>(On a related note, I kind of wish Garreth would stop abusing the term
>"relativism". But I'm not very optimistic about that happening, either.)
Thank goodness. I thought for a while that I was the only one who found the thread errr, largely self-absorbed and perplexing.
Using special definitions of your own devising for clearly defined and understood words like 'myth' is one thing, parroting vague generalities as self-referential circles of meaning is another, misusing words like 'relativism' when you mean 'diversities of opinion' is another again. But what really makes me wonder about the relevance of any of this argument is the refusal, when challenged, of the gentleman concerned to demonstrate how these lines of thought could be applied to a game or to the original game event under discussion with practical examples.
I tried thinking about a real GM in a real game would go trying to use such opinions. The experiment proved.... interesting.
In my own experience, archaeological approaches to interpreting culture usually parrot the current anthropological fashions, though with a lead time of around fifteen years. Recently, this lead time has proven to be to archaeology's distinct advantage. Themes and interpretive approaches like 'women the gatherer' or 'the interweaving of myth and ritual' get hashed around in the anthropological journals, and if they rise to the top and prove to have a practical utility, they get incorporated into the archaeological toolkit. This is in no way to devalue archaeology's unique perspectives and tools, but in any reading the archaeology of objects is, questions of dating and reconstruction aside, largely a variant on decidedly anthropological fields like semiotics, material culture and evolution/diffusion.
I have previously requested an example of this alleged 'material culture' approach that does not repeat perspectives already used in our explorations. Can anyone help with this?
Perplexed of Much Twittering in Chipping Sodbury (John)
nysalor_at_... John Hughes
Questlines: http://home.iprimus.com.au/pipnjim/questlines/
"There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind."
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