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May 26, 2007
One Stone in a Row
I just read Aydin's discussion of a paper by Howard Wainer called "The Most Dangerous Equation." I applied my awesome powers of false analogy and free association to Aydin's post. This random process reminded me of Bill Dever's dictum, "One stone in a row does not make a wall." But exactly how many stones in a row do I need before I can call a collection of stones a wall? And do I need any other evidence besides a sufficiently long row of stones?
I remember an occasion at Gezer when a diligent excavation team was digging through an excavation dump in the hope of finding the virgin material below. The year before, this particular dump was relocated from a nearby place on the tell with the help of a bulldozer. After a week or so, the intrepid area supervisor and his disgruntled team came upon the tops of six large fieldstones each touching the other in a straight line and at the same level. Two things were clear to the supervisor. First, his days of fruitless drudgery were over. Second, he had found a wall. But there were concerns. First, as his team continued to dig, it became clear that the matrix surrounding these stones had the same structure as the bulldozer generated material that he knew so well. And as the excavator probed the bottom of one of the stones, he discovered that it was founded on . . . Well, it wasn't founded on anything, and there were no associated surfaces. In short, its wasn't a wall. It was an artifact caused by the bulldozer pushing the previously randomly placed stones from the old dump location.
For the record, the above-mentioned area supervisor was not yours truly. I hesitate to name the excavation director who used a bulldozer to relocate a dump and then directed someone else to excavate it. I will only say that his name has been mentioned in this post and he is not a malacologist nor has he written any papers on sample size.
I am interested in how issues of sample size, the subject of Aydin's post, relate to various problems in archaeology and philology. If my thoughts on these issues clarify a little, I may do a post on the subject. I'm fairly sure my reflections will have little to do with stones in a row and more to do with how archaeologists use material remains as ethnic markers or how philologists identify language family associations. Then again, they may not. In the meantime, go read Aylin's post and see what you think.
Update: May 27, 2007
Alun has a very good discussion on how archaeologists spot design. He uses identifying walls as an example. I wish I'd read his post before I wrote the above ramble.
Posted by Duane Smith at May 26, 2007 4:30 PM | Read more on Archaeology |
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Comments
Oddly enough I was just thinking that I needn't have bothered :)
Posted by: Alun at May 27, 2007 11:09 AM
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