making.

Re: Romans may have destroyed Moray metal-working site

#29

Post by agiacalone »

fooker wrote: post #15
dboreham wrote: post #5

This is a good example of why archeologists shouldn't be believed. They've extrapolated the universe from a piece of fairy cake here. They found : burned buildings and a pot inside another pot. There are an infinite number of explanations for those two findings.

There is a nice book about this concept, called “Motel of the Mysteries”. The idea is that a group of archaeologists find a derelict motel in the future and try to explain what the mundane items were used for. It’s hilarious.

I read this a long time ago, too! It's great.
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