Post
by E.P. Grondine » Sat Feb 07, 2015 3:47 pm
Up in Chicago, there are two text collections.
One is the Oriental Institute's collection of Ancient Near Eastern texts,
one of the worlds's finest, if not the finest.
The other is Ayre's collection of Native American texts at the Newberry Library.
Just for fun, let us compare Ancient Near Eastern archaeologists, referred to in the following as "ANE", with all too many US North American archaeologists, referred to in the following as "PF".
(NB - Canadian archaeologists as a whole are specifically excluded in the following comparison. So are some folks from New Mexico, Arizona, UT Austin, and many others.)
ANE
Working ability with nuanced English, German, French.
PF
Problems understanding plain English.
ANE
Depending on excavation reports and other factors, some abilities with Italian and Spanish.
PF
Problems understanding plain English.
ANE
Working abilities with several ANE languages in transliteration, but usually have to rely on specialists for original cuneiform.
PF -
No abilities with any Native American languages,
or their cultures.
ANE -
Manage sites with the "visitor experience" always given very high priority.
PF -
Only care about their "rights" to excavate any particular site.
ANE -
Know how to dig, and where.
PF -
May know how to dig, but have no idea where.
All sites equally important.
ANE -
Excavation priorities and strategies well thought out.
PF -
Wherever the highway or shopping center is going to go in. Maybe.
ANE -
Familiar with all cultural phases of sites.
Likely familiar with classical Greek, Latin, some arabic, farsi, modern egyptian
and all texts relevant to the area they are working.
PF -
No ability to work with colonial French, Spanish, or Old Dutch documents.
Difficulties working with colonial English documents.
ANE -
Ability to work with local informants, in their native language.
PF -
No ability to work with local informants, even in plain English.
ANE -
Familiar with geology and ancient landscape.
PF -
Oblivious of both.
ANE
Toponym and topographic abilities -
Highly skilled, very well developed
PF -
Can't find their butts using both hands.
ANE -
Familiar with destroyed sites.
PF -
Pretend destroyed sites did not exist,
make no effort to recover any descriptions of them.
ANE -
Share their knowledge, freely admit what they don't know.
PF -
Share their confusion freely, pretend to knowledge they do not have.
Right now, I can't get to either text collection - since my stroke my abilities are very limited.
For that matter, I can't get out my front door in this f*****g snow and ice. My knees are sore from crawling on it.
I was a space reporter, and this is about as unbiased a comparison as I can make, based on my personal experience of all too many PF's.
All in all, I'd rather be troweling through non stratified tsunami deposits on Crete than dealing with PFs.
My apologies to all of the good US archaeologists I have met over the years, but then I also know they are as fed up with these PFs as I am.
I don't tolerate fools to well or gladly, and since my stroke I often make far too many embarrassing mistakes.
I am available for hire for masters or doctoral orals - I bet I could reduce many candidates to tears.