Back to the Caveman subject. I'm kinda glad we touched on this again, since I think when Erin brought it up on one of the first days, I wasn't really paying attention 100%. I remember seeing the title "Gay Caveman" under one of the pictures just as she was changing a slide, and thinking "wtf?".
Anyways, after researching it on google and discussing gender in class, it's clear that it is certainly quite an interesting idea. However, what I want to focus on more so in this entry are the reactions I read to the various articles posting about this groundbreaking "Gay Caveman"
Since this individual was in fact a member of a bronze-age farming community, why must the media label him as a "caveman" in the first place? I think this is a perfect example of how skewed media perspectives can be, particularly in archaeology, and just goes to show that you can't believe everything you read -scary thought considering how many news papers/articles actually took him to be a caveman.
Judging from the comments on the national post article, it's bizzarre how many people were angered by the interpretation of the team excavating the "gayveman" -yeah, made that up myself. Sure, I understand that sexual orientation is still very much a touchy subject, but people seemed more annoyed by the fact that these archaeologists came up with (what they believed) was such a far fetched hypothesis based on the evidence at hand. Although we've all been guilty of ignorance at one time or another, it seems many of these folks commenting don't understand what archaeology is about. Sure, skepticism and questioning is definitely a healthy aspect to any field of research, but what it seems many people don't understand, is that theoretical approaches are a huge aspect of archaeology. Without theory and interpretation, what could we discover from the past? There are so few situations where the evidence completely speaks for itself, due to preservation issues or what have you, and so you gotta start somewhere, right? As crazy interpretation as the gayveman may be, I still think it's a valid one. Questions and additional revised ideas are necessary on any subject, but complete refutation in such a case is simply ignorance.
I don't really want to pick out individual comments, but the replies to the article I'm talking about can be found at
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/the-hot-button/has-the-first-gay-caveman-been-unearthed/article1976257/comments/
TGIF
I love your name "gayveman"! Copyright that s**t. I read some of the comments and I agree completely with you that a lot of them are ignorant to the concept of hypotheses. I am a little skeptical myself and I find it hard to jump on the "gayveman" wagon. However, I do think that the only way to come to conclusions is by putting different interpretations out there.
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