01-06-2020, 12:35 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-20-2020, 11:38 AM by Nathan Ross.)
(01-06-2020, 10:25 AM)John1 Wrote: academia is developing this research industry but can't get around to finding the battlefield.
Good thing too - if they found it we'd have nothing left to argue about!
But yes, academic types clearly prefer writing about 'historical discourse' and the 'examination of the nature of history as a cultural phenomenon' to grubbing about in muddy holes looking for stray hobnails. I don't think we can blame them - two thousand years of 'durable cultural phenomena' presents a far meatier subject for historiography than the few scraps of Tacitus that we've been working on all this time.
And 'challenging the axioms of cultural history' is probably a better way of impressing one's academic peers than trying to present the case for a lost battlefield...
As I said before, unless the site turns up in some unexpected place (Wales? The Isle of Skye?) it would not alter the historical narrative in any way whatsoever, and so the actual location has only limited historical interest.
Nathan Ross