created by DibsReddit on 26/10/2024 at 11:14 UTC*
792 upvotes, 59 top-level comments (showing 25)
I'll be doing this AMA as part of our #RealArchaeology event. See the full line-up, with over 50 creators participating, across the internet at https://www.real-archaeology.com[1][2]
1: https://www.real-archaeology.com
2: https://www.real-archaeology.com
Find me on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/@flintdibble[3][4]
3: https://www.youtube.com/@flintdibble
4: https://www.youtube.com/@flintdibble
I'm on most social media: @ FlintDibble. Except for here where that username was grabbed soon after the "debate" on Joe Rogan.
I'll be answering these questions throughout the day, and some will be answered during my livestream today (10am-3pm EDT): https://youtube.com/live/wWvwvW4t1n4[5][6]
5: https://youtube.com/live/wWvwvW4t1n4
6: https://youtube.com/live/wWvwvW4t1n4
In addition to questions for me, I'll check back to see if there are any questions for my guests on today's livestream, so feel free to ask about shaligrams, ancient roman DNA, ancient dogs, or Quetzalcoatl, and I'll try and ping the appropriate experts.
For myself, I'm happy to answer questions related to:
1. Archaeological methods: fieldwork, and scientific lab work. I have extensive experience in both, and have trained hundreds of students in various methods.
2. The archaeology and history of the ancient Greek world, and to greater or lesser degrees similar topics across the prehistory and history of the Mediterranean (though they will vary).
3. Archaeological science and environmental archaeology. I'm a zooarchaeologist who studies ancient animal remains using a range of methods, and I can also try to answer questions in related disciplines.
4. Strategies for addressing pseudoarchaeology in the 21st century. Questions on Atlantis or the historiography of the lost civilization theory are fine too. However, note, I will not waste time answering the same questions related to the slander Graham Hancock has recently thrown my way. I've answered them repeatedly. If you think that I lied, you're in the wrong subreddit. Good luck over in r/grahamhancock or r/AlternativeHistory. This space is for #RealArchaeology and #RealHistory grounded in evidence and facts.
5. I'll try to answer questions on other topics too, but no promises!
I'm a scholar and educator here to share my experience and expertise with people. I'm not here for debate, that's finished and we saw the results.
Comment by EnclavedMicrostate at 26/10/2024 at 11:22 UTC
76 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Hello Dr. Dibble, fantastic to have you on here!
Reading the title of this AMA may be the first time I've ever encountered the phrase 'environmental archaeology', which sounds absolutely fascinating. Narrowing it down to what you mention as your area of expertise, what do we learn – in as broad or as specific terms as you'd like to go into – from the study of ancient animal remains?
Comment by ownmonster3000 at 26/10/2024 at 11:48 UTC
35 upvotes, 1 direct replies
What's an unsolved mystery of archeology that you think we have a good chance of solving in your lifetime?
Comment by elana at 26/10/2024 at 12:26 UTC
33 upvotes, 1 direct replies
It is wonderful to come across this! My father is Floyd McCoy, and his life's work has been the eruption of Thira so I have grown up with the legend of Atlantis. He has called what he does geological archaeology, so I feel like you two would get along great.
Do you believe the ideas of Thira and Atlantis being the same?
Comment by postal-history at 26/10/2024 at 11:47 UTC
24 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Why do you think people believe in pseudoarchaeology? I don't think real archaeology can fill the same need that pseudoarchaeology believers have, because pseudoarchaeology carries metaphysical messages about the meaning of human existence. Is that your experience?
Comment by DGBD at 26/10/2024 at 11:28 UTC
81 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I think one of the biggest issues with countering pseudo-archaeology, as with pseudo-science and a lot of other bullshit, is that legitimate researchers are, in fact, often wrong and not always fully confident in their findings. That’s the whole point of research! You go through the evidence, you tease things out from what you can figure out, but sometimes you get it wrong or don’t quite have all the facts you need. So, you have to hedge, or at the very least be mindful of what you don’t know. And when someone else comes along with evidence that runs counter to your own, you have to weigh that and see if maybe you were wrong in your assessment.
Meanwhile, a bullshit artist can say whatever they want as confidently as they want. And if someone comes and says they’re wrong, they can attack and deny with impunity. That confidence is *really* appealing to some people, over what can seem like waffling from the “legit” side.
So, the question is, how do we properly communicate that good research involves doubt and uncertainty and incomplete data? How do we overcome that “confidence gap” in how archaeology and other fields are communicated vs their BS cousins?
Comment by Tallerpeople91 at 26/10/2024 at 11:54 UTC
17 upvotes, 1 direct replies
What's an unanswered question in your field of expertise that you'd love to know the answer to?
Comment by Krish_Bohra at 26/10/2024 at 12:14 UTC
15 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I know we have fossils of Palaeoloxodon tiliensis dated to 1840BC found in Tilos, the Greek island. I have always wondered about the possibility of Minoans encountering these guys. They in all likelihood could have hunted them and played a role in driving this animal which was anyway isolated and in a precarious state to extinction. Do we find them mentioned in Minoan art and literature?
Comment by Mission_Box_5729 at 26/10/2024 at 13:25 UTC
16 upvotes, 1 direct replies
What is the current state of scholarship on a) what caused the Bronze Age collapse, and b) who the Sea Peoples were?
As I understand it, the consensus is volcanic activity triggering crop failures is the inciting incident. But how strong is this consensus and how robust the evidence?
Comment by Jonashls at 26/10/2024 at 11:26 UTC
32 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Best *fictional* usage of pseudoscience in your opinion?
Comment by consistencyisalliask at 26/10/2024 at 11:52 UTC
29 upvotes, 1 direct replies
G'day, Dr Dibble!
I teach a (senior high school) subject which requires students to find and assess a historiographical / public history dispute of their choice, and I fairly frequently have students who want to look into pseudoarchaeology-type topics as a kind of debate about the ownership of history and who could be seen to constitute a 'legitimate' historian. Sadly, my personal experience is that these students tend to struggle to produce substantial and effective works, often because they end up struggling to build a framework for assessing the pseudoarchaeologists' claims and contrasting them to scholarly approaches. While I'm generally reluctant to let students pursue such topics for this reason, I feel like there probably *is* something to be said about these debates, much as students might develop quite good essays about, for example, bad historical films, holocaust denial, or far-right appropriations of Norse history.
To address this, I would really like to build a repository of relatively accessible works by scholars and trustworthy history/archaeology communicators which explain about their judgements about, and efforts to counteract, pseudohistory and pseudoarchaeology, to give to these students early on, and help them get oriented with respect to the field. I'm thinking of, ideally, things in the vein of Lipstadt's *Denying the Holocaust* which analyse the hows and whys of pseudoarcheology from a scholarly perspective.
To that end, in your opinion, who (if anyone?) is writing / producing great, accessible material on this kind of topic at the moment? What are the 'go-to' books, articles, or other resources that a senior high school / junior undergraduate student might start with?
Thanks so much for your time.
Comment by OrthodoxPrussia at 26/10/2024 at 12:32 UTC
12 upvotes, 0 direct replies
If you're partial to historical fiction, can you recommend some favourites? Particularly, are there any books that nail your field of expertise like ancient Greece? Or perhaps good fantasy about Atlantis?
Comment by IacobusCaesar at 26/10/2024 at 14:40 UTC
10 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Hey, Flint. You really are a hero lately so thank you for all you’ve been doing.
As I’m someone with a masters degree in archaeology, what would you recommend to someone like me to be part of making the field more visible? Have you learned anything you would offer as advice to those who are educated in the field but not necessarily with a strong platform right now to help push back on the trend of pseudoarchaeology?
Comment by Fussel2107 at 26/10/2024 at 13:16 UTC*
9 upvotes, 1 direct replies
How do you resist the urge to run around a public square naked, screaming "This is not how any of this works?"
I swear, it gets harder each day.
Now for some real question: which approaches have you found work best to debunk the claims of people like Hancock to an audience that is not literate in archeological methodology?
Comment by Krish_Bohra at 26/10/2024 at 11:57 UTC
10 upvotes, 1 direct replies
As someone into wildlife history, I find your field of zooarchaeology very interesting. Q: Have you studied the presence of lions in Europe in historical times? How long did they survive? What was their range?
Comment by coolaswhitebread at 26/10/2024 at 12:30 UTC
9 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Hi Flint, I want to thank you for all the work you've done both academically and also publicly. In archaeology, we suffer a lot from having a lot of folks outside of the field doing the talking for us. I was blown away by the amount of preparation you did for the Rogan discussion.
I have two silly questions. Firstly, I want to ask how you've dealt over time being an archaeologist, and the son of an archaeologist with the name Flint? Was there ever a period where you went by something else or wanted to run away from archaeology a bit?
I also wanted to ask where you or really the field has come to stand on the Bordes vs. Binford ft. Dibble debate. Did it ever come up at the dinner table?
Comment by runespider at 26/10/2024 at 13:01 UTC
14 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Hello Dr Dibble. I am just a keen idiot. I've been around conspiracy boards first as a believer then steadily more of a skeptic as time has gone in until I finally am firmly on the science side of things.
Not being an academic what are some hazards a keen but not scholarly person should be wary of?
As a side thing, as someone who doesn't have academic credentials I often find that there's a lot locked behind pay walls or in dense, jargony material. Now being a nerd I can get around that and if I know what to look for I'm amazed at how many details there are. Ocean faring homo erectus, evidence of wood working on stone tools, very early sedentary living, so on. As a keen idiot with no real access to academia it's difficult to navigate this stuff. For an average person it's a non started. While people like yourself are great, what can be done or is being done to make information more accessible to the public, and to the press?
For example that recent find of the well preserved worked wood by human ancestors was amazing, but it was rarely mentioned that while it is an amazing find, residue jn stone tools had pointed to our ancestors working wood, and presumably erectus had to have some skill to make their boats.
I know this isn't exactly clear but I've been running for about 48 hours straight now, my apologies.
Comment by [deleted] at 26/10/2024 at 11:40 UTC
15 upvotes, 1 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by freddys_glasses at 26/10/2024 at 13:44 UTC
8 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I recently read a paper by MA Fowler on human sacrifice at Istros. Specifically he re-evaluates tumulus XVII which had previously been attributed to non-Greek people due to apparent funerary human sacrifice. He argues that based on more recent excavations elsewhere the time is ripe to push back on that line of thinking. He argues for an archaic Greek or possibly a Greek-native ethnic hybrid attribution.
I think you've done work up there. Do you have any thoughts on this? If not, any thoughts on Istros or ancient West Pontus more broadly?
Comment by quokka_cloaca at 26/10/2024 at 16:04 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I believe in what you are doing. People will pick you apart for your personality traits, but it is just a tactic to discredit what they do not want to believe.
I think it is really important to "take back" this sort of science. Archaeology used to be a well-respected and revered profession, and now it is used in modern America as entertainment and conspiracy theorizing.
My question is this: What do you find to be the greatest single discovery in the 21st century?
Comment by Sapient_Cephalopod at 26/10/2024 at 22:28 UTC*
8 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Hello Dr. Dibble, I'm a Greek engineering student enamored by my region's past. I'm especially interested in the process by which the pristine wilderness of the last Interglacial morphed into the Eastern Mediterranean's pre-industrial natural and cultural landscapes.
I've taken a liking to the Neolithic and Bronze Age of the regions bordering and including the Aegean Sea, and would specifically like to ask:
1. What is known about the ecological impact of early Neolithic Farmers in the region?
2. What about environmental changes under the Cycladic cultures, the Minoans and Myceneans?
3. Broadly speaking, how did these processes continue and transform through classical antiquity?
Topics of interest include:
Clearance of the Middle Holocene forests - how did their composition change? How much of that change is attributed to climate change or human impact? What did human land use look like and how did it change over time?
When did archeophyte tree crops like pomegranates, walnuts, almonds, quinces etc. arrive to the region?
How did mammal faunas change over time? Was there overlap between aurochs and domestic cattle? Did the mainland uplands host feral goats, like Crete does today?
What is the history of domestics in the region? When did late arrivals, like chickens, anatids and cats, become commonplace?
What the hell happened during the Bronze Age Collapse (environment-wise)?
I would be delighted to hear your input in any of the above topics. Thank you for your contributions to the field of archeology, you're doing great work.
Cheers!
Comment by sobric at 26/10/2024 at 12:52 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Hello! I studied archaeology at University a little over 15 years ago and had a particular interest in late bronze age Greece. The consesus at the time was that there was some some sort of societal 'collapse' across the Greek world, perhaps due to environmental changes after the eruption of Thera, perhaps due to the invasion of people from further north.
That consesus had been challenged some, and as I had the pleasure of spending a season digging at Lefkandi in Euboa, I was interested in finding out if there had been any more recent scholarship that moved the debate on some what.
Thank you!
Comment by MaidenMadness at 26/10/2024 at 13:24 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Dr Dibble I am curious as to your opinion on shows like Time Team, WW2 Treasure Hunters or River Hunters and their portrayal of archaeology? Are they a good showcase of what archaeologists do?
Comment by Top-Supermarket331 at 26/10/2024 at 14:31 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Hello Dr. Dibble,
I cannot thank you enough for doing this.
I have two questions for you if you do not mind.
In the fourth 'chapter' of 𝘗𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘰'𝘴 𝘈𝘤𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘺: 𝘐𝘵𝘴 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘐𝘵𝘴 𝘏𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺, a book that compiles the papers presented at a conference held in Athens in 2012, Eutychia Lygouri-Tolia (former Director of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Piraeus) argues that the so-called ruins of the gymnasium of the Academy, are actually the ruins of the Academy of Plato, because (in a nutshell) they are disimilar to other ruins of ancient gymnasiums and they are similar to Hadrian's Library (the latter would have then taken inspiration from Plato's Academy/Library/House/κήπος or whatever it truly was to build his own). I have the aforementioned book in both physical and pdf form but I have no idea whether I am allowed to post it here or not. Is it a plausible argument? Do other archaeologists or historians believe the same thing?
My second question is about this article: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.domusweb.it/en/sustainable-cities/gallery/2023/03/16/greeces-first-green-museum-in-platos-academy-park.amp.html[1] Will there be any archaeological searches before building this? They will not destroy the ruins to do so, will they? I am rather apprehensive about this but how I wish archaeological searches were made again on the site of the Academy and that Plato's tomb may finally be unearthed! If it were not destroyed, that is.
I would love to hear your thoughts on all of this.
Thank you for reading me and have a lovely day.
Comment by 4ChoresAnd7BeersAgo at 26/10/2024 at 12:29 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Hello! Dr. Dibble! I have a very basic field archeology question. On dig sites, how is it ensured people don't pocket finds for their own gain? Say like a coin or otherwise small valuable items. There is so much dirt, so many people, and so much opportunity - I can't help but think it must happen.
Comment by stillaswater1994 at 26/10/2024 at 12:57 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
How come more excavation isn't done in the Caucasus? I feel like it's one of the most neglected regions by archaeologists.