Re: Vineland

From: Philip Deitiker (Nopdeitik_at_att.net.Spam)
Date: 02/18/05 

Date: 18 Feb 2005 23:22:04 GMT

In sci.archaeology, Eric Stevens created a message ID
news:12pc11d8jesjc0nhnle32r97ngjfbuvs2p@4ax.com:

> On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 19:18:16 GMT, Philip Deitiker
> <Donevenask@worlnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>>Eric Stevens <eric.stevens@sum.co.nz> says in
>>news:3rcb11tqhdcrf8fkvqk3pisv1k0uhdk2lh@4ax.com:
>>
>>> On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 23:45:59 -0700, "Tedd Jacobs"
>>> <Jacobs@mail.boisestate.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>"Eric Stevens" wrote...
>>>>> On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 05:23:45 -0500, "Steve Marcus"
>>>>> <smarcus_spamout_@cox.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> --- snip ---
>>>>>>stating that artifact X cannot have been produced later
than
>>>>>>date Y *is* considered to be dating the artifact.
>>>>>
>>>>> Sez who?
>>>>
>>>>it's called a typology eric. or were you baiting?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> All this started from Seppo's statement that " The ink
hasn't been
>>> "dated" at all, ... " which as far as I know is perfectly
correct.
>>> Merely assigning an upper and lower limit to a date range
is not
>>> dating.
>>
>>But creating a confidence range based on probabilities is,
for
>>everything can be defined this way, and in doing so it makes
>>precise dates and date ranges comparable.
>
> I thought you would have understood the difference between
confidence
> limits and dates set by boundary conditions.
>
> Mozart was born on January 27, 1756 and died on December 4,
1792.
> These dates are known and there is no uncertainty about
them. These
> dates set absolute boundary conditions.

Irrelevant.

 
> Clearly these dates can be used to assign a limiting date
range for a
> newly discovered manuscript score in Mozart's own hand. It
has to have
> been written between the range described between those two
dates.

You are comparing apples and oranges.

  Do you know precisely when say the Declaration of
Independence was written. You know when it was signed, but
what about written. Can you tell me exactly when I wrote a
manuscript that was published on a certain date. Can you tell
from the birth record when a child was concieved, the exact
date.
   There are 'dates' for discrete events. There are dates for
events. For example if I was born in the early part of 1951 I
can date my conception to 1950. That is a date. If for
instance I found a corpse under a battlefeild with say civil
war attire on and a bullet hole in the uniform, I could date
that death to 1860s that is also a date, even though that
individual did die on a specific date, I don't know that
specifically.
  The argument is not over whether a date can be represented
by a date range that in many instances is treated as a date,
since in many cases no specific date is expected so that the
question of specific date is moot to begin with. The argument
was over whether that date range is meaningful and how it is
meaningful.

 
> Radiocarbon dating the paper will yield a specific date but
because of
> the confidence limits of the various steps of the process by
which the
> date was arrived at upper and lower dates can be assigned
along with
> their associated confidence limits. Change the confidence
limits and
> the nominally upper and lower radiocarbon dates also change.
In any
> case, one cannot be absolutely confident that the age of the
> manuscript paper lies outside the upper and lower confidence
limits.
>
> The fact that in both cases we use two numbers to describe
the
> possible age of the manuscript does not mean that the
meaning of the
> numbers is the same in both cases. That's why Steve Marcus's
original
> denial of the Seppo's statement was wrong. He was trying to
contradict
> chalk with cheese.

Historical dates only apply to a small subset of historical
timeline, they are convinient, and certainly useful in
autobiographical means. However you are clouding this issue
because a woman takes a few hours to birth a child at most a
few hours, and death occurs in moments. The manufactoring of a
map may take weeks and it may not be revealed in public for
months, if not years later. Therefore your consideration of
exact date is meaningless in this context. But there is no
date for when this map was penned, not even a approximate date
based on any historical document other than its first public
appearance. It would be akin to the date of birth of a stone
age person in which the anthropologist is trying to estimate
based on oral traditions of a group. The only methods you have
are interpretive in nature and are an approximation.
  Chances are however if the child is 1 month old you will
have a better estimate of the age than if the child is 14
years old. This is the relevance of relative dating. Relative
dating can result in a date which is a day, a week, a month, a
year, a decade, a century. Depending on its distance from the
current will reveal meaning of that date. In most cases, and
even some cases of birth, for instance, the birth of a child
may not be recorded until the baptism, or for instance may be
kept secret as a result of marital infidelity, exact dates are
rarities in ancient history.
  Can you tell me the exact date in a roman calender that leif
ericson stepped on continental america for the first time.
When I left Japan it was the 9th, for a 30 minute period I
crossed the international date line and it was the 8th, and
then it was the 9th as I traveled further east. What is a date
that you are so intent on distinquishing from dating?
  And shall we use your same standard of critique for
everything, and if so the VM does not have a precise date of
creation, therefore it is a fraud? Correct? Mercators map does
not have a precise date of creation therefore it is a fraud?
Shall I continue? 

-- 
Philip
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