I find it odd how an archeaologist is telling these aircraft historians who’ve excavated wrecks in order to further their knowledge of their particular interest in history that they are nothing more than treasure hunters. I don’t mean offence to your profession Malcolm but that attitude seems like pure snobbish piffle to me.
Unless I am missing something vital in this and need it explained in small syllables to put me right, because I’m no archeaologist, but I cannot fathom what the difference between an academic archeologist who digs up mummies (grave robbing!) or dinosaurs or old building foundations etc, and an aviation archeaologist who digs up a wreck from 60 years ago is.
How is it different? You both dig a hole, pull something out, investigate and analyse it to hopefully further your research, and by and large sell it to a museum or collector when finished for preservation – and to pay your expenses.
The only things different I see apart from one group being able to wave their doctorate and the other (in some cases) not, is that the archeaological study of ancient artifacts is much less scientific in a tangible sense and much more based on theory. Some old pot found in the ground can be theorised as to its age, usage, religious meaning etc – but no-one who used or made the pot is here to tell us and it was never photographed or written about at the time. So, it is either a useless piece of pottery, or a theory has to be developed around it to give it meaning and make it important.
Whereas we do know all about Spitfires, who designed them, who built them, who flew them, how and why they were used in WWII combat, and all about their engineering, etc as it’s all documented and eyewitnesses, users, even in some cases the manufacturers of an aircraft still exist – so there’s no need to theorise, it can be factualised. And in an individual case like this dig, you can then use all that fact to build up a picture of circumstance – the missing piece of the jigsaw.
With the pot, we don’t even have a clue about the pot near alone the circumstance in which it came to be buried. You can theorise who may have made it, who may have used it, how they engineered the clay,etc. But it ain’t fact, it’s theory, usually based on comparisions with previous theory. Sometimes no matter how wide of the mark it may be the archeaologist then presents it to the world as ‘fact’ – just like other sciences that cannot prove the theory but present it as the truth – like Geology – has anyone ever seen the earth’s core? No. So who’s to say my theory it’s white chocolate is any less valid?
Anyway, my point is, is it not a good thing to have people researching these wrecks now and getting the facts down for future generations while we know all that surrounding evidence that is fact. Or would you rather wait 500 or 1000 years till everyone connected to a Spitfire is long gone, no more actually exist for whatever reason and many records have disappeared in whatever wars or natural disaters that are to come, and then have some academic archeaologist dig the remains up only to theorise a little about it using their own completely different and removed discourse and assume he knows all about it, despite the fact he may connect the dots quite wrongly? He may assume that this beautifully crafted metal obkject is some ceremonial burial casket blah blah blah like most things archeaologists dig up these days.
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