Bret Devereaux

That can be *really big.* Most wars, plagues, famines - not archaeologically visible. But also social values, opinions, beliefs - do not generally leave archaeological evidence. 36/52

For example: Cult of Mithras - leaves evidence in the form of ritual sanctuaries. But it can't tell us (except for disjointed, hard to use snippets) what they believed, or what rituals they did, or sometimes who they were. 37/52

Archaeology works best as a companion to the sources, but that brings us back to the lack of sources - if there's no lit. text, evidence level plummets. Easy example of this: pre-Roman Gaul. The Gauls are *really* archaeologically visible. 38/52

They leave lots of prestige objects in shrines, lakes, rivers. Rich burial assemblages, identifiable hill-fort-town-centers. Lots of good archaeological evidence. But zero textual sources until the Romans show up. 39/52

Consequence: almost everything about their values, culture, social organization before the Romans and Greeks start describing it is speculative. Lots of ????s - tons. What archy can tell us, we know well - we can chart the changes in their objects really well! 40/52

Like 'when did they shift from shorter, pointier swords to longer, slashier swords' - can do a detailed map! But 'what was Gallic kingship like in 350 BCE? LOL best guess is to reason from Gallic kingship in 50 BCE, when we have Roman/Greek lit. texts. 41/52

Which brings us to: 6) Comparative Evidence - or (favorite Jurassic Park reference), "the frog DNA." Basically, if you don't know, fill in the blank with a similar, but more modern society which is better attested in the evidence. 42/52

Absolutely, comparative is the weakest form of evidence - it is what you use when you have nothing, but have a gap which has to be filled with *something* - comparative evidence is better than guessing... 43/52

...or in mid-19th century scholar fashion, just assuming ancient elites were just like your fellow British/French/German/American aristocrats. The good news is that comparative evidence can be brought to bear on any question. 44/52

The bad news is that societies are different! Societies separated by centuries tend to be *really* different. Comparative evidence thus works better when you have a reason to think things are less different. 45/52

For instance, subsistence patterns. Ancient people needed to eat too and had similar bodies (and thus dietary needs) to modern humans, so you can sometimes reason from early modern subsistence patterns to ancient ones (but beware tech/selective-breeding!) 46/52

Comp. evidence is easily the worst source of bad-pop-history-mistakes (that I talked about above). It goes like this: Scholar1 estimates in technical lit. something based on little bit of hard evidence and some comparative evidence. Clearly signals that this is guesswork. 47/52

That guess might be the number of mules in use by the Roman army (based on more modern army pack animal usage). It might be the direction of currency flows in the first century CE (based on modern econ. theory). But it's a guess, not firm. 48/52

Writer2 puts together general survey of question, incorporates Scholar1's guess, but text is meant for general audience, so the guess is not signaled. It looks like we *know* that fact, when we don't! 49/52

BookReviewer3 cries foul, but in a specialist publication. Meanwhile, Scholar4 (specialist in different field) reads Writer2's book and doesn't realize this is a guess, and so bases his argument on it. And now you have a scholarly argument supported by nothing but air. 50/52

And ancient historians screaming that arguments are 'built on sand' or that we 'can't know that' from the evidence and being ignored by other disciplines and breathy think pieces in the media. 51/52