Education? (What do you do?)

[Apázlinemjó]

I haven't seen any of their history department, sorry. But why be an historian when you could be an archaeologist? So much more depth. They way I like to look at it is the historian can read Caesar's Gallic Wars and say what the Aedui were doing in 54BC. The archaeologist can tell you what they had been wearing, eating and how healthy they were in 54BC.

Without the archaeological evidence EB would very bland, the Sauromatae, early Saka, Casse, Lusotann and for the most part the Aedui, Arverni and Sweboz would probably be just as generic as the "barbarians" in RTW vanilla. Not to offend the historians amongst us, without you the Hellenic factions and Roma would be very lacking, I just prefer knowing what individuals wore in antiquity rather than where they were.

When I applied for university I wanted to take archeology first, but somehow () I ended up at history and I still don't regret it. As one of my favourite professors said, the historian's work is like an investigator's, we have puzzle pieces and an unknown case, so our job is to solve the puzzle and find out what really happened. The archeologists' work is different, they find the pieces and analyze them, but it's not their job to put this into the whole picture. For example in Hungary, the archeology bachelors study Pannonia province a lot, while the Roman Empire as a whole not, it's exactly the opposite with us. But it depends on what you like actually, I more like to "work" with the big picture.

[kekailoa]

I'm interested in both, and to be a good archaeologist you obviously have to enjoy and have a thorough understanding of history, not only of the place you are working and/or excavating but of the surrounding regions and world as a whole.

But I couldn't be a historian. I love the material culture of ancient societies waaaay to much. The phenomenal detail and skill that's unmatched today is incredible, and being an archaeologist you get to see all that pretty stuff.

[WarpGhost]

I did Applied Physics at uni; history (especially ancient period) is a hobby.

[Seneca]

I have a BA in the history of ideas/thinking, and will shortly be completing a BA in PR and communication.

[Macilrille]

I haven't seen any of their history department, sorry. But why be an historian when you could be an archaeologist? So much more depth. They way I like to look at it is the historian can read Caesar's Gallic Wars and say what the Aedui were doing in 54BC. The archaeologist can tell you what they had been wearing, eating and how healthy they were in 54BC.

I am sorry to say so, and no offense meant, but...

This exhibits a great lack of knowledge of the science/art of historical research...

Source criticism applied is the foundation of historical research, all too many archeologists read the sources and does not apply any criticism/theory. I suspect all too many historians have looked at the material remains and not applied archeological theory/source criticism as well, though I hope that is a thing of the past.

It is seperate sciences for a reason and if I may say so, you have much reading to do and enlightenment to reach if you believe that one can just read the sources and know what happened and I am frankly both surprised and somewhat disappointed by such a view

You do the digging and thinking, I do the reading and thinking, then we compare notes. Two specialists can do more than two generalists, so it is better thus.

[Brennus]

Now gentlemen if you will allow me to compose my response to the following points ( I mean no offence, this is purely on academics)

As one of my favourite professors said, the historian's work is like an investigator's, we have puzzle pieces and an unknown case, so our job is to solve the puzzle and find out what really happened. The archeologists' work is different, they find the pieces and analyze them, but it's not their job to put this into the whole picture. .

This point only holds for literate societies that do not have complex political structures. Your point holds true for Rome and Carthage and other major literate political powers. These nations had writers with political bias and leaders that would guide the nation to perform certain acts of conquest, tolerate certain peoples and implement new reforms (the so called "Great Man" theory of German Historiography). Now these great powers were too short lived to be affected by climatic changes in a the way Palaeolithic man was and too well documented that archaeoloy could really alter the picture, however in illiterate or poorly documented societies the archaeologist is responsible for reconstructing the big picutre as best as can be done (e.g. V. Gordon Childe). And in societies where changes are observed lasting for much longer than could be caused by individuals (e.g. spread of agriculture) it is the responsibility of archaeologists (or your own French Annales School) to build up the big picture

I am sorry to say so, and no offense meant, but...

This exhibits a great lack of knowledge of the science/art of historical research...

Source criticism applied is the foundation of historical research, all too many archeologists read the sources and does not apply any criticism/theory. I suspect all too many historians have looked at the material remains and not applied archeological theory/source criticism as well, though I hope that is a thing of the past.

It is seperate sciences for a reason and if I may say so, you have much reading to do and enlightenment to reach if you believe that one can just read the sources and know what happened and I am frankly both surprised and somewhat disappointed by such a view

You do the digging and thinking, I do the reading and thinking, then we compare notes. Two specialists can do more than two generalists, so it is better thus.

I must commend your historical credentials that you were able to extract so much from my short comment. Yes you are correct the two social sciences are distinct for reasons but if I may respond to a few certain points. It is not the duty of the archaeologist to apply critique to historical records from reading them. We read, we excavate, then we criticise. More often than not the historian deals with more precise data, "Why was X at Y in such a year? What were the implications for X thinking at the time? What bias does this infer in X work?" the archaeologist however deals with broader, more blunt data "Why does Z artefact occur throughout region Y? What are the implications for the population" To put it simply you deal with great men's diaries, we deal with commen men's bins. It is your job to critique the historical records we can only disprove them, but as mentioned by someone above the archaeologist must have a good understanding of history that is why archaeology is an auxillary of history. Historical sources for you are you data, they are just guides for us, if we evaluated them we wouldn't be archaeologists, our data is the waste of societies, if you analysed our data you wouldn't be historians.

[alexanderthegreater]

Perhaps we should consider archeology and history to be two fields in a hybrid relationship to each other to reconstruct our knowledge of the past. It is true that archeologists analyze archeological evidence, and historians the historical sources, yet the conclusions of archeologists are incorporated in the reconstruction of the past by historians, while the finds of historians can be confirmed or disproven by archeology.

Yet there are some aspects of history which cannot be reconstructed by archeological evidence. I am thinking of certain cultural and sociological aspects, such as political systems, ideology, etc. Which have had a profound impact on our past. Here come in the social sciences such as antropology and sociology. This would add to the earlier mentioned point that history attempts to attain a more general view of our past, incorporating several techniques.

In addition to this, it must indeed be noted that the more general picture history attempts to provide applies only to literal cultures. There is written little about the Celts for example, and generally by outsiders (Romans). In their case it is archeology which provides the bulk of our knowledge.

And in societies where changes are observed lasting for much longer than could be caused by individuals (e.g. spread of agriculture) it is the responsibility of archaeologists (or your own French Annales School) to build up the big picture

I am inclined to strongly disagree here. It is a misconception that the study of history limits itself to gaining knowledge of a big basket of unrelated events. Au contraire, the central aim of history is to combine sources (not rarely spanning longer periods) to deduct general processes and developments. For example, the transition of the society of the Roman Empire into that of the Middle Ages. According to a somewhat dated theory, the Middle Ages only truly started with the collapse of mediterannean trade contacts due to the Arabic invasion of North Africa in the 8th century (!). Likewise, the serfdom of the Middle ages can be said to have originated in the closer binding of Roman colonists to their ground by their landlords during the Late Empire. (due to labor shortages among other things)
It is also nonsensical to base your perception of history on the Great Man Theory, which hasnt been at the forefront of historical thought since the beginning of the 20th century.

Just my 2 cents.

[vartan]

47 year old big kid and retired from an unrelated profession.

I hope you're having a blast. 19 years old here, and personally, age is but a number!

I want to choose theoretical chemistry.

Nice! Have fun with that =] I'm more of a pragmatist, hence the chemical engineering field for me =)

And yeah...there are so many chemists playing this game!!!

[Rahwana]

WE should start a specific chemist group here

BTW, I just completed my study in artifact compotition determination... That's awful, with 0.01 gr of sample, you should able to determine anything from it... one wrong breath and all is over...

[Brennus]

I think you sum up the situation very well Alexanderthegreater.

[vartan]

WE should start a specific chemist group here

BTW, I just completed my study in artifact compotition determination... That's awful, with 0.01 gr of sample, you should able to determine anything from it... one wrong breath and all is over...

Let's start it =]

And yeah. But 0.01g is a full 10mg. That's plenty if you have the right tools and a great lab.

[mountaingoat]

full time barbarian

[Brennus]

full time barbarian

Best Response so far!

[Cute Wolf]

Let's start it =]

And yeah. But 0.01g is a full 10mg. That's plenty if you have the right tools and a great lab.

He once accidentally blow up (with his nose) an ancient javanese shadow puppet's sample... that sample was actually for a whole class to analyze, but lost because his carelessness

[Apázlinemjó]

This point only holds for literate societies that do not have complex political structures. Your point holds true for Rome and Carthage and other major literate political powers. These nations had writers with political bias and leaders that would guide the nation to perform certain acts of conquest, tolerate certain peoples and implement new reforms (the so called "Great Man" theory of German Historiography). Now these great powers were too short lived to be affected by climatic changes in a the way Palaeolithic man was and too well documented that archaeoloy could really alter the picture, however in illiterate or poorly documented societies the archaeologist is responsible for reconstructing the big picutre as best as can be done (e.g. V. Gordon Childe). And in societies where changes are observed lasting for much longer than could be caused by individuals (e.g. spread of agriculture) it is the responsibility of archaeologists (or your own French Annales School) to build up the big picture

I generally agree what you said, those archeologists, who study the pre-witten and "not really" documented cultures, graduated in History too, at least in Hungary. While who work with the "classical" Ancient and Medieval times are usually "simple" archeologists studying mostly their fields only. While the historians (who teach us for example) have a deeper knowledge about the whole said time itself. I like the history department more, because I can study entire countries', fractions', "nations'", empires' struggles, advances, wars, economies (), cultures and declines, while with archeology I would feel that I'm "restricted" on one area/time.

[Aitcho]

I'm gonna buck the trend here: I'm 32, a Music Producer and Music Technology graduate and lecturer and know absolutely nothing about the time period apart from studying at Roman Britain aged 12. I always had toy soldiers and played Warhammer 40k and used to dream of a day when you could have real battles on a computer so I guess that's why I play.

[applebreath]

At the moment, a full-time bum...

[Mouzafphaerre]

.
Decided to give a second try to university at the beginning of my mid-thirties and began studying classical philology (Ancient Greek and Latin).
.

[the man with no name]

I've a long time to decide what i want to be when i grow up but at the moment i have 2 ideas, both involving history.

1. Be an archeologist on the celtic world.
2. Be an World Studies teacher/ancient gallic archeology professor

full time barbarian

EPIC WIN

3. I dislike the way history is approached at school.

~Fluvius

This is exacactly correct! In my school system we only ever study their gov't systems and why this affected this and that affected that and so on and so forth.

I haven't seen any of their history department, sorry. But why be an historian when you could be an archaeologist? So much more depth. They way I like to look at it is the historian can read Caesar's Gallic Wars and say what the Aedui were doing in 54BC. The archaeologist can tell you what they had been wearing, eating and how healthy they were in 54BC.

I agree with all of this completely.

What the heck, how did this double post? I could have sworn i copyed these quotes and pasted them. Oh well. Maybe Ludens can fix this.

[Iain.]

Sort of a Chemist

Sort of in that I'm starting a degree in pure chemistry this september.

[vartan]

Sort of a Chemist

Sort of in that I'm starting a degree in pure chemistry this september.

You should join EB Chemists.

Education. What do you do? Attain it.

[Hannibal Khan the Great]

Well I'm not even in high school yet, but I do plan to get a degree in either classical, dark ages or medieval history. Considering that I've got a plan that gets me 4 (or 5 if I do good enough in HS) free years of college, I think I've got everything pretty well planned out.

[stratigos vasilios]

I'm doing my Masters in Audiology. History is a thoroughly enjoyable hobby with its enjoyment multiplied when playing EB.

[Daiyoukai Ramza]

I regret to say that I only have a High School diploma, with no real plans to pursue further education. Due to intense laziness and some... rough times as a teenager, I posses neither the grades, nor the standardized test scores to enter a good college; never mind the whole financial aspect of that endeavor. However, if I were to enroll in an institution of higher education, the most plausible majors for me, considering my interests, would be history, archaeology, or biology. A degree in English would be a distant fourth, if only because I do not hold that major in particularly high regard compared to the others when it comes to job prospects, despite my love of writing. Ironically, my fifth choice for a major would be mathematics, despite my utter ineptitude at any field of mathematics more advanced or difficult than geometry.

Of course, my sub-par performance in mathematics could be chalked up to my teachers, all of whom failed in making the material they taught seem relevant to my life. Still, I'm not entirely sure if it's that, a genuine weakness in my mathematical capabilities, or both. In any case, it's a pretty big hurdle in regards to gaining a degree in any math-heavy field.

...

On a final note, I believe that years of exposure to the internet has literally sapped my intelligence. It's a miracle I can even type in complete sentences with (semi)proper grammar and spelling.

[vartan]

The whole proper grammar and spelling "thing" seem to vary among forums. Is it just me or does this forum tend to have on average more people that can execute aforementioned grammar and spelling as opposed to forums for any old video game?

[bobbin]

Sort of a Chemist

Sort of in that I'm starting a degree in pure chemistry this september.

Which uni are you going to?

[Yeos]

I studying Business Management Accounting, completely unrelated to EB. I kind of have an interest in historical stuff, especially in war stuff. I also love telling them to people in detail about these history stuff. ^^

I wonder why I didn't go for historical subject and jobs.....

[Ortilochus]

I'm another chemist. In my third year at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and currently doing my exams. I am fascinated with ancient history and two of my favourite books are also the Iliad and the Odyssey. After reading about battles it is great that I can play on EB to connect with the past.

P.S How do I join EB chemists?

[Nobo]

I have a Bsc in International Business and just started my Msc in Strategic Marketing. After that... who knows. But I have a feeling that my EB time will drop dramatically, once I actually have to work for a living

[Andronikos]

Ortilochus, I tried to send you an invitation, but it failed, so I suppose, that Junior Members can't join groups, just wait for a while, I will invite both you and Iain. later.