Romans In Denmark.

[cmacq]

Preface Rant

First, remember this is all in good cheer, so please don’t misinterpret the bearing of my comments, as my subtle nature is often misconstrued as sledgehammer-ish, cutting, or by the truly clueless; mean-spirited? Must, be my heritage coming through, as I typically call it, as it lies. A far as US Archaeology and Historiography are concerned, my personal experience is as follows; method is great as an outline, but as much as possible, your research/project must always be based on direct evidence, and all direct evidence must be field checked if possible. You can do this by establishing a set of simple yet rigorous tests. You must always personaly know the provider of all indirect evidence you use. If you do not know them, don’t trust them, and if for some reason you do trust them, triple check and test everything, if you don’t trust them don’t use this type of evidence, except prefaced as a cautionary tale. Also, learn to render Latin, and Greek texts yourself, as you will find many well-worn translations are not at all what they should be.

To understand Goffart’s works, one must first understand the history of US Archaeology and Historiography from the 60s on, to some degree, Yet,let’s just cut the crab and get straight to the chase? First, Archaeology is not an exact science; rather it’s more a scientific-art. The study of history beyond textural evidence, on the other hand, relies directly on the former discipline, and thus is even more an art than is Archaeology. In this vain, I believe many archaeologists from this era (60s to 90s) have sort of an Oedipus complex, in that they seek to kill the father of their art, and 'do' their respective mother-discipline. Yes strange but true, as they try to trash their predecessors, not based on merit, but for the sake of their career. That is, to stand out, apart, or above? Again, sad but very true, as it’s all wrapped in the various guises of Marxist, Processual or so-called New, Behavioral, and Post-processual, or good god, feminist, gender-based, and neo-Marxist Archaeological approaches/methods. Today we have the neo-Darwinism, cognitive science, phenomenology, postmodernism, agency theory, Functionalism, and System theory. From this god awful mess Historiography and its method have taken its own buss words and then we have our revisionists and minimalists, of which vat the works of Mr Goffart are well known to fall. In the end these works serve only to foster the recent and more modern antagonisms of the major enthno-political complexes that be, that want what all good collectives always want; a long and glorious past for the so-called ‘pure’ or ‘master race.’

If you'r in school now, post-grad, I hope you’ve heard all this before, yet I know many are treated as mushrooms. Kept in the dark and feed only bull.

The direct textual and archaeological evidence from Denmark (and modern Germany) are very clear on this point. There was significant cultural and demographic change between the 1st century BC and 3rd century AD. There also is significant evidence of similar changes between the 4th and 7th centuries in Denmark. Much of this has to do with why radiocarbon dating doesn’t work as it should.

If you want more detailed information please outline the specifics.