
Perfectly preserved bronze age wheel unearthed in Cambridgeshire - diodorus
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/feb/19/archaeologists-excavate-bronze-age-wheel-cambridgeshire
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developer2
>> In the fire, possibly started by a cooking blaze that got disastrously out
of control

>> A skull... possibly originally casually buried in the river bank just
outside the door of the larger house

>> The wheel... may originally have been hanging on a wall.

>> the people of this settlement lived on and in the water and were rich
enough to all but ignore the abundant food a few feet away... Instead the
bones and food traces reveal that they were eating quantities of lamb, along
with pork, beef and venison, and various grains.

What is with the overabundance of conjecture with no evidence to back up such
claims? Whose first impression of a settlement burned to the ground is that it
was likely caused by an out of control cooking fire? Why speculate about a
wheel hanging from a wall? A skull is assumed to have come from a burial? The
lack of fish bones implies they ate no fish?

I'm curious how much of this comes from the archeologists versus the writers
of the article. When I hear "settlement fire" and "skull", I imagine an
assault on the settlement involving an intentionally set fire. But I wouldn't
publish my baseless speculations in an attempt to fluff the number of words in
an article.

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maaku
> What is with the overabundance of conjecture with no evidence to back up
> such claims?

Welcome to archeology.

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developer2
Haha, I suppose that's true. There will always be the few tidbits where there
is enough evidence to make factual statements about what is found at a site.
The rest is going to be speculation; some of it based on educated guesses, and
some of it pure imagination.

I can understand the wonder and excitement that comes with imagining how the
pieces fit together. Everyone likes to dig (pun!) their teeth into a mystery.
If an article is going to contain more than the proven facts, I just wish
they'd lay out multiple possible scenarios rather than a single "it was
probably _this one convoluted option_ ".

Then again... as long as they explicitly label all the conjecture with
"maybe/possibly/probably", they're at least not being outright misleading -
which leaves room for each person to wring their own brain for other options.
I guess I want the people who know the most about these things to lay out more
reasonable possibilities for me, instead of making me put in the effort to
imagine it all for myself. :D

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deelowe
Interesting definition of perfect preservation. Also, I have a nit here. Why
do these types of articles show like 1 shot with the actual object (typically
out of focus and in the background)?

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unavoidable
I agree that articles like this usually suck for pictures. But in this case
the video attached actually provides a great summary and a good deal of close
ups.

~~~
deelowe
Ahh. I avoided the video due to the custom player. Typically, those are more
trouble than they are worth.

