Christ Illustrated

It is Christmas time, a season that calls for a religious blog post. Fortuitously, I recently discovered the magisterial La Vie de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ ("The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ") by Jacques (James) Tissot, which is suitably biblical.

The French painter Tissot (1836-1902) had a fairly conventional artistic career, until his support for the Paris Commune forced him to flee to London, where he lived and worked for ten years. Some years after his return to Paris in 1882, he experienced a spiritual conversion during a visit to the Church of Saint-Sulpice, which led him to devote the remainder of his life to religious painting.

Religious Revival

By chance, the nineteenth century had seen the birth of the pictorial Bible, along with related works such as the Landscape Illustrations of the Bible (published by John Murray in 1836). The German artist Julius Schnorr was an early exponent of the genre. Alongside this new trend came a revival in religious painting, by artists such as Ford Madox Brown, William Dyce (more famous for his Arthurian scenes), and particularly William Holman Hunt (famous for his 1860 painting of The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple). At roughly the same time, Tissot's countryman Gustav Doré had great success when the publication of a Bible illustrated with 228 of his engravings led to a London exhibition which ran almost continuously throughout 1868-9, closing only on Sundays.

Travelling In The Footsteps

Like Holman Hunt, who had travelled in Egypt and Palestine in order "to make more tangible Jesus Christ's History and Teaching", Tissot headed east. (However, unlike Hunt, he does not appear to have experienced any street scuffles or colourful scenes in brothels.) Between 1886 and 1889, he made studies for an ambitious series of paintings that became La Vie de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ.

Completed in 1894, the 365 paintings were exhibited in Paris (1894-5), London (1896) and New York (1898-9), before being purchased by the Brooklyn Museum in 1900.

Tissot's scenes have been influential, as (for example) the inspiration for D. W. Griffith's cinematic biblical epic of 1916, and doubtless many of its successors. I'm sure we can still see Tissot's influence in the biblical epics of today.

Counting Down from Marathon

On November 13, long distance runners from all over the world converged on Athens for the 29th Athens Classic Marathon. This old arithmetically-challenged emperor assumed that it was organized to celebrate the 2,500th anniversary (25th centenary) of the Battle of Marathon, fought in 490 BC. However, the official logo of the Association of International Marathons and Distance Races (pictured here) makes it clear that they considered 2010 to be the centenary. So who's correct?

An Ancient Event

It used to be thought that the Battle of Marathon was fought in 491 BC. That date can be found in the Cambridge Ancient History (original edition) volume 4 (1926) by J.A.R. Munro, although others had long championed 490 BC.

It was well known that ten years had separated the two Persian invasions of Greece. The Greek victory over Xerxes at Salamis, ending the second Persian attempt, occurred in 480 BC, but some scholars clung to the view that, because Xerxes had actually set out from Susa in 481 BC, counting back 10 years gave 491 BC for Marathon.

(Thucydides may have contributed to the confusion when he wrote that the Battle of Marathon occurred ten years after the expulsion of the tyrant Hippias from Athens, which had occurred in 511/0 BC. Confusingly, the Attic calendar ran from summer to summer, so that, technically speaking, the tenth anniversary of the expulsion of Hippias spanned 491 and 490 BC. However, it is known that Phainippos, the Athenian archon for 490/89 BC, was in office at the time of the Battle of Marathon, which virtually guarantees that it fell in 490 BC.)

Dating Problem

However, the AIMDR (and they're not the only ones) have fallen foul of a different problem; a problem that continues to bedevil chronological calculations involving BC and AD dates. (See previous post for BC and AD dates.) This problem is caused by the absence of Year Zero.

Arithmetic calculations involving negative numbers (like BC dates) and positive numbers (like AD dates) assume that zero is the pivot, the fixed point between the two types of numbers. Subtract minus-10 from 10 and the result is 20.

Unfortunately, historical chronology doesn't work the same way. AD 10 is only 19 years after 10 BC, not the 20 years that we might naturally assume. (Think about it: 9 BC is one year later, 8 BC is two years later, ..., 1 BC is nine years later, AD 1 is ten years later, AD 2 is eleven years later, ..., AD 10 is nineteen years later.) Similarly, AD 2010 (the anniversary celebrated by AIMDR on their logo) is only 2,499 years after 490 BC. (Let's ignore the fact that they've gone for "2010 AD" instead of AD 2010.)

Only J.A.R. Munro and his fellow supporters of a battle in 491 BC could justifiably have celebrated last year! However, this year, all those keen runners who braved the unseasonal chill of Athens last week to run in the 29th Athens Classic Marathon were, perhaps unknowingly, celebrating the real anniversary, the 25th centenary of the greatest battle in ancient Greek history. Congratulations to all of them!

AD, CE, does it matter?

I think it may have been Voltaire's fault.

Recently, there has been a certain amount of internet discussion about the terms CE and BCE as replacements for the venerable AD/BC dating system. The wickedly subversive commentator Mary Beard (that's her description, not mine) helpfully informs us that "CE and BCE have been around for years, and < are > often used instead of BC and AD". But surely the question is: "why?"

I know that, in English, pedigree is everything. A bit like a squatter in someone else's house: if he's been there long enough, he gets to stay. If Mary Beard's friends have been using CE long enough, they get to continue. Thank goodness they haven't been using YsHtGD ("Years since Herod the Great Died"). However, Mary Beard prefers BC and AD because BCE and CE sound alike when she says them in a lecture theatre (so she probably wouldn't have liked YsHtGD and YbHtGD, either).

A Christian System?

Of course, not everyone uses the BC/AD system: Jews and Muslims have their own chronologies. Many supporters of BCE/CE claim that it is more respectful to these other faiths. This is a spurious argument. (Would we expect Jews and Muslims to give up their traditional systems in order to find a universal, neutral chronology?) In fact, the average history student (for who else uses the terms?) has no interest in knowing what BC and AD stand for, only what they mean chronologically.

A better point might be that the BC/AD system is a western tradition. As Mary Beard observes, "it is now impossible to imagine unpicking the Christian calendar". And, in any case, why should we be expected to overturn a perfectly good tradition that everybody understands?

A neutral system?

As many perceptive readers already realise, the BCE/CE system actually perpetuates the so-called "Christian" system by adopting the same cross-over point. The underlying system remains the same. 27 BCE is still the same as 27 BC, only it takes an extra letter to say so. So why change the abbreviations? Why does it matter?

It's all Voltaire's fault

Historical chronology began with biblical scholars. Writing in Latin, they naturally used the phrases ante Christum (before Christ) and anno Domini (in the year of the Lord) for dating biblical events. When secular historians tackled the chronology of ancient Greece, they naturally slotted events into the biblical timescale of "years before J.C." For example, in 1732, when James Anderson compiled his Royal Genealogies (subtitled The Genealogical Tables of Emperors, Kings and Princes, from Adam to these Times), he tabulated thousands of events beginning with the creation of the world "in the imaginery Year of the Julian Period 710, on the 23rd Day of October, Afternoon, before the Christian Era 4004 Years". He acknowledged that the only existing chronological framework was a Christian one.

Subsequent events were dated "A.M." (Anno Mundi, "in the year of the world"), with the equivalent year "before Christ" (being 4004 minus the year A.M.), with alternatives in the "Julian Period" (being A.M. + 710) and various other chronologies (olympiads, "era of Rome", "era of Nabonassar"). The Year 4714 of the Julian Period (= A.M. 4004) began a new era, according to Anderson, "which by long use is call'd the Era of Christ, and its Year call'd (Anno Domini) the Year of our Lord; tho' strictly it should be call'd (Anno Erae Christianae) the Year of the Christian Era". All subsequent dates are given A.D.

This was the milieu in which historians were working in the 18th and 19th centuries. When men like Voltaire came to write, they used phrases like "in the common era" or "in the Christian era" or "in the vulgar era" interchangeably. There was no Christian overtone. They simply made use of the chronologies worked out by men like James Anderson.

Which is better?

Any chronological system requires a fixed point. AD 1 painlessly gives us our fixed point, whether or not we agree with the reason for its invention. Any alternative chronological system would require a different fixed point to be agreed upon.

Perhaps it's simplest to stick with the BC/AD system. If some people feel the need to disguise its origins by relabelling it CE, who am I to complain?

Antonine Wall Museum

It has been a while since the Antonine Wall was in the news.

One of the recurring features of this blog -- besides championing a sensible interpretation of the disappearance of the Lost Ninth Legion (most recently here) -- is to follow developments on the Roman frontier in Scotland (most recently here). So this emperor was excited to learn that Glasgow University's Hunterian Museum -- home of many spectacular finds from the Antonine Wall -- has re-opened after a two-year refurbishment.

The Guardian newspaper reports, with not a little hyperbole, that "one of the Roman empire's most enigmatic monuments is set to reveal some of its secrets". Enigmatic? Secrets? (Well, I suppose journalists have got to drum up interest in their stories somehow.)

In fact, journalist Charlotte Higgins' second attempt at the story is a lot better: no hyperbole; just the bare facts (to parody her headline). She draws attention to the beautiful new gallery showcasing the permanent "Antonine Wall: Rome's Final Frontier" exhibition, and praises the designers' avoidance of gimmicky interactive displays. Here, rather than a "most enigmatic monument", the Antonine Wall is described -- perfectly -- as "this relatively little-known patch of Britain's Roman past". Second time's a charm, Charlotte.

Medieval Armour Was Heavy

Various press reports have latched onto the recent publication of some findings in the field of armour research.

A team involving academics from Leeds, Milan and Auckland measured the effects of walking and running in a 30-40kg suit of plate armour, and discovered -- surprise, surprise -- that wearing armour has a detrimental effect on a man's breathing.

Actually, their analysis is slightly more detailed than this. They have discovered that distributing the weight around a man's body and along his limbs in a suit of armour has a rather different effect from loading the same weight into a backpack. When suited up, a man's energy expenditure is around 2.2 times higher when walking, and 1.9 times higher when running, although his mass has increased by only 1.4 times.

Press reports (e.g. The Guardian newspaper, with video) have enthusiastically attributed the English victory at Agincourt in 1415 to the fact that "the French knights were knackered". Hopefully, historians will have a more sophisticated analysis of the battle!

Report: G.N. Askew, F. Formenti & A.E. Minetti, "Limitations imposed by wearing armour on Medieval soldiers' locomotor performance", in: Proceedings of the Royal Society B, online content: 10.1098/rspb.2011.0816

Under The Sun

Recently, I saw an advert for a book called "Everything Under The Sun". I don't know what kind of associations that phrase evokes for you, but for me it evokes King Solomon. And not in a good way.

There is, of course, a better known sun-related phrase, which I was reminded of while flicking through the Meditations of my adopted son (!), the emperor Marcus Aurelius.

I happened to be reading the wonderful old translation of Casaubon (1692), and came to the passage (VII.1) where he writes:

Generally, above and below, thou shalt find but the same things. The very same things whereof ancient stories, middle-age stories, and fresh stories are full: whereof Towns are full, and Houses full. There is nothing that is new. All things that are, are both usual and of little continuance.

C.R. Haines translates the same passage in the 1916 Loeb edition:

Look up, look down, everywhere thou wilt find the same things, whereof histories ancient, medieval, and modern are full; and full of them at this day are cities and houses. There is no new thing under the sun. Everything is stereotyped, everything fleeting.

His addition of the words "under the sun" betray the fact that Haines knew the Casaubon edition with its commentary by Monsieur and Madam Dacier, who wrote (in 1692) "Seeing there is nothing new under the Sun, and all things are at all times the same, we can renew our whole Life by renewing and bringing under our review, the things that have happened in our own time; for they are the same that we shall see afterwards".

The Wisdom of King Solomon

Of course, the Daciers did not invent the phrase. And here we return to King Solomon, because the phrase was first coined by him three millennia ago, as the writer of The Book of Ecclesiastes (1:9):

What has been will be again, What has been done will be done again, And there is nothing new under the sun.

The sentiment, evoking universal familiarity, is a hopeful one. Everything is renewed, everything begins again.

Perhaps less well known is another of Solomon's sayings, based around the phrase with which I began this post. The saying encapsulates quite a different sentiment: the opposite, negative version. On the subject of the vanity of pleasures, riches and wordly goods, he writes:

I was weary of my life, when I saw that all things under the sun are evil, and all vanity and vexation of spirit.

These words, which seem to sum up the opposite meaning, struck a chord with the seventeenth-century proponents of the "decaying world" theory. Far from everything repeating itself in a naturally renewing cycle, on the contrary, the world is constantly decaying.

In his History of the World in Five Books of 1614, Sir Walter Raleigh wrote:

And as all things under the sun have one time of strength and another of weakness, a youth and beauty, and then age and deformity; so time itself (under the dreadful shade of whose wings all things decay and wither) hath wasted and worn out that lively virtue of nature in man, and beasts, and plants, yea the heavens themselves, being of a most pure and cleansed matter, shall wax old as a garment.

Raleigh well knew the connotations of the phrase "Everything under the sun". And they are quite different from the philosophy of "Nothing new under the sun". A philosopher like Marcus Aurelius would never make the mistake of confusing the two.

Another book, another wall

The latest book to land on my imperial desk is The Aurelian Wall and the Refashioning of Imperial Rome by art historian Hendrik W. Dey, whose c.v. is eclectic in the extreme. (He has jointly authored papers on "Evidence for Holocene Marine Transgression and Shoreline Progradation Due to Barrier Development in Iskele, Bay of Izmir, Turkey" and "Tsunami waves generated by the Santorini eruption reached Eastern Mediterranean shores".)

The title of the book intrigued me, as it misuses the adjective "Aurelian". Dey requires a word that means "belonging to Aurelian", the emperor universally credited with building the visible walls of Rome. But the adjective "Aurelian" means "belonging to Aurelius" (as, for example, Marcus Aurelius' column at Rome is known as the Aurelian Column).

Think of Julius and the adjective "Julian", Augustus and the adjective "Augustan", Tiberius and the adjective "Tiberian", ... and then think of Trajan and the adjective "Trajanic", Hadrian and the adjective "Hadrianic", Diocletian and the adjective "Diocletianic". The word Dey needed is "Aurelianic".

This obvious error set my mind working: how did such an elementary mistake get past the editors at Cambridge University Press?

Aurelian's Wall

Although Dey's book is called The Aurelian Wall, and he mostly uses this phrase to describe it, he is well aware that "Aurelianic" is the correct form of the adjective: he refers to Aurelianic brickwork, and even occasionally (admittedly, very occasionally) risks confusing his readers by writing about the "Aurelianic Wall" (I counted only three instances). Clearly, he and his editors at Cambridge University Press have made the decision to re-christen the famous muri Aureliani "the Aurelian Wall".

It seems that Dey is not the first to make this mistake, though the perpetrators are usually North American. In 1898, the Canadian poet Bliss Carman wrote a poem entitled "By the Aurelian Wall", in memory of John Keats. Contemporary editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica were perhaps the source, as they seem to have opted for this same erroneous version. Yet a century earlier, the Scots philosopher David Hume correctly referred to "Aurelian's wall" in his 1758 essay "Of the Populousness of Antient Nations", and Edward Gibbon used the same phrase. Characteristically, the German wikipedia entry has it right, but not the American version.

So it must remain a curious puzzle, exactly when the mistaken form originated, and why. We wouldn't refer to Hadrian's Wall as "the Hadrian Wall", nor the Baths of Diocletian as "the Diocletian Baths", but for some reason, Cambridge University Press have chosen to throw their weight behind "the Aurelian Wall". Odd.

The Biggest Inscription of the Ancient World

I recently noticed that the University of Köln, in collaboration with publishers Rudolf Habelt, have begun to put the journal Epigraphica Anatolica online. The latest available issue, EA volume 40 (2007), includes a paper by Martin F. Smith and Jürgen Hammaerstaedt entitled "The inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda". It seems that work is continuing on this, the biggest inscription of the ancient world.

Giant Inscription

Smith, an independent scholar based in Shetland, has been studying this remarkable inscription, set up by the Epicurean philosopher Diogenes of Oinoanda, since 1968. Prior to that year, eighty-eight fragments were known to nineteenth century scholars; Smith added a further 125 during the years from 1968 to 1994, 10 more in 1997, another in 2003, and five in 2007, bringing the total to 229 pieces.

It seems that the inscription, proclaiming the wisdom of the third century BC philosopher Epicurus, occupied an entire wall of a stoa, or collonaded gallery, perhaps 100m long, which Diogenes had built in the city agora at Oinoanda (Turkey). When the city fell into disrepair, the stoa must have been gradually dismantled and the individual blocks dispersed for reuse across the site, some of them in an emergency defensive wall.

Scholars believe that the inscription includes several individual works; the title of one of them, Old Age, appears on Fragment 137. Others include miscellaneous Epicurean maxims, and a treatise on ethics, around half of which survives. One of the fragments explains that "I wanted, by making use of this stoa, to set out the remedies which bring health and safety".

Smith has estimated that only around one-third of the enormous jigsaw has so far been pieced together. Much work remains to be done. Hammerstaedt and Smith promise more discoveries in Epigraphica Anatolica volume 41 (2008), which will soon be going online, too.

Official Oinoanda, City of Diogenes web site: http://www.dainst.de/index_8097_de.html.

Julius Caesar and Jesus

It is Easter again, and it has become a blogging tradition (observed here and here and here) to select an Easter theme.

I recently heard someone remark that "there is more evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ than there is for Julius Caesar's invasion of Britain in 55 BC".

This is an intriguing variation of a perennial chestnut: that, somehow, the truth of Christianity can be proved by employing the techniques of historiography. In other words, if we can demonstrate what little evidence exists for other commonly accepted events in ancient history, we must surely accept the existence of Jesus Christ on similarly scanty evidence.

Religion vs. Ancient History

The most recent source of this argument was, I think, the late E.M. Blaiklock, sometime Classics lecturer and Christian apologist, who complained that "Julius Caesar is not thus dismissed, or his rather unsuccessful reconnaissance across the English Channel relegated to legend, despite the fact that our principal informant is Julius himself (in a book designed to secure his political reputation) and that confirmatory evidence of that campaign consists merely of a shield in the river at the Chelsea crossing of the Thames, a few lines in Cicero's voluminous correspondence, and only a handful of later references".

His point was that, if we are willing to believe everything that Julius Caesar wrote, why shouldn't we give the Gospel-writers a similar degree of trust? (As if proof of the mere existence of a man named Jesus contributes anything to a Christian's faith in the existence of a loving God. But that's another question.)

Christianity and the Philosophers

Two-hundred-and-fifty years ago, the philosopher David Hume realised that "some human testimony has the utmost force and authority in some cases ... [for example] when it relates the battles of Philippi or Pharsalia". His point was that we have no reason to dispute the descriptions of the ancient writers who recorded these events (chiefly Appian for the former, and Caesar himself for the latter). Much the same argument holds for Caesar's "rather unsuccessful reconnaissance across the English Channel", otherwise known as the first Roman invasion of Britain.

So, does the same apply to the Gospel accounts of the bodily resurrection of Jesus?

No less a thinker than Dr Samuel Johnson came at the problem from a different direction. Rather than casting doubt on random events from antiquity (whether they involved Caesar or Christ), he realised that it was perfectly possible to cast doubt upon a well-established contemporary truth. The example he selected was the well-known British taking of Canada in 1763, which he demonstrated to be so unlikely as to be doubtful: the French were far more numerous than the British aggressors, for example, and the sources of information on the event were all British. If doubt could be cast on so certain an event, what chance did the Resurrection have?

Returning to Blaiklock's comparison between Caesar and Christ, the intellectual Tom Paine had already considered this, but drew a less favourable conclusion: "The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision, and credulity believe," he wrote, with hard-headed pragmatism. "Stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of Julius Caesar not many years before, and they generally have their origin in violent deaths, or in execution of innocent persons".

In Good Company

But Johnson again took a different tack: "As to the Christian religion", he wrote, "besides the strong evidence which we have for it, there is a balance in its favour from the number of great men who have been convinced of its truth, after serious consideration of the question". One of those was the poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who scorned the search for evidence of Christianity. "Make a man feel the want of it, and you may safely trust to its own Evidence, remembering only the express declaration of Christ himself: No man cometh to me, unless the Father leadeth him" (citing John 6:44).

We should perhaps remember the words of the philosopher John Locke, who wrote that "a beneficent Creator has placed some things beyond the reach of human comprehension, but also has endowed us with faculties capable of grasping a few essential truths with certainty and many others with sufficient probability for belief and action". Christianity is not, after all, ancient history. It's a faith.

New Twist on the Lost Legion

The Eagle movie is due for release in the UK on 25 March, and publicity has reached fever pitch. Under the headline "Lost Legion", the BBC online magazine for 16 March 2011 asks: "Did a mysterious Roman military disaster change Britain?"

Archaeologist Miles Russell, a prehistorian from Bournemouth University, asks "could a brutal ambush have been the event that forged the England-Scotland border?"

Well, this old emperor can tell you right now: the answer is "No".

The BBC magazine suggests, rather simplistically, that "for the English, the massacre of the Ninth is an inspiring tale of home-grown "Davids" successfully taking on a relentless European "Goliath". For the Scots, given the debate on devolved government and national identity, not to say the cultural impact of Braveheart, the tale has gained extra currency - freedom-loving highlanders resisting monolithic, London-based imperialists."

Crazy Leap of Logic

Dr Miles Russell, self-professed exponent of extra-terrestrial archaeology, believes that "there is not one shred of evidence that the Ninth were ever taken out of Britain. It's just a guess which, over time, has taken on a sheen of cast iron certainty". ("Guess" is such a loaded term; let's say "theory" instead. But, in any case, Dr Russell is mistaken, as regular readers of this blog will know.)

But almost immediately, he contradicts himself. (Unless BBC Online Magazine have misquoted him.) "Three stamped tiles bearing the unit number of the Ninth found at Nijmegen, in the Netherlands, have been used to support the idea of transfer from Britain," he continues, "But these all seem to date to the 80s AD, when detachments of the Ninth were indeed on the Rhine fighting Germanic tribes." However, a senior lecturer in archaeology really ought to know that tile-stamps cannot be dated. And if the Ninth Legion never left Britain, as Dr Russell is keen to assert, how on earth could they be on the Rhine fighting Germanic tribes? He seems rather confused.

In fact, the manufacture of tiles in the Netherlands by the Ninth Legion does indeed prove that the legion had been transferred from Britain. There is no other explanation (... apart from extra-terrestrial involvement, I suppose).

Glossing over this inconvenient truth, Dr Russell then seizes upon the comment of an anonymous late Roman writer that, when Hadrian became emperor, "the Britons could not be kept under Roman control". In a huge leap of logic, he concludes that "It was the Ninth, the most exposed and northerly of all legions in Britain, that had borne the brunt of the uprising, ending their days fighting insurgents in the turmoil of early 2nd Century Britain." (Unless BBC Online Magazine have misquoted him.)

Absurd Conclusion

Surely a senior lecturer in archaeology ought to realise that "guesses" like this one really should be supported by some sort of evidence?

Having devised this fatuously simplistic theory, which fails to address any of the intricate evidence carefully assembled by generations of scholars, Dr Russell simply rests his case! (Unless BBC Online Magazine have misquoted him.)

"The loss of such an elite military unit", he continues, begging the question and blithely passing over the fact that he has failed to demonstrate such a loss, "had an unexpected twist which reverberates to the present day". What could this unexpected twist be? Dr Russell's answer is ... Hadrian's Wall! Thus, "the ultimate legacy of the Ninth was the creation of a permanent border, forever dividing Britain".

Reality Check

Wait! First, Dr Russell has not proved that the Ninth Legion was lost in Britain. He has not even contributed in any sensible way to the ongoing debate. He has simply belittled alternative theories (branding them "guesses") while asserting his own theory. Is this really how archaeology is taught at Bournemouth University?

And second, Dr Russell has failed to make a link between his alleged destruction of the Ninth Legion in a British ambush and the building of Hadrian's Wall. There has been much discussion of the circumstances surrounding the building of Hadrian's Wall, but -- again -- Dr Russell has not contributed in any sensible way to this discussion. He has simply asserted that Hadrian's response to the loss of the Ninth Legion was to build a wall!

Digging himself deeper into the mire of illogicality, he concludes: "The origins of what were to become the independent kingdoms of England and Scotland may be traced to the loss of this unluckiest of Roman legions". (Unless BBC Online Magazine have misquoted him.) What arrant nonsense. Even a glance at a map of Britain would show that the Scottish-English border is not marked by Hadrian's Wall. Hadrian's Wall lies entirely in England.

I'm only a grumpy old emperor, but am I wrong to expect more sense from a senior lecturer in archaeology?