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A 4-Year-Old Boy Breaks a 3,500-Year-Old Jar at an Israeli Museum

mumblethrax said:
We're talking about sites and context. Those are not preserved in museums. They have, by and large, been destroyed by museums. Artifacts get preserved, but there's relatively little scientific value in the preservation of artifacts.


The public does not have access to the vast, vast majority of most museum collections. They don't have the floor space for them. The British Museum exhibits about 1% of its collection.
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The British Museum boss is alleged to have sold a whole load of them on eBay:

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-68665773

The British Museum has launched proceedings against a former staff member who they believe stole and damaged at least 1,800 of its items.

The High Court has ordered the disclosure of eBay and PayPal records from the eBay account of the suspect, former curator Dr Peter Higgs.
The museum says these records contain evidence of its items being sold online.
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Any potters here? Any potters who believe for one second that their work will last forever?

You can learn more (although probably not much that's new) from broken ceramics than from whole.

Still, I hope those curators or their descendents never get their hands on any of my stuff.
 
zooterkin said:
Do try harder. Not the boss, a member of staff.
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Actually he was the curator for the Greek and Roman department.

Missing and stolen gems
Dr Higgs worked within the museum's department of Greece and Rome from 1999 until the summer of 2023 and has denied all the claims. He was promoted to acting keeper of the department in January 2021, a position described by Mr Burgess as a "very senior and prestigious position" 26 Mar 2024
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BBC

Yes, it should have read 'a boss' not 'the boss'.
 
"Now, if a 3,500-year-old boy broke a four-year-old jar, that would be news!"
 
Thermal said:
And the task of much of society is to preserve some of the past for the appreciation of future generations. You think we should fill Pompeii back in too, and put a supermarket over it?
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A lot of Pompeii (and many other sites) was damaged/lost because of being uncovered and left to the elements for decades. A lot of the work there now is about protecting and shoring up exposed structures.

As I understand it, nowadays archaeological sites literally do preserve some areas untouched so that future archaeologists with better techniques will have something left to look at and learn about.

So yes, according to the experts of the field, it is good to leave some history buried in the dirt.

Probably not to build a supermarket on top of it though.
 
Lithrael said:
A lot of Pompeii (and many other sites) was damaged/lost because of being uncovered and left to the elements for decades. A lot of the work there now is about protecting and shoring up exposed structures.
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Right, which is why we learn what we can and preserve as best we can. Like the guys in Cairo who stripped the cool cladding off the pyramids at Giza, ain't nothing gonna last forever.
Lithrael said:
As I understand it, nowadays archaeological sites literally do preserve some areas untouched so that future archaeologists with better techniques will have something left to look at and learn about.

So yes, according to the experts of the field, it is good to leave some history buried in the dirt.
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That...makes no sense. Leave some busy work for future archeologists? How about learn all we can now, and future archeologists can stand on the shoulders of our work while they discover the next new site to learn from? We aint buryimg the Sphinx so later generations can play scavenger hunt while people today just see a pile of sand. Live while you can. Global warming or Russia might take all the fun out of future archeological escapades anyway.
Lithrael said:
Probably not to build a supermarket on top of it though.
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We can always use a good supermarket, though. Mine never has enough parking.
 
Thermal said:
That...makes no sense. Leave some busy work for future archeologists? How about learn all we can now, and future archeologists can stand on the shoulders of our work while they discover the next new site to learn from?
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Well, like here's a Smithsonian mag article talking about why. Not just holding off on more excavation like at Pompeii, but rather actually filling the dirt back in to the site, just to blow your mind.


And don't forget that these sites, especially very good, interesting, well preserved sites, are a finite resource. We are always lucky as hell when we discover one of these. It's reckless to assume that anything a future archaeologist could learn from a site we choose to preserve now, could just as easily be learned from a site they may find in their time.
 
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Relax. Eventually technology will progress to the point where future archaeologists can just use time-manipulation tech to view whatever they want to in the past. They'll see the jar being made, they'll see it being used, they'll see Habunashapul hiding candy wrappers in it when he was supposed to be dieting, they'll see it being broken by that kid.
 
I can't wait for that technology, so I can spend 47 megajoules of energy to see back in time and prove I never took that cookie (but I did break the cookie jar)

...man compared to archaelogical middens the sci-fi future guys are gonna have a complete field day with all the landfills.
 
Thermal said:
That...makes no sense. Leave some busy work for future archeologists?
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I'm not sure where you're getting busywork from. The idea is that future generations of archaeologists will have better techniques, just as the current generation have better techniques than those in the past. That they will be better at gleaning information from sites. And because we don't know what exactly they'll need to do that, it's better to preserve sites as much as possible.

How about learn all we can now, and future archeologists can stand on the shoulders of our work while they discover the next new site to learn from?
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The trouble is that "learning all we can", particularly if that means pulling artifacts to display in museums or leaving a site exposed to the elements, is a destructive process. Context is lost, which means information is lost. Future archaeologists can't stand on shoulders that aren't there.

Most of this work is extremely non-glamorous. Archaeologists spend a lot of time digging through midden heaps. A friend did his fieldwork in Iceland, where he mostly looked at fish bones and the rotten wood of what was once a structure or a longship. None of that stuff is going to end up in a museum, or being a tourist attraction.

Global warming or Russia might take all the fun out of future archeological escapades anyway.
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It seems overly pessimistic to assume that all archaeological sites are going to be destroyed in the near future. To the extent that they are threatened by climate change or war, this can be anticipated and dealt with accordingly.
 
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Lithrael said:
I can't wait for that technology, so I can spend 47 megajoules of energy to see back in time and prove I never took that cookie (but I did break the cookie jar)

...man compared to archaelogical middens the sci-fi future guys are gonna have a complete field day with all the landfills.
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I don't remember where I read it, but someone pointed out that future archaeologists are going to think our civilization ran on infant car seats. We produce bajillions of them and nobody wants a used one because they're less safe (and in some places it's actually illegal to sell used ones), so they get thrown out. And being plastic they will last thousands of years. Future archaeologists will have quite a puzzle. Alien future archaeologists will assume humans were all infant-sized and those were our regular chairs.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I think fault lies with the museum, the parents, and the child. And also whoever made the pottery because they didn't make it sufficiently durable for ordinary usage.
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MUSEUM UNCOVERS DOCUMENT IN URN WHICH SHOWS PRODUCT WARRANTY EXPIRED JUST LAST YEAR
 
grunion said:
MUSEUM UNCOVERS DOCUMENT IN URN WHICH SHOWS PRODUCT WARRANTY EXPIRED JUST LAST YEAR
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With a small-cuneiform clause that all disputes must be arbitrated by the manufacturer's choice of arbiter, costs borne by the buyer regardless of outcome.
 
Thermal said:
I've seen some computer generated renditions of the Colluseum in its besplendored glory, and it would truly be a sight to behold. But the Shpinx at Gaza just looks like a lion/Pharaoh with wearing one of those rubber noses and glasses.
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We will get a new CGI version of the Roman Coleseum in the upcoming movie "Gladator 2" as Ridley Scott returns to Rome...
 
mumblethrax said:
I'm not sure where you're getting busywork from. The idea is that future generations of archaeologists will have better techniques, just as the current generation have better techniques than those in the past. That they will be better at gleaning information from sites. And because we don't know what exactly they'll need to do that, it's better to preserve sites as much as possible.


The trouble is that "learning all we can", particularly if that means pulling artifacts to display in museums or leaving a site exposed to the elements, is a destructive process. Context is lost, which means information is lost. Future archaeologists can't stand on shoulders that aren't there.

Most of this work is extremely non-glamorous. Archaeologists spend a lot of time digging through midden heaps. A friend did his fieldwork in Iceland, where he mostly looked at fish bones and the rotten wood of what was once a structure or a longship. None of that stuff is going to end up in a museum, or being a tourist attraction.


It seems overly pessimistic to assume that all archaeological sites are going to be destroyed in the near future. To the extent that they are threatened by climate change or war, this can be anticipated and dealt with accordingly.
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Hang on. We have better techniques now than they had in the past. Why aren't we the ones doing more archeology?

There's always going to be hypothetically superior future technology. At some point, archeology has to involve doing archeology.
 
Because we can see the damage past people did when they did archaeology without the superior future technology of what we have now, and wish they'd held off.
 
theprestige said:
Hang on. We have better techniques now than they had in the past. Why aren't we the ones doing more archeology?
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No idea where you're getting "more" archaeology from. The idea is to preserve enough of a site that questions we can't answer today (or aren't even asking yet) can be answered in the future.

There's always going to be hypothetically superior future technology. At some point, archeology has to involve doing archeology.
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Do you think anyone is advocating putting the tiny brushes down altogether?

People should probably read the Smithsonian article Lithrael posted. These are best practices developed by professional archaeologists. You should at least try to understand why those practices have been adopted before deciding you know better.
 
mumblethrax said:
No idea where you're getting "more" archaeology from. The idea is to preserve enough of a site that questions we can't answer today (or aren't even asking yet) can be answered in the future.


Do you think anyone is advocating putting the tiny brushes down altogether?

People should probably read the Smithsonian article Lithrael posted. These are best practices developed by professional archaeologists. You should at least try to understand why those practices have been adopted before deciding you know better.
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Every site represents the potential of questions we haven't thought to ask.

Relative to the archeologists of the past, we represent the archeologists of the future. Why would our archeologists of the future not leave their work undone, same as us, and for the same reasons?

Why shouldn't we put down the tiny brushes altogether? Every time we pick them up, we risk ruining things for future archeologists.

And why shouldn't future archeologists put down the brushes, for exactly the same reasons?
 
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