Anglo-Saxon Christian grave find near Cambridge 'extremely rare'
This item on BBC news website is really annoying. Now I know that when the media reports academic work it often simplifies the findings / theories etc. But if any of the quotes given are in the least bit accurate it is just another example of the way archaeologists make huge assumptions about their finds.
Here they have found a grave of a teenage girl buried with a gold and garnet cross. The cross they assume is a sign of Christianity and therefore presumably the faith of the girl. This maybe not be the case at all.
How can anyone possibly now what this unknown girl believed? Unless the girl is identified and some other proof of her faith is discovered all we really know is she was buried with a cross.
Now as a deceased person has no control over how they are buried and what with, it could be argued that those that buried her were Christian. But again we cannot know that for certain. The cross may have been looted or even found and just a favourite piece of the girl.
Archaeologists need to be more honest and say 'we just don't know what the significance of this find' because they really can only hypothesize.
Friday 16 March 2012
Sunday 11 March 2012
The past is another country - is Bradford?
Last week, for want of anything else to watch on TV, I ended up viewing 2 programmes I hadn't planned too. One was the first episode of new BBC2 drama 'White Heat'. In this one of 7 former flat mates has died and as the survivors begin to gather at the London flat they once shared their stories are told in flashback. So far so unoriginal. But that's not the reason I wasn't going to watch. The flashbacks start from 1965 and as the last 20th century historical piece on BBC2 'The Hour' was did not work either as a thriller or a docudrama I was wary. And going by this first episode I was right to be so. The character's are cliched and were introduced against a backdrop of social and political events of the period. This was to be expected; we all must be constantly reminded that the 1960s was a period of GREAT SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CHANGE and don't you forget it! As if no decade has ever been as important. Obliviously nothing of significance ever happened in the 1950s, 70s, 80s etc. One thing this consistent referencing of events in 1965 did do however was reinforce the cliched characters.
There's Jack, whose daddy owns the flat. He thinks he's a revolutionary and can afford to be because daddy is a MP and can and does pay off his debts.
Charlotte, a naive, virginal nice middle-class girl from the suburbs who has to leave home to realise her dad is having an affair and her mummy drinks so much gin because her miserable life as a hausfrau and absent husband. Charlotte reads DH Lawrence's 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', gets the Pill and has sex with Jack, only to find out he's got no emotional feelings for her at all.
Alan is from t'up North. He thinks he's better than those he's left behind but is still deferential to the old order.
Victor is a law student from Jamaica. Home sick and subject to racial prejudice, he fancies Charlotte.
Lily is an art student, already seduced by her tutor and under pressure from her parents to give up art and return to the 'real world'. Alan fancies her
Jay is a medical student and closet gay. But his secret is out to the final flat sharer, Orla, who sees him with another boy at a party.
Orla is the only surprise in this mix. A frumpy catholic girl from Belfast, not attractive and very different from the rest - she's the only reason I'd keep watching as I'd like to see where her story is going.
After seeing 'White Heat' I decided to watch Channel 4s 'Make Bradford British'. What's the connection? Well in 'White Heat' Alan says that Jack choose them all to share the flat as a kind of social experiment. And what else could you call sticking 8 people from different backgrounds into each others lives to see what happens? I didn't see the first of this 2 part docu-reality programme but I had read that it caused some outrage by groups in Bradford who saw it as provocative and made the town sound so divisive. The 8 were chosen from a group of Bradford residents who failed the citizenship test and I gather in the first episode the 8 were all living together. In this second one they were paired off to spend 2 days living in each others homes to see what makes us British.
What followed in it's abbreviated and edited way was a short insight into prejudice and preconceptions that reflect on us all I guess to some extent or another.
Jens, retired policeman and pillar of this almost exclusively white community, was like a throw back to another era. Paired with Desmond, Black British, born here of Caribbean parents, Jens at first cannot see past Desmond's colour and makes continue remarks about it until Desmond takes him to a pub where as a young man he was attacked just for being black. For his part Desmond is impressed by the charitable and community work that Jens does. Both do seem to learn from each other.
Pub landlady Audrey, whose dad was black and mum white, has Sabbiyah as her partner. We don't see much of her at Sabbiyah's but at her pub Sabbiyah is exposed to a truly unpleasant tirade from a white customer that reduces her to tears. Maura is not as understanding as one might have expected her to be but reflects on her own past experiences of racism and comes to realise that she, as she puts it, is racist and uses her colour to argue that she can't be.
Damon, young, white and recently split from his girlfriend and mother of his child is with Rashid, who is welcoming and takes him to his local mosque, where Damon discovers Islam is not about terrorism. Damon is impressed by the way the local community and Rashid's family take care of each other and when Rashid reveals that he has a broken marriage and children the two men realise that they have more in common than they thought.
The last pairing went very wrong. Taxi driver Mohammed and former magistrate Maura are just too different. Maura is appalled at the way Mohammed treats his wife and daughter and he sees her as bossy. Briefly when Maura goes out with him to work she sees how he could view white British society in a less than favourable way. But at Maura's house Mohammed snaps at being asked a question about his daughter bringing home a white boyfriend and walks out not to return.
I wasn't surprised at this. Of all the participants Mohammed looked the most uncomfortable and probably regretted ever getting involved. Sadly though he also confirmed a stereotypical view of an Asian man, marrying off his daughter as a teenager to someone back home and having a house bound wife who doesn't speak English.
So did this social experiment achieve anything? Well it showed to some of the participants their own prejudices and perhaps makes us all reflect on what makes us the same and not different - family and belonging. But the title of the programme was meaningless and I can't help feeling it was just there to provoke. The only thing that can make people feel British is the feeling that they belong.
There's Jack, whose daddy owns the flat. He thinks he's a revolutionary and can afford to be because daddy is a MP and can and does pay off his debts.
Charlotte, a naive, virginal nice middle-class girl from the suburbs who has to leave home to realise her dad is having an affair and her mummy drinks so much gin because her miserable life as a hausfrau and absent husband. Charlotte reads DH Lawrence's 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', gets the Pill and has sex with Jack, only to find out he's got no emotional feelings for her at all.
Alan is from t'up North. He thinks he's better than those he's left behind but is still deferential to the old order.
Victor is a law student from Jamaica. Home sick and subject to racial prejudice, he fancies Charlotte.
Lily is an art student, already seduced by her tutor and under pressure from her parents to give up art and return to the 'real world'. Alan fancies her
Jay is a medical student and closet gay. But his secret is out to the final flat sharer, Orla, who sees him with another boy at a party.
Orla is the only surprise in this mix. A frumpy catholic girl from Belfast, not attractive and very different from the rest - she's the only reason I'd keep watching as I'd like to see where her story is going.
After seeing 'White Heat' I decided to watch Channel 4s 'Make Bradford British'. What's the connection? Well in 'White Heat' Alan says that Jack choose them all to share the flat as a kind of social experiment. And what else could you call sticking 8 people from different backgrounds into each others lives to see what happens? I didn't see the first of this 2 part docu-reality programme but I had read that it caused some outrage by groups in Bradford who saw it as provocative and made the town sound so divisive. The 8 were chosen from a group of Bradford residents who failed the citizenship test and I gather in the first episode the 8 were all living together. In this second one they were paired off to spend 2 days living in each others homes to see what makes us British.
What followed in it's abbreviated and edited way was a short insight into prejudice and preconceptions that reflect on us all I guess to some extent or another.
Jens, retired policeman and pillar of this almost exclusively white community, was like a throw back to another era. Paired with Desmond, Black British, born here of Caribbean parents, Jens at first cannot see past Desmond's colour and makes continue remarks about it until Desmond takes him to a pub where as a young man he was attacked just for being black. For his part Desmond is impressed by the charitable and community work that Jens does. Both do seem to learn from each other.
Pub landlady Audrey, whose dad was black and mum white, has Sabbiyah as her partner. We don't see much of her at Sabbiyah's but at her pub Sabbiyah is exposed to a truly unpleasant tirade from a white customer that reduces her to tears. Maura is not as understanding as one might have expected her to be but reflects on her own past experiences of racism and comes to realise that she, as she puts it, is racist and uses her colour to argue that she can't be.
Damon, young, white and recently split from his girlfriend and mother of his child is with Rashid, who is welcoming and takes him to his local mosque, where Damon discovers Islam is not about terrorism. Damon is impressed by the way the local community and Rashid's family take care of each other and when Rashid reveals that he has a broken marriage and children the two men realise that they have more in common than they thought.
The last pairing went very wrong. Taxi driver Mohammed and former magistrate Maura are just too different. Maura is appalled at the way Mohammed treats his wife and daughter and he sees her as bossy. Briefly when Maura goes out with him to work she sees how he could view white British society in a less than favourable way. But at Maura's house Mohammed snaps at being asked a question about his daughter bringing home a white boyfriend and walks out not to return.
I wasn't surprised at this. Of all the participants Mohammed looked the most uncomfortable and probably regretted ever getting involved. Sadly though he also confirmed a stereotypical view of an Asian man, marrying off his daughter as a teenager to someone back home and having a house bound wife who doesn't speak English.
So did this social experiment achieve anything? Well it showed to some of the participants their own prejudices and perhaps makes us all reflect on what makes us the same and not different - family and belonging. But the title of the programme was meaningless and I can't help feeling it was just there to provoke. The only thing that can make people feel British is the feeling that they belong.
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