Re: Archaeological dating methods, was: ARCHAEOLOGY VERSUS TACITUS' AGRICOLA was to Paul Burke Re: Grænlendinga þáttur

From: Paul Burke (paul_at_scazon.com)
Date: 03/21/05 

Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2005 11:36:34 +0000

I.E_Johansson wrote:
> "t(nospam)kavanagh"
>>snort, snicker, guffaw

> Bitter or Lager?

Come on Inger, even Swedes don't snort their beer (even though it's
probably more expensive than cocaine).

But seriously. You are making the point, quite correctly, that
documentary evidence runs in tandem with archaeological evidence. And
when documentary evidence from many different sources both agree largely
among themselves, and concord to a reasonable extent with the
archaeology, a much fuller and more reliable picture can be built up
than from either alone. We have no names, for example, from the
mesolithic period in Britain, and very little idea of their beliefs or
social and political organisation. On the other hand, documents and
archaeology agree that there was a substantial presence of Roman culture
in Britain for a few hundred years.

But contrast this with your major concern, Norse settlement in north
America. The documents are sparse, and the archaeology even sparser.
Apart from l'Anse there are no undisputed Norse settlement sites on the
mainland; the saga evidence suggests that this site was NOT Vinland, but
in any case it was occupied only briefly. For Greenland, the documents
and archaeology are pretty well in agreement. There's scattered but
definite evidence of penetration, probably from Greenland, to Baffin
Island and the High Arctic, but apparently practically nothing documentary.

So to reiterate the point: where documents and archaeology agree, it's
reasonable to accept the documents as illuminating aspects which could
not be obtained from the archaeology alone. When a document is not
supported by archaeology, it's reasonable to accept it if it is part of
a consistent corpus that is largely in agreement. When a document, or
even a collection of documents, is contradicted by the archaeology, the
hard facts win and the stories lose. Otherwise, any given document COULD
be accurate, but we have no means of distinguishing it from a novel.

Paul Burke

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