Question: do you have a belif that has clouded your judgment / put others a risk

Jennifer Bates answered on 13 Nov 2016:

Hi,

For me, as an archaeologist, this is a really interesting question. To answer the second half, no I haven’t put anyone at risk because of a belief or indeed any action, because that is not what science or indeed anything is about, from my point of view.

But scientific judgement – well, that is where as an archaeologist life gets tricky. What we are trying to do is interpret how people lived in the past, which means looking at the material things left behind by humans. And it is very very difficult not to look at something and think, oh I know what that is, I’ve seen one of those before. But the problem is, how do you know what something is? Things change depending on when, where, what and how you look at it. The best example of this is from Disney’s Little Mermaid! The moment when Ariel picks up a fork and starts using it to brush her hair. She does this because to her, it looks and is a comb. It has spikes like a comb, is shaped like one, and she has been told it is one, so to her the right thing to do is brush her hair. But to us, it is a fork, because it has spikes like a fork, is shaped like one, and we have been told it is one, so the right thing to do is NOT brush hair but eat with it. So who is right? Well, both of us! At a certain moment anyway. When Ariel uses it as a brush under the sea she is right and when it is used as a fork above ground it is a fork. The only way to know how to use an object is to put it in the context of it’s use, of the moment of use, not to put our own judgement on the object until we know the context of its use. And that is how you can work out whether it is a fork or a comb, by looking at the other things around it and where it is, how it was being used, rather than thinking, it looks like a fork, it must be a fork. If it is surrounded by pots, food, hearths, other implements that could have been used for eating with, and has crusts of food on it, it’s probably a fork, but if it is next to pots with make up in them, has hair tangled in it, its probably not for eating. And that’s how I view this idea of belief and judgement, I do have beliefs, ideas, I live in the modern world after all and use all kinds of things, but I try not to let them cloud my judgement by looking at the context of my finds.

I suspect that doesn’t always work, but at least it tries to help a bit. 🙂