[SunkenCiv]

Lately my list pings have not "finished" and returned to the topic screen. I'm concerned that the list is so large now that the last few names aren't receiving pings. Hate to say it, but we may have to split the list in half. Anyway...

Finding Artifacts is Not Archaeology
interview of George Bass
July/August 2003
Archaeology magazine

Few people may believe this, but my most exciting discoveries have all come in the library, long after the diving was over. It was perhaps half a year after the conclusion of the Cape Gelidonya excavation before I had the first inkling that we had excavated a Near Eastern rather than a Mycenaean ship. The notion first came to me when I was studying the ancient merchant's pan-balance weights, which proved to be based on Near Eastern weight standards. This led to further library research that later rewrote part of Bronze Age history. I could repeat this story many times. Finding artifacts is not archaeology.

[Little Bill]

I agree with Bass. These people excavate and make all kinds of unwarrented assumptions based on no evidence. I bought a book one time on the Old Stone Age. One of the chapters was on stone tools.

In this chapter the author used some really difficult math to describe how the Makers struck and restruck various flint tools at a site that he dug. The whole thing came down to they made tools and they resharpened them and some were left handed.