The Titanic is a litmus test to determine when grave robbery becomes archaeology. amirite?

Keep in mind that by the fall of the Egyptian empire there were already archaeologists studying the START of the Egyptian Empire.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Why would I keep that in mind?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

You don't know it yet, but this exact tidbit of information will present itself in your mind in exactly the right moment to change the course of history. Somehow. Maybe non-obviously.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

When you're on Jeopardy, and this question comes up. You're going to wish you'd kept it in mind.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Rip Egypt

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Did they interview people?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Egyptian podcasts were lit.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I assume archaeologists study the beginning of a heap of current civilisations.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I'm no archaeologist (or grave robber) but I would have to say the exchange of money for discovered artifacts determines it. When Indiana got his artifacts for the museum, that was archaeology. When we got Nurhachi's ashes in exchange for that big-ass diamond from Lao Che, that is grave robbing

by Anonymous 1 year ago

This is over simplified but absolutely not wrong. When it's for profit it's looting/grave robbing. When it is for education and the advancement of understanding of humanity's past, then it's archaeology. Museums are kind of a gray area because a lot of them are just giant monuments to colonialism (LOOKING AT YOU BRITISH MUSEUM). But they are also the best way to bring the information we find to the public. Indiana was kind of set during the early transition from antiquarianism to actual scientific study so he's loved by most archies, but generally regarded as a terrible archaeologist.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

It's a wreck, not technically a grave. It counts as salvage in my book.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Ironically if the first people to come across the Titanic had taken a single artifact the would have had the rights to the entire ship. They would have declared it off limits and a mass grave. But because they didn't under international law anyone can take anything they want from it.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

This \^ Plundering the titanic is akin to any other vehicle. Pulling stuff from a car wreck in the wilderness, or airplane crash.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

So, where does the Arizona sit?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

It was declared a national historic landmark in 1989, and it is (or was) an active US military cemetary as the Arizona survivors could choose to have their ashes interred in the wreck after their death.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I love the smell of salvage.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

According to my professor, graverobbing becomes archaeology at about \~100 years. Also, graverobbing requires a grave to rob, The Titanic is more of a tomb raider situation

by Anonymous 1 year ago

*It belongs in a museum!*

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Easy there Great Britain.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Graves are generally where people get buried by other people. Not the place in which they die. You die in a McDonald's drive thru at 3am wolfing down a Big Mac. You don't get buried in their parking lot. At what point do you think that "the place you die" becomes "your grave?" Is it after a year or a hundred? Is it after 6 feet or 12,000? What about people who are buried at sea? Like, legitimately, due to their own written wishes? Point is, archaeology is just the study of the past and these folks sure didn't die in the future. And any one definition of "grave" probably isn't a complete definition.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I think the place you die becomes your grave the moment those who would be responsible for burying you no longer plan on moving you.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Probably a reasonable definition. Of course there would be exceptions, but in general I think this covers 99.999% of dead people and their responsible gravediggers.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

The thing is almost any place that a person dies on land, their body can be recovered and they can be laid to rest somewhere else. Shipwrecks are nuanced because they can't be. For certain that ship had many bodies in it and they stayed there until they fully decomposed. Lots of people died on the surface but it's essentially a certainty that there were plenty within the ship as well. They were effectively buried at Sea and it was their coffin.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

It becomes your grave the moment it was traumatic enough. Have you seen memorials/flowers on roadside signs? When someone dies somewhere in a terrible way, people visit that place as a mourning ritual. It could, and is sometimes, considered a grave. Moreover, a grave can also be someone's resting place. A lot of the people in the titanic are "resting" there — their remains were not recovered. Where do you mourn?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Sorry, a litmus test? As in, acidity? What?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

So litmus test can mean: a test for acidity or alkalinity using litmus. But it can also mean: a test in which a single factor (such as an attitude, event, or fact) is decisive. I'm using the second definition here.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Except it's not really a good litmus test is it. Archaeology of literal tombs and burial places would be more indicative of some specific factor. The titanic is very far from a grave for the definition of grave robbery.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Guess archaeologists just have a knack for staying ahead of the curve!

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Go ahead and try that in Pearl Harbor.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I've been asking this for years now, What is the acceptable amount of time until people can start robbing graves? 100 years? 1000 years?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Is it a time period or whether or not there is a living population with some connection to the deceased that will stand up for them?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

125 years, at least as long as the grave gets visitors,

by Anonymous 1 year ago

It's not a grave, it's a wreck. Very different

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Well, looks like we've come a long way in "professionalizing" grave robbery! 😄

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Do archaeologists have a 'grave' sense of humor? 😄

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I would debate that archaeology is just rich peoples name for grave robbing. And that all of it is bad.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I think it still gives us a lot of valuable historical information. It can be done ethically or unethically.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

So I can go dig up all the dead US presidents, sell their bodies profit, and then claim the sale was purely to further the academic research I was doing? Got it

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Selling for profit and lying about your reasoning is clearly unethical, it sounds like you took out the research part of the whole ordeal.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Tell me you don't know what archaeology is without telling me you don't know what archaeology is

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Bro's only knowledge of archaeology is Indiana Jones lmaoooo

by Anonymous 1 year ago

If the grave was somehow lost then perhaps.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Is that ethical archaeology? What are you studying?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

If its actual grave robbing for the purpose of stealing valuables, and not actually doing research... sure. But actual archeology is not grave robbing, its us finding out about the distant past, and learning the where, what, why, who, when and how of the past. A good example is Gobeckli Tepe, a city that is so old is may entirely rewrite human history. Some parts of it are around 12,000 years old. It would have been twice the age the great pyramid is now, when the great pyramid was being built... thats insane!

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Do you think archaeologists only dig up bodies?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Seems like a lot of people don't realize most of what we find is actually trash. Broken pottery, debitage from the making of stone tools, and whatnot.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

>And that all of it is bad. Apart from the fact we learn lots about civilisations that came before us?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

And make cool paint colors rom their ground up bones, make millions off of auctions to "further science" and dont forget the nice spoils of war filling museums. But sure, we "learned" a lot, that really helped us today.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

>And make cool paint colors rom their ground up bones, Can't say I've heard of this, source? >make millions off of auctions to "further science" Would just be sat in the ground otherwise... At least it goes to either an appreciative owner, or donated to a museum? >dont forget the nice spoils of war filling museums. Because there's beautiful things found, and how else can they be appreciated? Is it a good thing the world can see them? >But sure, we "learned" a lot, that really helped us today. Never said it would help us, just said we learned about them and it's interesting...

by Anonymous 1 year ago

>Can't say I've heard of this, source? Bone white and mummy brown pigments. While bone white was often made with animal bones, mummy brown was made of actual human remains.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Man, archeology sounds pretty metal!

by Anonymous 1 year ago

it's only grave Robbin when the person you rob was rich else who cares when you disturb the last suffering of eternal dead

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I'm if the opinion, grave robbing is always OK. I understand that is a minority opinion lol

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Not when the UK does it.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Technically Titanic is not a grave, but it serves as a metaphoric one.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

It's not grave robbing, since they were never buried 🤷🏻‍♂️

by Anonymous 1 year ago

There's a definition of archaeology, and that ain't it.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Pretty sure the idea of looting shipwrecks has been generally accepted

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I don't follow. Why specifically the titanic?

by Anonymous 1 year ago