Greek helmets galore

[MeinPanzer]

Ruben wrote:

This is hardly "officious humbug attitude," I have to say. I would like to see Jorg's publication as much as the rest, but (if I understand it correctly) his proposal is for a study based primarily on unprovenanced art market helmets. That is the territory of an auction catalogue, but not of an official archaeological publication, because unprovenanced items can't be fit into the big picture of archaeology, and as I stated before, they are all but worthless unless studied unto themselves. The attitude here, that academia wrongly shuns everything the art market produces, is off base, since, as I posted before, there are examples where such items are published and considered in official archaeological publications. The problem is in basing an entire study on them - that is not the basis for a thesis.

Well, perhaps 'officious humbug atitude' is emotive, but it is censorship of a sort, and that is a subject I feel strongly about.

That's fine, but that's not an archaeological thesis, that's an art historical or some other thesis. It's hardly censorship that an entire work on unprovenanced items is rejected for archaeological study because by their very nature unprovenanced items cannot contribute in any significant way to the furthering of our knowledge of archaeology, because in archaeology context is everything. It's an inappropriate subject for archaeology - so it can be published somewhere else.

As you point out, even without provenance, they can be "studied unto themselves"....and our knowledge of the subject thereby increased. There is no reason that within the limitation of lack of provenance, a thesis should not produced on such a subject. As has been pointed out, where a helmet is found and the context might be valuable, but lack of it does not affect the study of other valid subjects, such as metallurgy, construction methods, art and many other things which can be learned purely from the artifact itself, regardless of origin.

But then we have this information, and no way to compare or contrast it to the extant archaeological information. We have this helmet, which our comparisons tell us should be 4th c. south Italian. We examine its construction, and then compare it to other south Italian helmets. In the end, we find that it is very similar to other south Italian helmets, and then we know that it's likely south Italian - but then again, it might not be, so we must be content with knowing that all we really know about it is based on comparison, which means that it can be of little value in furthering our knowledge of south Italian helmets. And when it concerns something like helmets, in which we have a fairly small field of actual provenanced examples to work with, an unprovenanced artefact can often hinder more than it can help, since so many helmets are unusual or have unique touches.

Assuming Jorg's study is a 'serious' one, to dismiss it, sight unseen, as "the territory of an auction catalogue" is indicative of the very atitude being complained of here as "officious humbug". Why shouldn't a study of Greek helmets as artifacts per se, or the construction methods of them for example ( regardless of lack of provenance) be published in an "official" archaeological publication ? One can see the obvious advantage to archaeologists in the field of knowing construction methods of helmets and thereby being able to correctly identify fragments found, or the value of recognising types ( and I have seen myself field archaeologists and academics 'misidentify' fragments of armour and weapons as something else). This in turn assists with dating etc. Publication of a study such as Jorg's in an "official archaeological publication" where it will come to the attention of "official archaeologists" is arguably invaluable.

Well, why does it have to be officially published by archaeologists? If it can be published elsewhere, it will be just as freely available as if it were published in an official journal or by an archaeological press. The reason why it shouldn't be published is because of what I said above - such artefacts are "parasitic," and do not contribute to furthering our knowledge. Don't get me wrong - I think that Jorg's study would be invaluable. But it wouldn't be archaeology, because archaeology involves working with a basis of material which can be reasonably assumed to possess a solid provenance.

I see this subject the same way that I see, for instance, the study of ancient painting. Archaeologists publish on ancient painting, providing new examples for scholars to discuss and providing them with a solid basis of context to work with which allows chronological, geographical, cultural, etc. bounds to be placed on any study. Art historians also publish on ancient painting, and they may freely discuss painting as a subject unto itself, with all their own methods, but they are focused on the material itself, and not necessarily its context. While the domains of the two disciplines overlap, they are two separate groups.

I wrote a much longer post, and I have deleted it, as I would only offend without educating. Suffice it to say--Ruben, the line you defend does not--to me--exist. Archaeology has dirty hands. As a discipline, it has always been ready to serve the needs of political masters and cultural bias. From the standpoint of historiography, archaeology has a poor record--very poor. As the technology to "see" into the ground improves, I'm one of those people who hopes that all digging is stopped and forbidden--and all the artifacts studies where they ought to have been left--in situ, and in the ground--except in rare cases and rescue. Soon enough, 3D imaging will allow us to "see" the helmet inside the tomb. Perhaps we won't see the painting on the wall. So be it--we'd probably only ruin it, anyway. Let's leave it there until we have the technology to map sites and digitize them--so nothing more is lost by the amateurish efforts of grave-looters--whether paid by a university or a collector.

Well, I don't think we can come to terms on this, since we seem to have radically different views of archaeology. All that I would say is that perhaps your view of archaeology has made you overly cynical of the whole discipline. And concerning the "ruining" of sites and artefacts, the past is the past, and all that can be done is to look to the future. While archaeologists constantly strive to improve their means and methods, no such improvement is visible in the art market. That's why these days only trial trenches are often dug, and portions of cities or cemeteries excavated - so that in the future, teams with more advanced technology can excavate and perhaps pick up on details missed by previous excavations. I would just reiterate what I stated before, which is that seeing archaeology as having "dirty hands" makes it very easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater.