The death of archaeological theory

[aligern]

On anothers facebook page I had a debate with a chap who pointed out that there was no such thing as historical fact ( which we all know) and that kids should be taught that the past was in fact unknowable.  I think he was or had been teacher. This recalled a long ago debate in this Society. Frankly I regard such  theorising as pointless and a sign of the decline of the West. It is no wonder that the UK performs badly in international educational comparisons if the educational establishment thinks that teaching kids to question is more important than giving them the best researched factual framework, which they can later on question if they get that far. IMO its a bit like telling your soldiers when training them to shoot to remember that the guy in the sights may well have a wife and kids of his own.
So, the Britons were conquered by the 'Angles, Saxons etc. because they were moral relativists and were being punished by God (Gildas tells us this) , being left a bit of the country so they were able to ponder upon what they had lost. Archaelogy's job is to come up with the evidence for  this and put the contradictory stuff in the spoil heaps........Well that is just about what Archaelogy was once used for and nit really much different from the recent archaeologists who tell us that actually  everbody in the fifth century got on like  a house on fire ( though no burnt layer has been found) that we were already speaking a Germanic language and the Saxon shore forts were built to keep the troops busy, or  store grain.
The govt. is now desperate to teach British Values, because they are starting to recognise that youngsters need to have a believable framework of fact that tells them that they are the good guys and that the way we do things round here is the best way ( though it can always be improved or updated) . If a Society does not do that then expect trouble from those within and without who do have an utter conviction that there way is best!
Now retire to trench, put on tin hat and await a salvo from across the border to the West😉
Roy

[Andreas Johansson]

Actually, once a Theory is proven it becomes a Law.

Again, not as the words are used in the hard sciences. A law is formulaic statement of a regularity - it may be approximate or even wrong. We do not speak of Newton's laws of motion but Einstein's theory of gravity because the former is somehow more proven.

[RichT]

It goes like this:

As I was sitting under an apple tree one day, an apple fell to the ground = Data.
Apples detached from trees fall to the ground = Law.
The earth (and all large masses) attract objects to themselves by a force called gravity = Theory.

This isn't a hierarchy of provenness - all are equally proven or true (so far as they go). Proven theories go right on being theories, and may be subsequently refined without becoming untrue, or non-theories, as:

All large masses alter the shape of spacetime such that other objects moving through spacetime in their vicinity have their paths deflected = better Theory (as having more explanatory power).

[RichT]

Roy

...
[musings]
...

That depends whether the purpose of education is to produce better informed, more well-rounded indviduals, or to stick it to Johnny Foreigner.

That said I expect everyone can agree that post-modernism can be (and often has been) taken too far, ditto moral relativism. Nothing in excess.

Has anyone proposed the theory that the decline of the Western Roman Empire was due to what they did or didn't teach in schools? Or that it was because they stopped believing/teaching that Rome Is Best? Rather than, more prosaically, movement of nomadic populations on the Steppes, or systems collapse, or what have you.

[Jim Webster]

I would suggest that it's merely a sign of decline. When a subject like Archaeology (which is really just a tool) starts having theories of it's own about itself, we're caught up in a whirlpool of navel gazing which will lead to everything disappearing up a suitably inappropriate orifice.
I note that we have theories of education but not theories of agriculture 

[Imperial Dave]

for me, theory is followed by facts and reasoning/interpretations. Theories are only as good as the last set of data.....but is the best we have where we are looking backwards in time

[Erpingham]

I would refer you back to the original paper.  Archaeology developed theory explicitly to be academically credible alongside other social sciences

The danger with an interpretative discipline without explicit theory is that implicit assumptions fill the gap.  Explicit theories are of course not necessarily good - I don't think many rate the Nazi Archaeology of the Ahnenerbe very highly these days.

[Imperial Dave]

holistic approach all the way 

[Patrick Waterson]

That depends whether the purpose of education is to produce better informed, more well-rounded indviduals, or to stick it to Johnny Foreigner.

Ideally both.

Has anyone proposed the theory that the decline of the Western Roman Empire was due to what they did or didn't teach in schools? Or that it was because they stopped believing/teaching that Rome Is Best? Rather than, more prosaically, movement of nomadic populations on the Steppes, or systems collapse, or what have you.

Funnily enough, yes, if one counts education under the Christian-run Roman Empire as being 'in schools'.  Gibbon (Edward, of the orotund oratorical opus Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) took a lot of stick from contemporaries for observing that Christianity, the mindset it induced and the attitudes it produced went a long way to weakening the Empire.

[nikgaukroger]

Has anyone proposed the theory that the decline of the Western Roman Empire was due to what they did or didn't teach in schools? Or that it was because they stopped believing/teaching that Rome Is Best? Rather than, more prosaically, movement of nomadic populations on the Steppes, or systems collapse, or what have you.

Funnily enough, yes, if one counts education under the Christian-run Roman Empire as being 'in schools'. 

Which you'd be damned hard pushed to actually do with any definition of "schools" as being close to the modern one. Anyway, in the Christian run empire teaching continued pretty much as it had always done just with the addition of teaching Christianity (if your parents were Christians that is). The classics remained within what was taught and the literary output even from Christians carry's on with a strong Rome is best theme.

Gibbon (Edward, of the orotund oratorical opus Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) took a lot of stick from contemporaries for observing that Christianity, the mindset it induced and the attitudes it produced went a long way to weakening the Empire.

And he still gets stick for it now - I think the idea has pretty much been discarded by historians.

[Jim Webster]

Has anyone proposed the theory that the decline of the Western Roman Empire was due to what they did or didn't teach in schools? Or that it was because they stopped believing/teaching that Rome Is Best? Rather than, more prosaically, movement of nomadic populations on the Steppes, or systems collapse, or what have you.

Funnily enough, yes, if one counts education under the Christian-run Roman Empire as being 'in schools'. 

Which you'd be damned hard pushed to actually do with any definition of "schools" as being close to the modern one. Anyway, in the Christian run empire teaching continued pretty much as it had always done just with the addition of teaching Christianity (if your parents were Christians that is). The classics remained within what was taught and the literary output even from Christians carry's on with a strong Rome is best theme.

Not only did a lot of Christians still teach the classics, there were even attempts to produce bible stories in a classical format because that's what so many people (those who had been taught to read) were used to.

[aligern]

There's more interest being taken nowadays in what you might call Toynbee studies, the rise and fall of Empires. It is interesting that there are parallels in the way that states are born, or perhaps activated, grow , mature and then decay and are taken over.mPerhaps that is because , in the Anglophone community the British Empire fell within living memory and US hegemony is now challenged and maybe in its sunset phase.
Looking back to the Roman Empire there are elements in the end of the Roman West where it is really puzzling that such a mighty entity (France, Italy, Spain, North Africa and Britain)  could not get its act together to defeat and cow a few thousand barbarians. No wonder Gibbon looked for causes  of a decline in morale and found them in religion. After all he lived in a society where belief in the superior pragmatism of English Protestantism was a pillar  of national identity.
Roy

[nikgaukroger]

Not only did a lot of Christians still teach the classics, there were even attempts to produce bible stories in a classical format because that's what so many people (those who had been taught to read) were used to.

Also didn't Julian try and ban Christians from teaching the classics as being incompatible with their beliefs? As it was the foundation of learning at the time it was an attempt to stop Christians being teachers effectively.

[Patrick Waterson]

The problem arose not from the form of teaching but from the function.  Christian teachers, however classical in their approach, took 'Thou shalt not kill' seriously, and a soldier who killed an opponent - even on the battlefield - was subject to a three-year eucharist ban.  Hardly the sort of stuff to put backbone into a military unit (and possibly a motivation behind the increasing adoption of missile tactics, which make it harder to see who kills whom on the battlefield).

That said, military service was still an obligation, even under Christian emperors.  Yet we see an increasing number of Roman citizens ducking out of service either by pulling social strings or the more direct method of thumb-removal.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Roman army found itself having to recruit, and even to federate, increasing numbers of barbarians.  These were mostly Arian and thus not subject to education by or the dictates of the Athanasian imperial clergy.  Once the worship of Mithras was suppressed, the barbarians' fighting record soon surpassed that of the Roman citizenry.

Also didn't Julian try and ban Christians from teaching the classics as being incompatible with their beliefs? As it was the foundation of learning at the time it was an attempt to stop Christians being teachers effectively.

.
He did regard it as a bit much that they should use a classical education to undermine the classical world, yes.

I think we are drifting off topic for the thread: is it worth opening a new thread if anyone wishes to discuss the subject of Christianity's real or supposed influence on Roman imperial attitudes and army performance any further?

[Jim Webster]

Not only did a lot of Christians still teach the classics, there were even attempts to produce bible stories in a classical format because that's what so many people (those who had been taught to read) were used to.

Also didn't Julian try and ban Christians from teaching the classics as being incompatible with their beliefs? As it was the foundation of learning at the time it was an attempt to stop Christians being teachers effectively.

Yes that seems to have been his approach