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fspades posted:The context is quite different though. People giving an actual drat about ancient artwork for the sake of it being ancient is quite a modern phenomenon. ISIS is no different, they are just approaching it from a hostile and completely idiotic standpoint, whereas the Ottomans (and the ERE) just didn't care. Which is how you end up with stuff like this: That's pretty cool, I love spolia
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Feb 27, 2015 20:31
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Giodo! posted:Well this is the worst. Three things came to mind when I first saw that footage: 1) many of those pieces are plaster replicas. But most aren't. It's not quite as bad as it looks, although it is still very bad. 2) why are the trying to stop people selling artifacts from ISIL controlled territory on the black market? At least they wouldn't be destroyed then. It might take a century or two to recollect them like China is now doing, but they'd survive for a few more years. 3) If these artifacts were in the British museum, this wouldn't have happened. Does this make me a bad person?
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Feb 27, 2015 22:54
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Captain Postal posted:2) why are the trying to stop people selling artifacts from ISIL controlled territory on the black market? At least they wouldn't be destroyed then. It might take a century or two to recollect them like China is now doing, but they'd survive for a few more years. Same reason we try to avoid paying ransoms for kidnapping; it encourages and provides material support for them doing more and more of it.
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Feb 27, 2015 23:03
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bartkusa posted:Same reason we try to avoid paying ransoms for kidnapping; it encourages and provides material support for them doing more and more of it. I disagree, it's not quite the same. Paying kidnapper ransom encourages more kidnappings (which is bad), exporting the 3000 year old cultural heritage of a people encourages getting more of it out of range of these shitheads (which is good - well, not as bad as destroying it). Although that doesn't solve the "material support" issue.
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Feb 27, 2015 23:19
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If the material has already been excavated and the alternative is the institution its housed in would be destroyed then yes. The problem is that buying the stuff encourages treasure hunters to go dig up the local sites and completely destroy the archaeological context of the object. Without that a lot of that those artifacts can only be very roughly dated and are no longer useful, except as art, instead of being able to understand the historical context in which they existed.
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Feb 28, 2015 02:16
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Captain Postal posted:2) why are the trying to stop people selling artifacts from ISIL controlled territory on the black market? At least they wouldn't be destroyed then. It might take a century or two to recollect them like China is now doing, but they'd survive for a few more years. Because those are generally being sold by ISIS themselves. It's one of their major sources of revenue.
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Feb 28, 2015 04:08
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Because those are generally being sold by ISIS themselves. It's one of their major sources of revenue. If only Indiana Jones was here...
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Feb 28, 2015 04:25
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Haha the theme music immediately started in my head.
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Feb 28, 2015 04:57
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Captain Postal posted:Three things came to mind when I first saw that footage: More or less what I was arguing earlier today. Also, what happens when ISIS is 'defeated' and the museums come hunting for their artefacts held in the hands of private buyers?
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Feb 28, 2015 07:58
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I'm sure isis keep extensive records of their financial transactions involving selling looted art.
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Feb 28, 2015 10:07
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Tearing stuff down is part of the historical process, sure. But the Ottomans built wonders of their own in their place. I'm sure we can expect ISIS to build gently caress all of value and eventually burn out.
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Feb 28, 2015 14:09
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Octy posted:More or less what I was arguing earlier today. Also, what happens when ISIS is 'defeated' and the museums come hunting for their artefacts held in the hands of private buyers? Museums get some nice poo poo and historians still cry because we've lost any context.
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Feb 28, 2015 23:00
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the JJ posted:Museums get some nice poo poo and historians still cry because we've lost any context. Anytime archaeologists cry it is a good thing JK archaeologists but still you guys make archaeology super boring
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Feb 28, 2015 23:12
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Octy posted:More or less what I was arguing earlier today. Also, what happens when ISIS is 'defeated' and the museums come hunting for their artifacts held in the hands of private buyers? Serious question: How is this different to China? Much of their good poo poo has been destroyed, but the stuff that survived often did it by being sold on the black market over 500 years, and now that China is economically very powerful and needs to spend all that money on something, they're buying it back, or philanthropists are buying it and donating it back. That's why I said it might take centuries to rebuild these collections that ISIL is selling off, and these cultures to regain their heritage, but it can be done so long as it isn't destroyed for a youtube propaganda video.
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Mar 1, 2015 00:53
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Captain Postal posted:Serious question: How is this different to China? Much of their good poo poo has been destroyed, but the stuff that survived often did it by being sold on the black market over 500 years, and now that China is economically very powerful and needs to spend all that money on something, they're buying it back, or philanthropists are buying it and donating it back. Because that poo poo is worthless (from an archaeological stand point) if it's removed from it's context. Hell, it can even spill over, because artifacts like that get 'laundered.' I remember they found some site in Afghanistan and the whole valley had been strip mined for artifacts (probably sold for pennies by the people who picked them up.) Basically everything coming out of Iran/claiming to be Iranian from the years before and after was instantly suspect. the JJ fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Mar 1, 2015 |
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Mar 1, 2015 01:20
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Captain Postal posted:Serious question: How is this different to China? Much of their good poo poo has been destroyed, but the stuff that survived often did it by being sold on the black market over 500 years, and now that China is economically very powerful and needs to spend all that money on something, they're buying it back, or philanthropists are buying it and donating it back. Sure, the artefacts survive, which is better than them being destroyed: but losing the context of the artefacts means we lose much historical detail you can learn from them.
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Mar 1, 2015 01:21
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the JJ posted:Because that poo poo is worthless (from an archaeological stand point) if it's removed from it's context. Yeah but again, the other option here is that it gets smashed or ends up in some gangster's penthouse. There's no "leave site undisturbed" option in a chaotic warlord state.
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Mar 1, 2015 03:07
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Arglebargle III posted:Yeah but again, the other option here is that it gets smashed or ends up in some gangster's penthouse. There's no "leave site undisturbed" option in a chaotic warlord state. Sure, but it's like losing a million dollars and finding a penny. It's really loving close to useless.
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Mar 1, 2015 03:18
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except not really because they can still be used as displays to educate and fascinate people, where as if they're destroyed they cant be used for jack poo poo.
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Mar 1, 2015 03:21
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OBLIVION IS PREFERABLE TO A LOSS OF CONTEXT *nukes the ruins of Ur*
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Mar 1, 2015 03:22
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the JJ posted:Sure, but it's like losing a million dollars and finding a penny. It's really loving close to useless. I mean I definitely want undisturbed sites but I'll take poo poo not being smashed over being smashed any day. Especially this stuff, it's already in a museum. I live in a country where most of the history was intentionally destroyed and it's pretty depressing and not something that should happen anywhere else. Cool poo poo to look at has value.
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Mar 1, 2015 04:14
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the JJ posted:Because that poo poo is worthless (from an archaeological stand point) if it's removed from it's context. nothing to seehere posted:Sure, the artefacts survive, which is better than them being destroyed: but losing the context of the artefacts means we lose much historical detail you can learn from them. I thought these artifacts were being looted from museums for sale, so there's no context anyway. Is ISIL performing digs for loot? Captain Postal fucked around with this message at 04:22 on Mar 1, 2015 |
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Mar 1, 2015 04:16
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Captain Postal posted:I thought these artifacts were being looted from museums for sale, so there's no context anyway. Is ISIL performing digs for loot? I believe so, or at least they are allowing others to loot sites in exchange for a cut of the sales.
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Mar 1, 2015 04:33
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nothing to seehere posted:Sure, the artefacts survive, which is better than them being destroyed: but losing the context of the artefacts means we lose much historical detail you can learn from them. It's context wasn't being in a museum, you know. sullat posted:I believe so, or at least they are allowing others to loot sites in exchange for a cut of the sales. I was first going to ask for a source for this, but then I looked at it and it turns out it is actually true and they are doing it in a scarily massive scale. That is a much, much more serious problem than this silly stunt I feel. It seems to me people assume the looted items are all digged up and transferred in pristine condition but I bet a huge portion of them are getting destroyed or damaged in the process, to speak nothing about the loss of context. fspades fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Mar 1, 2015 |
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Mar 1, 2015 16:14
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Grand Fromage posted:I mean I definitely want undisturbed sites but I'll take poo poo not being smashed over being smashed any day. Especially this stuff, it's already in a museum. I guess I'm more thinking about sullat posted:I believe so, or at least they are allowing others to loot sites in exchange for a cut of the sales. And the case of Firozkoh and the way those artifacts were laundered tainted a whole shed load of poo poo coming out of Iran. And that secondary market incentivises looting. I don't think ISIL is going to go out of their way to dig up a bunch of poo poo just to smash it, but they (or desperate people in a chaotic situation trying to make their lot a smidge better) are going to pull up a bunch of stuff and sell it. So yeah, I'll take smashing over selling. Long term, I think it's mildly less damaging. Horrific, but, still the lesser of two evils. fspades posted:It's context wasn't being in a museum, you know. No, but we do know the chain of custody of the museum bits, so they're still useful in that sense.
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Mar 1, 2015 16:32
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I'm just going to have to disagree with you there. Selling is infinitely preferable to smashing. Frankly the concept that artifacts in museums are "useless" without the benefit of a complete archeological history is utterly absurd. A case in point for these sorts of discussions would be the Rosetta Stone. It is a classic example of a major historical artifact that was completely removed from its archaeological context, as well as being irreparably damaged and modified over the years, and yet it has had a resounding impact on the fields of history, linguistics, and archaeology. I certainly don't prefer that it had been smashed by the Crusaders or Napoleon's troops than it being removed from Rosetta by the British in 1801. And in spite of it not being found as the result of an archeological dig, we still have constructed a fairly detailed - if imperfect - contextual history for the Rosetta Stone - many centuries after it had been been removed from its home in antiquity. On a common tangential point: The potential tragedy in its destruction would be incalculable, and if it had been repatriated or "loaned" to Egypt in the mid to late 2000s as the Egyptian curators hoped, then it would have been sitting right in the middle of the recent struggles between the Egyptian military and the Islamists. These objects have international meaning and value, and in a very real way they belong not only to us, but to our children's children, and we, as a species, have a fundamental responsibility to safeguard them for future generations. I certainly do not want future history books to tell a sad story about how early 21st century historians made a tragic decision to adopt a laissez faire attitude to archeological artifacts, based on misguided principles, and as a result oversaw the destruction of our ancient heritage. Kaal fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Mar 1, 2015 |
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Mar 1, 2015 16:42
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We say that now, but when England descends into internecine civil war and the Duke of Norfolk razes London, boy won't we feel silly
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Mar 1, 2015 18:04
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Tao Jones posted:We say that now, but when England descends into internecine civil war and the Duke of Norfolk razes London, boy won't we feel silly Not to mention all the rent he rakes in from his property on the Strand.
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Mar 1, 2015 18:08
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Kaal posted:I'm just going to have to disagree with you there. Selling is infinitely preferable to smashing. Frankly the concept that artifacts in museums are "useless" without the benefit of a complete archeological history is utterly absurd. Sure, the Rosetta Stone was a big deal, but it's incredibly exceptional, mostly because it contextualized itself. The vast majority of artifacts are going to be bits and nibs and nubs, and those have to be contextualized if they're going to mean anything. The articles ISIL is smashing are already out of the ground and well documented. It sucks and there is so much more that could be done with those pieces, but we do have most of what we can get out of them. The illegal trade is incentivizing the spoiling of new sites, tainting legitimate recoveries, and, you know, funding genocide.
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Mar 1, 2015 18:39
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I have to say, I'd never heard of Firozkoh or the Minaret of Jam before today, but it's absolutely astonishing. Is this the only left standing at the site?
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Mar 1, 2015 22:17
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Tao Jones posted:We say that now, but when England descends into internecine civil war and the Duke of Norfolk razes London, boy won't we feel silly Well so far the British Museum has managed to shield its charges from two world wars that featured aerial bombardment of the city of London. In fact parts of the building complex were leveled by a bomb in WWII but they had emptied it of movable artifacts well beforehand and sheltered them deep underground (just as they had done in WWI). I'd say that the Rosetta Stone is in good hands right where it is. the JJ posted:Sure, the Rosetta Stone was a big deal, but it's incredibly exceptional, mostly because it contextualized itself. But I mean it's fairly evident that it did not. Certainly the crusaders didn't appreciate its self-contextualization. It was being used as a building material until an educated French soldier realized that it was an antiquity and took it straight to Napoleon. And even then, despite concentrated work by an international assortment of experts, it took more than 20 years for it to be decrypted. I'm certainly glad that the British didn't decide that all value has been derived from the Rosetta Stone and allow it to be risked or destroyed in the last 215 years. Kaal fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Mar 1, 2015 |
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Mar 1, 2015 22:33
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Are you guys considering the artistic value of a piece apart from its context? I've read art criticism of Clovis Points with almost no mention of its provenance. Things can be appreciated as pieces of art rather than as historical objects.
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Mar 2, 2015 02:14
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Kaal posted:But I mean it's fairly evident that it did not. Certainly the crusaders didn't appreciate its self-contextualization. It was being used as a building material until an educated French soldier realized that it was an antiquity and took it straight to Napoleon. And even then, despite concentrated work by an international assortment of experts, it took more than 20 years for it to be decrypted. I'm certainly glad that the British didn't decide that all value has been derived from the Rosetta Stone and allow it to be risked or destroyed in the last 215 years. Right, but the whole thing that makes it matter is the fact that it's got text on it in three languages, and let us work backwards from what we knew and translate the poo poo we didn't, and that's really loving cool, and that text -in three languages!- contextualizes it.* 99.9999999999% of poo poo is not going to have that. * 
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Mar 2, 2015 02:33
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the JJ posted:Right, but the whole thing that makes it matter is the fact that it's got text on it in three languages, and let us work backwards from what we knew and translate the poo poo we didn't, and that's really loving cool, and that text -in three languages!- contextualizes it.* I don't buy that for a second. If the context of the Rosetta Stone doesn't matter because it's sole importance is the written element, then the same could be said for any number of artifacts. Michelangelo's David statue is beautiful regardless of where it stands (which is good, because it was significantly moved). The Elgin Marbles are similarly fascinating and inspirational in spite of their tragic history. These artifacts are some of the most valuable in the world, despite having been removed from their original location long before any archaeologist could work with them. So they really put paid the idea that artifacts are "worthless" after they've been removed from their original site. You're coming across as if we should basically dynamite the Mona Lisa because it is no longer sitting in Leonardo's study in France and we've extracted all the useful data from it using a camera. Now there certainly is a benefit to allowing archaeological sites to be fully diagrammed and explored, particularly when you're talking about potsherds and burial mounds, but that isn't what we're talking about when it comes to the systematic looting and destruction of antiquities throughout the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. ISIS isn't running around stomping on ancient trash heaps filled with clay and fossilized scraps of papyrus - they're only interested in large, significant artifacts. And I simply can't get behind the idea of writing them off on principle. We should be encouraging the preservation of these antiquities wherever feasible. The Greeks offered their Ottoman enemies bullets in order to prevent them from melting down the Parthenon for lead - surely we can cough up a few hundred dollars to channel these artifacts back into responsible hands. http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/13/world/meast/iraq-museum-paying-smugglers/ Kaal fucked around with this message at 08:53 on Mar 2, 2015 |
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Mar 2, 2015 08:41
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Kaal posted:I don't buy that for a second. If the context of the Rosetta Stone doesn't matter because it's sole importance is the written element, then the same could be said for any number of artifacts. Michelangelo's David statue is beautiful regardless of where it stands (which is good, because it was significantly moved). The Elgin Marbles are similarly fascinating and inspirational in spite of their tragic history. These artifacts are some of the most valuable in the world, despite having been removed from their original location long before any archaeologist could work with them. So they really put paid the idea that artifacts are "worthless" after they've been removed from their original site. You're coming across as if we should basically dynamite the Mona Lisa because it is no longer sitting in Leonardo's study in France and we've extracted all the useful data from it using a camera. The Rosetta stone is literally a lump of rock without that text. David would still be magnificent but that we know it is Michelangelo's and can frame it within his work, and we know where it once was and who sponsored it. The Mona Lisa as currently displayed is poo poo and you're better off looking at a high quality photo, although that's a total tangent. But that's a red herring. You're talking about big poo poo, much more recently, with well know, well explored histories. This is the poo poo ISIL would smash, and while it's a tragedy, it has already been pulled up and gone over. Everything else, the poo poo they're selling by the truck load (and are digging up as well) is most useful to us in context. If you put money into that market you're getting junk and encouraging these rear end in a top hat to keep digging, keep sifting, keep ruining more poo poo. They'll break it down for transport, falsify origins, do whatever. Oh, plus there's the whole funding genocide thing. That they're smashing poo poo is awful and terrible, and exactly as flashy and shocking as they wanted it to be, but as a historian the rampant smuggling and looting is a lot worse.
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Mar 2, 2015 16:09
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Going back to Caesar - something I've always wondered about is the quality of the stuff his troops constructed, either for sieges or transport (such as the infamous construction and dismantling of a bridge purely as a "gently caress you" to the Germans). Considering the enormous speed at which these things were constructed, was the idea purely to get something functional up without concern for making sure it was any more solid than necessary to last the length of the siege? Were there any accounts of these things falling apart under the weight of troops etc? How were they able to build so fast and yet provide something that worked as intended and didn't fall over the first time a stiff breeze kicked up? I'm thinking in particular of Alesia and Dyrrachium, where Caesar had his troops build huge walls and towers at breakneck speed to pin down his opponents and prevent escape. In the latter case, he was practically racing Pompey's troops who were constructing a wall of their own - was it just a matter of mass coordinated movement/discipline allowing them to produce effective fortifications? I know a big point was made about Roman troops also being able to quickly construct their camps, and I have to figure that these needed to be as secure as possible given the danger of attack in enemy territory, so they can't have cut many corners in terms of stability/safety, right?
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Mar 3, 2015 01:17
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Basically a combination of practice and prefabrication. Things like the legionary camp were totally prefab and carried with you, and you've done it so many times you could do it in your sleep. For other constructions I believe (I'm not sure if we know this for certain or it's speculative) that there were pre-designed parts that the legion's engineers would be familiar with. You're not reinventing the wall every time you put one up, this is a flat stretch with a hill behind so use wall design A3 or whatever. I'm sure there were lovely things built too quick that collapsed, though. But remember that legions mostly spent more time building than fighting, they knew what they were doing.
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Mar 3, 2015 03:27
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 they see me rolling
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Mar 3, 2015 08:38
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Nostalgia4Dicks posted:
First good use of a segway
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Mar 3, 2015 09:09
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Grand Fromage posted:Basically a combination of practice and prefabrication. Things like the legionary camp were totally prefab and carried with you, and you've done it so many times you could do it in your sleep. For other constructions I believe (I'm not sure if we know this for certain or it's speculative) that there were pre-designed parts that the legion's engineers would be familiar with. You're not reinventing the wall every time you put one up, this is a flat stretch with a hill behind so use wall design A3 or whatever. It's bizarre, it never even occurred to me to think about them carrying about prefab stuff but that makes a lot of sense.
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Mar 3, 2015 11:54
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