Jan 17, 2022 06:44 PM
(This post was last modified: Jan 17, 2022 06:57 PM by C C.)
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022...rka-lovers
EXCERPTS: . . . For a decade, the assumption about the Lovers of Moderna's sex remained unchallenged. Then, in 2019, Lugli and his colleagues decided to try a newly available technique for determining the sex of human remains using proteins in tooth enamel. To their surprise, the Lovers were both male. The pair suddenly became potential evidence of a fifth-century same-sex relationship.
The story of the Lovers is part of an ongoing sexual revolution in archaeology. For decades, archaeologists have had to rely on grave goods and the shape of bones to tell them whether a skeleton belonged to a man or a woman, but over the past five years, the use of new, sophisticated methods has resulted in a string of skeletons having their presumed sex overturned. The ensuing challenges to our ideas about sex, gender and love in past societies have not been without controversy.
The wider debate on sex in archaeology took off in earnest with the now-famous 2017 paper about a Viking warrior, found in a grave full of weapons in Birka, Sweden. The grave had been known since the late 19th century and had been presumed to contain a man, but it wasn’t until Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson from Uppsala University, Sweden and her team tested a DNA sample that anyone could be sure.
[...] When they were first found, the Lovers were sexed by osteology, a visual examination of the bones that is still the most common way to sex remains. However, the technique is far from perfect. ... The Lovers of Valdaro were teenagers when they died, one possibly as young as 16, so the osteological examination that declared them “female” and “probably male” could use some modern back-up – and it’s on its way.
In the new year, a DNA project based at Tor Vergata University of Rome is set to reveal its results on the Lovers’ sex and potential familial relationships.
Beyond Lover couples, of which there are only a handful worldwide, two other groups will probably see more “sex reveals” in the future. One is hominids, the group of living and extinct apes that humans belong to. “[With] hominids, you’ve got poorly preserved skeletons of a species where you don’t know what the range of sexual dimorphism is, because you might just have bits of one or two of them,” explains Gowland. One very famous hominid known as Lucy, for example, was sexed by half a pelvis. “What if Lucy was Larry?”
[...] So, are the Lovers of Modena evidence of a same-sex relationship 1,500 years ago? Similar to how the Birka Viking’s warrior credentials became the subject of controversy when her sex was published, the love of the Lovers is now being called into question. They could be brothers, which, because of the failed DNA analysis, cannot be ruled out. The authors of the 2019 study themselves propose that they might have been comrades-in-arms. However, previous work by Lugli’s colleagues rejected the idea that they were buried in a military cemetery. The dead didn’t show signs of repeated combat, there were both men and women, and a six-year-old child. So why revive the soldier hypothesis?
Lugli says that certain things changed: there was an in-depth analysis of the injuries and a skeleton that they thought was a young woman was actually a man. But, he says, “our interpretation was mostly from a historical perspective”. He thinks it’s unlikely that their parents would put the pair hand in hand to show their love, at that time. “But anything’s possible.”
In other words, the dead don’t bury themselves. But clearly they don’t excavate themselves either. “There’s a real lack of creativity about how other people lived their lives,” says Pamela L Geller, a bioarchaeologist specialising in queer and feminist studies at the University of Miami, “because we are so wedded to the categories that we have in place now.” (MORE - missing details)
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Inner Cynic: Good, unintentional example of how the human sciences are now just trading in old biases for new ones. Most likely the duo actually are brothers or comrades of some sort, but using a social justice cognitive filter to interpret and popularize them as a gay couple is what garners attention and rewards for scientists in this era (published papers, research funding, lecture circuits, accolades from administrators and award academies, etc).
There's a marvelous network of mutually reinforcing circularity going on between "philosophical and politically left socioeconomic academic scholars" and the social sciences. The former shape the ideological predilections of the latter (especially with regard to the policies of science administrators). And the motivated reasoning and reward slash punishment structure of the scientists working under that (indirectly) humanities regulated structure accordingly output data evaluations (romping in statistical fallacies), fashionable interpretations, and studies that try to support the prescriptions, diagnoses, and hypotheses of academic scholars.
It's less a problem with physical sciences that sport heavy ties to technology and engineering, because the results and conclusions of those disciplines have to conform with standards of reality or the way nature works. Disaster will more quickly rear its head if _X_ is flawed, with ensuing litigation. Whereas in the human sciences (which can also include biomedical research), pretentious crap can circulate as facthood for decades without being seriously challenged.
EXCERPTS: . . . For a decade, the assumption about the Lovers of Moderna's sex remained unchallenged. Then, in 2019, Lugli and his colleagues decided to try a newly available technique for determining the sex of human remains using proteins in tooth enamel. To their surprise, the Lovers were both male. The pair suddenly became potential evidence of a fifth-century same-sex relationship.
The story of the Lovers is part of an ongoing sexual revolution in archaeology. For decades, archaeologists have had to rely on grave goods and the shape of bones to tell them whether a skeleton belonged to a man or a woman, but over the past five years, the use of new, sophisticated methods has resulted in a string of skeletons having their presumed sex overturned. The ensuing challenges to our ideas about sex, gender and love in past societies have not been without controversy.
The wider debate on sex in archaeology took off in earnest with the now-famous 2017 paper about a Viking warrior, found in a grave full of weapons in Birka, Sweden. The grave had been known since the late 19th century and had been presumed to contain a man, but it wasn’t until Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson from Uppsala University, Sweden and her team tested a DNA sample that anyone could be sure.
[...] When they were first found, the Lovers were sexed by osteology, a visual examination of the bones that is still the most common way to sex remains. However, the technique is far from perfect. ... The Lovers of Valdaro were teenagers when they died, one possibly as young as 16, so the osteological examination that declared them “female” and “probably male” could use some modern back-up – and it’s on its way.
In the new year, a DNA project based at Tor Vergata University of Rome is set to reveal its results on the Lovers’ sex and potential familial relationships.
Beyond Lover couples, of which there are only a handful worldwide, two other groups will probably see more “sex reveals” in the future. One is hominids, the group of living and extinct apes that humans belong to. “[With] hominids, you’ve got poorly preserved skeletons of a species where you don’t know what the range of sexual dimorphism is, because you might just have bits of one or two of them,” explains Gowland. One very famous hominid known as Lucy, for example, was sexed by half a pelvis. “What if Lucy was Larry?”
[...] So, are the Lovers of Modena evidence of a same-sex relationship 1,500 years ago? Similar to how the Birka Viking’s warrior credentials became the subject of controversy when her sex was published, the love of the Lovers is now being called into question. They could be brothers, which, because of the failed DNA analysis, cannot be ruled out. The authors of the 2019 study themselves propose that they might have been comrades-in-arms. However, previous work by Lugli’s colleagues rejected the idea that they were buried in a military cemetery. The dead didn’t show signs of repeated combat, there were both men and women, and a six-year-old child. So why revive the soldier hypothesis?
Lugli says that certain things changed: there was an in-depth analysis of the injuries and a skeleton that they thought was a young woman was actually a man. But, he says, “our interpretation was mostly from a historical perspective”. He thinks it’s unlikely that their parents would put the pair hand in hand to show their love, at that time. “But anything’s possible.”
In other words, the dead don’t bury themselves. But clearly they don’t excavate themselves either. “There’s a real lack of creativity about how other people lived their lives,” says Pamela L Geller, a bioarchaeologist specialising in queer and feminist studies at the University of Miami, “because we are so wedded to the categories that we have in place now.” (MORE - missing details)
- - - - - -
Inner Cynic: Good, unintentional example of how the human sciences are now just trading in old biases for new ones. Most likely the duo actually are brothers or comrades of some sort, but using a social justice cognitive filter to interpret and popularize them as a gay couple is what garners attention and rewards for scientists in this era (published papers, research funding, lecture circuits, accolades from administrators and award academies, etc).
There's a marvelous network of mutually reinforcing circularity going on between "philosophical and politically left socioeconomic academic scholars" and the social sciences. The former shape the ideological predilections of the latter (especially with regard to the policies of science administrators). And the motivated reasoning and reward slash punishment structure of the scientists working under that (indirectly) humanities regulated structure accordingly output data evaluations (romping in statistical fallacies), fashionable interpretations, and studies that try to support the prescriptions, diagnoses, and hypotheses of academic scholars.
It's less a problem with physical sciences that sport heavy ties to technology and engineering, because the results and conclusions of those disciplines have to conform with standards of reality or the way nature works. Disaster will more quickly rear its head if _X_ is flawed, with ensuing litigation. Whereas in the human sciences (which can also include biomedical research), pretentious crap can circulate as facthood for decades without being seriously challenged.
Recognizing Politically-Biased Social Science
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...al-science
Political biases constitute a permanent threat to the validity of social science on politicized issues because:
(1) Almost everyone in the social sciences holds politically left beliefs, including an extraordinary overrepresentation of radicals, activists, and extremists (see this reading list for more on this and other topics addressed in this essay).
(2) Until that changes, there is always a potential for those political beliefs to influence almost every step of the research process, including but not restricted to what gets studied, funded, and published, how studies are designed and interpreted, and which conclusions become widely accepted within a field.
(3) Unless active steps are taken to limit such biases, they are likely to run rampant; many social scientists embrace the idea that infusing social science with activist agendas is justified.