From Ms Carolyne Kershaw
Sir: I write in reference to Charles Thomas's article, `Diggers at the
final frontier' (February). A present-day icon of science fiction, namely Captain Jean-Luc Picard
of Star Trek, The Next Generation holds a degree in archaeology. I mention this because
Star Trek does have cultural influence, both on scientists involved in the space programme
(NASA named the first space shuttle `Enterprise' in tribute to Star Trek) and on the general
population. There are `Trekkers' everywhere.
Several episodes of Star Trek, The Next Generation have involved archaeology. For example,
one concerned a project in which a team of archaeologists were studying a humanoid species at a
`Bronze Age' technology level from a high technology hide (to avoid contamination of the developing
culture), much as naturalists today study animal species. Imagine the insights we might gain into our
own human development from such studies.
I feel sure that `xenoarchaeology' is on the agenda of NASA and the European Space Agency, but way
down the list. We won't find anything for xenoarchaeologists to study until we develop the technology
to `boldly go' to other planetary systems.
From Mr Norman Nail
Sir: The book Centuries of Darkness, by Peter James and several others, put forward
controversial views on the chronological sequences in Egypt, the Near East and the Mediterranean
world in the period 1200- 700BC, and it was roundly criticised by experts in the history and
archaeology of those areas. Peter James now argues in his article,
`Updating the centuries of darkness' (April), that the
experts were wrong and five years' accumulation of new knowledge is proving him and his co-authors
right.
Without considerable working-over of knowledge in the fields of Egyptology, Assyriology, Anatolian
Studies, Hellenic Studies, and so on, for which your magazine obviously has not got the space, it is
impossible to deal with the facts; but there are questions of the philosophy of history which arise out
of the Centuries of Darkness approach to historic data which are worth looking at.
At the base of the Centuries of Darkness theories is the assumption that `dark ages'do not
occur, there is a steady cultural progress in history, and there is no such thing as periods of regression
and stagnation. So, if these appear to occur, it is because historians and archaeologists are using an
inflated chronological framework which puts in sequence events which really occurred side by side in
different locations in the same broad area.
Most historians and archaeologists, however, believe that dark ages do really occur and are usually
related to the collapse of centralised and usually militarily powerful states. It can be argued that
cultural decline is not the basic issue, but systems' collapse of one or more important parts of the state
machine; and recovery can take some time.
Peter James asserts in his article that he and his collaborators do not deny the occurrence of dark ages
generally, but only their occurrence in the areas and in the period they write about; but this merely
adds a further assumption that a phenomenon found worldwide in the history of complex societies was
absent in a fairly large number of such societies in a particular 500-year period.
Unfortunately, all these philosophical aspects of their thesis are not considered in Centuries of
Darkness, which is essentially a series of tours de force, in which such facts about a
particular dark age as they acknowledge (and they often don't acknowledge them all) are fitted into a
framework which eliminates it as an historical period in the area concerned.
If the theory of James et al about dark ages were to be applied to Britain, we would have to
assume that the Roman Britain of Theodosius was immediately followed by the Saxon Britain of
Alfred the Great, and the events and culture of sub-Roman and early Saxon Britain were really located
in some remote areas of Britain contemporary with the Theodosian/Alfred the Great sequence.
Similarly, European history would be rejigged so the late Roman Empire was followed immediately by
the empire of Charles the Great, and the events of AD400-800 were consigned to some contemporary
backwater area in northern Europe.
If this British and European history purged of dark ages sounds arrant nonsense, it is because we have
enough background knowledge to realise this; but, in my view, it is not greater nonsense than much of
the rewriting of ancient history to be found in Centuries of Darkness.
From Dr W S Hanson
Sir: I am prompted to write in response to the article by Max Adams,
`Iron Age ridge and furrow? So it seems' (April). I know
the Breamish Valley reasonably well and have visited the sites to which Max Adams refers on a
number of occasions, at least once in the company of the late Prof George Jobey whose pioneering
work in that area and fastidious publication belies the claim that the landscape is little known.
Just because the extensive ridge and furrow ploughing respects the Iron Age/Romano-British
settlement on Haystack Hill does not make the two contemporary - it merely reflects the difficulty of
infilling and ploughing over such large landscape features in the medieval period. I noted a broadly
analogous situation on a recent visit to Long Meg and her Daughters by Penrith, whose ridge and
furrow runs right through the stone circle without displacing the stones. No one would suggest that the
two are contemporary, but clearly the medieval farmers were not prepared to go to the considerable
trouble of removing the stones.
Immediately above the three main scooped enclosures at Haystack Hill on a small plateau lies a
rectangular enclosure which seems to contain or partly overlie less well-preserved remains of round
houses, the latter, perhaps, part of a further Romano-British/Iron Age settlement. Also within that
rectangular enclosure is a rectangular building, not readily visible on the aerial photograph which you
published but quite clear on the ground (see George Jobey's plan in Archaeologia Aeliana 42,
1964, fig 10). This rectangular house and enclosure is most likely to represent the medieval re-use of
the earlier settlement location and provides a more sensible context for the visible ridge and furrow.
Far from being an integrated landscape dating from a single prehistoric time period, we have here a
further excellent example of the time depth which is so commonly observed in the British
landscape.
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© Council for British Archaeology, 1996
Star Trek digging
Yours sincerely,
CAROLYNE KERSHAW
Liverpool
24 April
Keep the darkness
Yours sincerely,
NORMAN NAIL
Truro
7 May
No Iron Age fields
Yours sincerely,
BILL HANSON
University of Glasgow
19 April