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Time Team Topper...an explanation and rant
16 years ago
So I finally watched the Time Team episode on Topper today (if you want to see it, check out the PBS website, search Time Team or Topper and you should be able to watch it online). Having been there for the shooting, I wasn't surprised how it turned out. I mentioned in my last journal there was a little debate surrounding the episode, and I'll try to explain that here.
First of all, as a general archaeology show, I was relatively pleased. They didn't show flashy objects and wonderful treasure...they did a fairly good job at representing archaeology as it really is...slow, hot, dirty, and very buggy (Newsflash: SC is hot, humid, and has bugs....DUHHHHH!). Yes we do dig down 5cm at a time in order to preserve the exact depth at which we find the artifacts, which helps give us an idea of how old they are or what may have happened to the site.
The Ground Penetrating Radar they did was a little absurd in my mind...no kidding your not going to be able to see much due to roots, you're in the freaking WOODS!
Scott Jones and his primitive technology demonstrations were by far my favorite thing. First of all, Scott is an awesome guy. I've met him a few times now and he's an amazing primitive technologist. I learn a ton every time I sit down to watch him flintknapp (and yes, he does break rock barefoot...man is tough as nails). Also, I'm a HUGE proponent of primitive technology and making sure all archaeologists try their hand at it at least once in their carriers. What good is trying to reproduce stone tools you may ask? Well, like Al mentioned archaeology is like a giant jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces missing. We do what we can with the material we have, but we still can't get the full picture. By taking the raw materials these people had to work with and trying to make these tools ourselves, we can fill in a few of the gaps. Even if we found an entire point, that still won't tell us what size rock he started with, how he hit the stone to take off certain flakes, and what tools were used to remove those flakes. Only by experimenting ourselves can we even begin to guess how primitive tools were made. You can postulate all day long based on theories and guesswork, but if you sit down to try something and find it physically impossible...well then they probably didn't do it either. Plus its a helluva lot of fun
Now, my (and a few other people's) beef with the show. No matter what archaeological site you go to, you will NOT be able to answer any huge burning questions (like whether preclovis existed or not) in 3 days...and they actually seemed to think they could come up with some hypothesis after three days of barely any work in the preclovis pit and NO lab work (which I'm a bit miffed at, not only 'cuz it meant I wasn't in the show at all [vanity, they name is Rew], but also lab work is one of the most important parts of archaeology...for every hour in the field its about 3 hours in the lab figuring out what the heck it was you dug up!)
Also, the way they represented the site really ticked me off. It was like Time Team were these wonderful saviors that were nice enough to come and lend their expertise to us. No. I'm sorry. None of those people knew ANYTHING about Clovis/Preclovis. The one person who did, our site director, wasn't introduced until about 10 min into the show. Some of those "archaeologists" I don't think knew what they were doing either. The one girl Chelsea, had no idea how to hold a stadium rod (used in surveying) which is very much archaeology field school 101. A lot of the questions they were asking (which don't get me wrong, questions are good!) made me wonder if they'd ever been in the field before...and they were represented as the people doing the excavation/interpretation of the site! They didn't even acknowledge our staff...our head archaeologist, field crew, and volunteers in their show at all. That's what Topper is all about - the dedicated people - students, professors, and regular volunteers - are the only reason Al is able to excavate this site at all. This may come off as me just wanting to be on TV or in the spotlight, which I honestly don't care about, but I felt they needed to show that this site was being dug by a group of people who come back year after year...not this Team that shows up for 3 days and then leaves.
Okay, sorry about that...ends my rant. It was a stressful week while they were filming and I think a lot of us were quite disillusioned with the show by the end. They pretty much ignored us while they were there filming, which I thought was rather rude. Heaven forbid I try to do some of my lab work, which may involve turning on water while they were filming!
...and I don't mean to offend any artists out there, but why the hell was the artist the host of an ARCHAEOLOGY show? Anyone else find that a bit strange?
First of all, as a general archaeology show, I was relatively pleased. They didn't show flashy objects and wonderful treasure...they did a fairly good job at representing archaeology as it really is...slow, hot, dirty, and very buggy (Newsflash: SC is hot, humid, and has bugs....DUHHHHH!). Yes we do dig down 5cm at a time in order to preserve the exact depth at which we find the artifacts, which helps give us an idea of how old they are or what may have happened to the site.
The Ground Penetrating Radar they did was a little absurd in my mind...no kidding your not going to be able to see much due to roots, you're in the freaking WOODS!
Scott Jones and his primitive technology demonstrations were by far my favorite thing. First of all, Scott is an awesome guy. I've met him a few times now and he's an amazing primitive technologist. I learn a ton every time I sit down to watch him flintknapp (and yes, he does break rock barefoot...man is tough as nails). Also, I'm a HUGE proponent of primitive technology and making sure all archaeologists try their hand at it at least once in their carriers. What good is trying to reproduce stone tools you may ask? Well, like Al mentioned archaeology is like a giant jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces missing. We do what we can with the material we have, but we still can't get the full picture. By taking the raw materials these people had to work with and trying to make these tools ourselves, we can fill in a few of the gaps. Even if we found an entire point, that still won't tell us what size rock he started with, how he hit the stone to take off certain flakes, and what tools were used to remove those flakes. Only by experimenting ourselves can we even begin to guess how primitive tools were made. You can postulate all day long based on theories and guesswork, but if you sit down to try something and find it physically impossible...well then they probably didn't do it either. Plus its a helluva lot of fun
Now, my (and a few other people's) beef with the show. No matter what archaeological site you go to, you will NOT be able to answer any huge burning questions (like whether preclovis existed or not) in 3 days...and they actually seemed to think they could come up with some hypothesis after three days of barely any work in the preclovis pit and NO lab work (which I'm a bit miffed at, not only 'cuz it meant I wasn't in the show at all [vanity, they name is Rew], but also lab work is one of the most important parts of archaeology...for every hour in the field its about 3 hours in the lab figuring out what the heck it was you dug up!)
Also, the way they represented the site really ticked me off. It was like Time Team were these wonderful saviors that were nice enough to come and lend their expertise to us. No. I'm sorry. None of those people knew ANYTHING about Clovis/Preclovis. The one person who did, our site director, wasn't introduced until about 10 min into the show. Some of those "archaeologists" I don't think knew what they were doing either. The one girl Chelsea, had no idea how to hold a stadium rod (used in surveying) which is very much archaeology field school 101. A lot of the questions they were asking (which don't get me wrong, questions are good!) made me wonder if they'd ever been in the field before...and they were represented as the people doing the excavation/interpretation of the site! They didn't even acknowledge our staff...our head archaeologist, field crew, and volunteers in their show at all. That's what Topper is all about - the dedicated people - students, professors, and regular volunteers - are the only reason Al is able to excavate this site at all. This may come off as me just wanting to be on TV or in the spotlight, which I honestly don't care about, but I felt they needed to show that this site was being dug by a group of people who come back year after year...not this Team that shows up for 3 days and then leaves.
Okay, sorry about that...ends my rant. It was a stressful week while they were filming and I think a lot of us were quite disillusioned with the show by the end. They pretty much ignored us while they were there filming, which I thought was rather rude. Heaven forbid I try to do some of my lab work, which may involve turning on water while they were filming!
...and I don't mean to offend any artists out there, but why the hell was the artist the host of an ARCHAEOLOGY show? Anyone else find that a bit strange?
I was sad, too. :( My family and I sat down to watch the show. I even called DirecTV to find out what channel PBS was on. XD It's IN20 here, which is why I couldn't find it. We didn't see you at all! :( So, I got out my laptop and went to the website and showed my family the clips that you were in! At least they got to see you!
It would have been so cool to see you in the lab doing your thing. :) Either way, I'm still REALLY proud of you and all your accomplishments! You are absolutely one of the coolest people I have ever met and I'm lucky to know you! *hugs*
Like I said, it was a relatively well done archaeology show...they didn't just show 'TREASURE!' which is what a lot of other shows have done just to get ratings. Their representation of what archaeology is like was true...just not what THAT site was like. 'Course I guess its not easy to find perfection in the TV business
"I really don't blame the show for taking the weirdest possible angle...is waaaaay better for the ratings..."
Welcome the world of mass media kiddo.
On a somewhat related note to my last sentance, I'm terribly upset at that new CG movie, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. They're making it sound like dinosaurs came after the Ice Age! I mean, it's taken years and years to even START getting people to realize that dinosaurs were not around during the Ice Age, and now this is going to go screw it up again, all because of a kids movie. I didn't even like first one. :/
That seemed pretty superfluous to me as well. I kept wondering why they felt they needed to pursue it, when the first run just showed the expected lots of roots and nothing else. Or why they thought GPR was necessary in the first place. So you'd find that something hard reflected your radar; big fekking deal. You still have to dig to find out what it is.
I guess the only reason I wasn't too impressed by the primitive technology demonstrations was because it struck me as one of those things that are neat and fun, but not too useful scientifically. I mean, honestly, there's no way to prove that what he was doing was the same thing as what these people 13,000 years ago were doing. It gives you an idea, sure, but you'll never know whether or not it's totally accurate. And of course you also run the risk of finding new and intriguing ways to use rocks that maybe these Clovis people never even thought of themselves, which would lead a team astray when considering what is actually an artifact and what isn't. We live in a very different world now, so we think differently as well.
That said, I guess I don't know what else you would do to try to get that kind of specific information besides trying it yourself. You're right about that. It just doesn't seem like the type of thing you'd want to put in an academic paper, except maybe as an interesting side-note.
Okay, now the big thing.... I actually didn't realize that they brought in their own team to pretend to dig at that site. I thought it was a couple of folks just filming the real team at their work, and then that artist guy to narrate while he drew his slack-jawed archetypal cave-men running around in skins attacking mastodons. That's why I was so confused when they said they had a 3 day time-limit. I couldn't imagine that a)a dig would be given only three days' funding, or that b)they actually thought they could accomplish something monumental in three days. So that was really mostly just a TV crew trying to act like professional archaeologists, or what?
Back to primitive technology...you made some good points that actually more archaeologists need to keep in mind. Academics tend to develop these pet theories and ideas that are good...but we're never sure if its exactly true. However, when writing up an academic paper, people tend to represent these ideas as the "answer" and sometimes the only one out there. I think all academic work needs to come with the caveat "here are some good ideas that seem to work, but we can never be sure this is what really happened" - I think part of the reluctance to do this comes from not wanting outsiders going "well if you're never going to KNOW why are you even trying?" which is a whole nother argument. Primitive technology is actually a highly respected field in professional archaeology and most archaeologists insist that there needs to be some sort of experimentation done or reference to an experiment done in the past to lend credence to an argument. Primitive technology has kind of become another way to help back up theories, much like anthropology is used; you find a group of people that live today in similar conditions to what the ancient people we're studying or make certain things in similar ways and present them as a modern analogy (though of course not a perfect one) to how things were done in the past. Here's an example: one debate about clovis points is whether they were used only as projectile points, or if they were knives as well (or maybe even only used as knives). One of the ways to examine this is through usewear patterns on the stone - these can sometimes be seen under a microscope as certain polishes or striation patterns on the stone. Now, we could postulate just by looking at the artifact under a microscope what type of use made those particular patterns, or we could experiment. I had a friend who made some clovis points from the same type of chert as the ones she found as artifacts, haft them, and did experiments of throwing them at dead horses as projectiles, as well as using them to butcher the horse meat, and even process plant fibers. Each type of use left a different pattern on the stone, which she then compared to the actual artifacts to see what those ancient tools were used for. She had unquestionable matching in the projectile point and butchering evidence.
As for the TV crew...well they did have archaeologists on their crew, but the problem usually comes with expertise in a certain field...if your a Southwestern archaeologist you're not going to be familiar with Northeastern archaeology, so in going to a site in the Northeast, you may be able to do archaeology just fine (field methods are pretty much uniform in most archaeology), but you won't be able to say too much about what you dug up because you don't have training in that field. It wasn't just a bunch of non-archaeologists coming in and trying to do archaeology, but nor were these people knowledgeable enough, nor did they spend enough time at the site or analyzing the data to be able to make any hard conclusions
See...you made the mistake of getting me to talk about archaeology...LOOOOONG posts in which I will not shut up
I think I was just wary of it because it sort of reminded me of some of the bullcrap techniques UFO hunters use to 'prove' their points, involving recreations of the described scenes using computer graphics.
So the crew was just a bunch of 'foreign' archaeologists trying to figure things out about a culture about which they knew very little? Still seems funny to me that they would put on this air of wanting to solve this riddle of the preclovis people in 3 days' time. I suppose they just did that to make the program more suspenseful, or something. 'Cause no one just wants to watch an archaeological dig.
See...you made the mistake of getting me to talk about archaeology...LOOOOONG posts in which I will not shut up
Hey now... it means you're really into your subject, which is great. Plus, I like hearing about it, for some reason. It's a different kind of science than what I'm used to, so it's nice to see the logic you folks use about things. If I ask you questions, by all means, ramble as much as you want. I'm guilty of it myself when it comes to astronomy and physics.
I'd like to do more solar system mechanics and planetary studies, though. Not so grand scale, but the variety is just awesome.