Posts tagged Ethics
Bookmarks for 16th of November through to 18th of November
Nov 18th
These are my links for 16th of November through 18th of November:
- The Academic Journal Racket « In the DarkTelescoper explains how academic publishing works. The only thing that would improbe the post would be the theme from 'The Naked Gun' in the background.
- A Case in Antiquities for ‘Finders Keepers’ – NYTimes.comYou can make arguments in favour of repatriation of antiquities. You can make arguements against. Being on either side doesn't make you inherently foolish. But when you write that the British Army took the Rosetta Stone from the French and "returned it to the British Museum" then something has gone wrong. It's probably a case of momentary brainfade rather than idiocy, but it matters because the whole question of ownership of the Rosetta Stone is about where it rightfully belongs. Using the word 'returned' builds in the assumption that all antiquities are inherently British.
- Notes & Queries; Sledges – Theoretical Structural ArchaeologyGeoff Carter concluded he didn't have evidence for a staggeringly early cart shed in Poland. Could it have been a used to house a sledge? I've just realised I know absolutely nothing at all about the history of sleds and sledges. Not only that, but I can't recall much attention More >
Bookmarks for 12th of November through to 14th of November
Nov 16th
These are my links for 12th of November through 14th of November:
- Is the new policy statement PPS 15 a threat to heritage? – Building DesignI'd love to have a pithy and insightful opinion on this, but first I'll have to look up what PPS 15 says. it's important as PPG 15 and 16 have been the basis of protection of heritage in the UK for many years.
- Pagans for Archaeology: Why reburial won’t workIt's all very well me saying there are ethical reasons to be against reburial, but I still haven't found the time to write them down yet. Now this post hits almost every point I was going to make, especially the point about memory. This won't stop me from writing up my thoughts when I can find the time though.
- Identity : Gambler’s HouseTeofilo talks about Chaco and Navajo identity and discovers neither is as simple as you might think.
- 3rd-century building fuels debate over lost country … asahi.com(朝日新聞社)"The central axis of each building forms a straight line. Each building is believed to have faced the same direction. Such careful planning for buildings was common for palaces and temples during the Asuka Period from the late sixth century to the early More >
Blogging and Honesty
May 30th
A ramble rather than a rant.
How do you put your blog posts together? Photo after erix!There’s been a spate of ‘Why Blog?’ posts in the Biblioblogosphere. They happen every so often amongst bloggers. Sometimes they’re insightful and sometimes they’re navel gazing. Thankfully the discussion leans towards the former here. Charles Ellwood Jones has put up a round up of posts at the Ancient World Bloggers Group.
The entries that particularly caught my eye were on honesty in blogging. Jim West kicked that strand off, you should read the whole thing, but key pararaphs are:
In sum, do we refrain from blogging what we really think about this or that or the other because we are unsure of ourselves, or because we are fearful of the reaction or- and worst of all- because we are afraid we might not be called to serve at Harvard or Yale if someone there reads what we cheekily say? . . . I find myself, at the end of the day, constantly amazed at the unwillingness of some to be themselves. I take this as nothing but hypocrisy. Hide yourself, don’t say what you think, play the hypocrite, and someone may hire you or publish you. More >
Neanderthal Ethics
Feb 18th
Here’s an oddity I started thinking about following a tweet by Dr Kiki who pointed to this article Return of the Neanderthals: If we can resurrect them through fossil DNA, should we?. The strange thing was my reaction to this. The answer seems obvious. I thought I’d missed the boat on this when The Philosophers’ Magazine blog covered it. Again the author, Jean Kazez, missed the obvious objection, so I left it in a comment, and it was easily dismissed – or rather ignored. Seeing as two people see no problem with what I see as an insurmountable problem I have to be open to the idea I’m being dogmatic. (more…)
Why other histories matter
Aug 24th
Photo Lupinare III (cc) Nick in exsilio.
I have an interest in ancient prostitution. It’s not what I’d call a guilty pleasure, because when you read about the miserable lives the women had it’s hardly pleasure, but there is plenty of guilt. I don’t find ancient prostitution salacious but given the explicit art, I can see how people would think it is and this triggers the feeling of being a dirty old man. Yet more and more I think to understand how ancient cities worked you need to know about the seedy underbelly of the city. For every poet whose fragments survive and whose words are pored over by philologists, thousands of prostitutes died after miserable lives missed only by their friends. I wouldn’t say that the study of poetic fragments is wrong or inherently inferior to the study of the ancient underclasses, but I think for the sake of honesty about the classical world someone needs to tell these stories.
Someone who’s just done this recently is N.S. Gill. She’s posted Firebaugh’s notes on Roman prostitution. In some ways it’s depressing the notes are still relevant enough to be worth posting. The language is dated. Well, no even that might not More >
Bad news for the Christians
Jul 8th
There’s a 1st century BC tablet which has been found predicting a Messiah that will rise after three days. I can’t really see this shaking Christianity by connecting it to Judaism. The whole concept of a Messiah is Jewish. It’s not like Judea was short of Messiahs in this period. As for prophecies Matthew is known to have drawn on Jewish prophecies for his gospel, hence the whole being born in Bethlehem thing. It is of historical interest though. It seems like a messiah prophecy we didn’t know about before. That could have told us more about the development of Christianity.
Sadly it can’t tell us a lot, because the material is unprovenanced. Anyone who’s Christian has had information about tablet of importance to their faith trashed and it’s information which cannot be replaced. It’s been compared to finding the Dead Sea Scrolls.* It’s not like finding the Dead Sea Scrolls. It’s like burning them unread and sifting through the ashes to see what you can make out.
However as long as there’s a market for unprovenanced and illicit antiquities there’ll be a profit to be made from other people’s beliefs.
See also: The Boston Globe and Jim West’s weblog.
*Actually in some ways it is. More >
Why context matters
Jun 11th
Finding burials is not always easy. Bodies decay over time, and their visibility can vary for a number of reasons. One reason in particular is the wealth of the deceased. If you’re rich you can afford a very lavish and very visible burial. As a result our understanding of the past can be skewed in favour of the social élites. That’s one reason why archaeologists get so excited about large cemeteries. News is coming out of Italy of one such cemetery near Fiumicino airport. What has been found is a necropolis with around three hundred skeletons. What makes these special is that they’re the skeletons of the poor.
There’s various reasons why the Italian archaeologists think they were poor. The grave goods aren’t as plentiful as you get from the richer sites. In the tombs there are ceramic tankards, oil lamps and what remains of ancient shoes. There’s also around seventy coins, mainly of Trajan and Faustina, used to pay the ferryman Charon. The coins date the tombs to the early second century BC. The location may not have been as prestigious, this was down towards the ports of Rome, which played a vital role in connecting Rome with its empire. More >
Are Sainsbury’s mis-selling energy?
Jan 10th
I was stopped in the bread aisle today by a nice lady who wanted me to switch my energy supply to Sainsbury’s. It’s a common thing in the UK and the energy companies are collectively known for the ethical standards they employ when selling their energy plans. It’s not a surprise so many of them sponsor weather bulletins – “Today’s weather is brought to you in association with Happy Energy, because we’re a shower of bastards.”
What’s interesting is the sales pitch that you get as you try and find a loaf. My energy supplier was recommended by Greenpeace. Generally that’s enough to persuade sales people from wasting my time. It’s growing less effective. I demurred saying that I didn’t want to sign anything because I was concerned that there was going to be a push for nuclear power and I’m not convinced it’s a good thing. Sainsbury’s, she assured me, had nothing to do with nuclear power. Sainsbury’s even sold a Green Energy plan.
Sainsbury’s don’t actually have their own power stations, they re-sell and right now they’re reselling for EDF. What was the news when I got home? French energy giant EDF has already said it plans to build four nuclear plants in the UK by 2017, More >
Archaeology, Photography and HDR
Jan 6th
Minard Castle. Photo (cc) Mike 138.
If it were true that the camera never lies, then photography wouldn’t be a problem. It does though. Or at least a photograph isn’t a wholly objective record of reality. A couple of years back I was happy with this and was discussing illustrating an event using a photo mosaic. The universal reaction to this idea was horror, which surprised me. What I was planning to do was take a photograph of a site and manipulate the sky behind it – and make clear that this was a reconstruction not an original image. The overwhelming negative reaction meant that I’ve never done this. The alternative, that I draw a reconstruction of the event, and throw in a few imaginary people, with speculative hairstyles and clothes, standing around in small groups – without any evidence for this – was considered fine. I assume that people are ok with drawings being highly speculative, but still expect photo-quality images to be ‘real’, whatever that might be.
Photo editing is a serious problem as programs like Photoshop make it easier than ever to mess around with the exposure or the colours of a photo. If you’re photographing the result More >
Egypt, Antiquities and Copyright
Dec 30th
Mickey Mouse Copyright Laws. Based on a photo (cc) Liber.
One of the advantages of being slow in writing is that you can look at what everyone else is saying about something. Often people will have thought about the same problem and already anticipated problems in your own line of thought, so you can avoid making a fool of yourself. Other times it’s a surprise, and this is one of those times. News from the BBC is that Egypt is ‘to copyright antiquities‘.
Egypt’s MPs are expected to pass a law requiring royalties be paid whenever copies are made of museum pieces or ancient monuments such as the pyramids and this law will apply around the world.
To a greater or lesser extent other bloggers think they can’t do this and they can’t enforce it. In contrast I think they can and they can. This isn’t just my very basic understanding of law. It’s also the fact that museums in the West have been doing this, more or less, for years. Below is where I make a fool of myself. (more…)
