To say that this is beneath contempt is to give it too much praise

[fpb]

http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/historians-say-theyve-located-king-arthurs-round-table/19550471?icid=main|aim|dl1|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolnews.com%2Fworld%2Farticle%2Fhistorians-say-theyve-located-king-arthurs-round-table%2F19550471

I ask you.
Some of us spend years of unpaid work patiently working out the circumstances in which early British and related literature arose, studying texts word by word, excluding hypotheses we would have liked to entertain, sticking rigorously to what can be shown to be the case. The result? Our work gets maybe ten hits a year. Then some unspeakable moron comes along and claims that, because the "city of Legions" and a shrine to martyrs are mentioned in the same text (which, he fails to say, is book-length) - this proves that an amphitheatre in Chester is King Arthur's Round Table! And this, in the name of God and before all the hosts of Hell, passes for scholarship! It is published in newspapers and magazines! And the conscious fraudster - because this cannot but be conscious - revels in the publicity and perhaps gets a permanent spot in the media or a university chair!

NEWSPAPERS, WEEKLIES AND TV NEWS PROGRAMMES SHOULD BE FORBIDDEN BY LAW FROM COMMENTING ON ARCHAEOLOGY, AND ESPECIALLY ON ARTHURIAN MATTERS.

Comments

[fellmama.livejournal.com]

Eh, this is always the way, and no doubt it will pass. Remember a few years ago when Carandini was going around saying he'd found the Lupercal?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

There's a difference. Carandini may not be much when it comes to historical reconstruction, but he has made some very significant finds (including the thing that wasn't there - the lack of any destruction layer at the time when Rome was supposed to have been destroyed by the Gauls). And there is nothing wrong with thinking one has located a sacred place that was known to be in the Palatine area anyway. This is another matter altogether.

[affablestranger.livejournal.com]

Good grief. Now he'll be on the hunt for Excalibur and That Lake, and he'll probably get good funding for the "search".

I'd like to get in on some of that money.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

The really aggravating thing is that the press does this with pretty much every field of study.