Talk:Arthur Evans

The Usual Plagiarism

It's amazing how people on Wikipedia just cut and paste whole blocks of information illegally from other website.

Most of the content here was copied and stolen from http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/abcde/evans_arthur.html // Aes-Sedai 9:46 AEST.

Is this still true? Folks at 137 (talk) 18:37, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Link not longer maintained. Brings up the following "Emuseum Thank you very much for visiting the EMuseum at Minnesota State University, Mankato. The EMuseum is no longer in service as of March 15, 2011." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.57.66.152 (talk) 06:13, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Controversy surrounding excavation of Knossos

Does anyone else think it would be worth mentioning the fact that the methods he used during excavation and particularly the 'restoration' at Knossos are now deemed somwhat controversial? --Philthemancunian 10:49, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree it should be in here, considering the insane things he did to the place. Archaeologist indeed! Not to mention most of his theories about Knossos and certain rooms, which most archaeologists don't agree with. 81.109.27.158 (talk) 18:58, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed the "over-restoration" should be noted; however, lets not get carried away with over-emphasis of modern thinkers. In his day his theories of the rooms were not bad, given the data and methods available then. Of course, modern archaeologists know more about Knossos, but lets not put down Evans in the process. Cewvero (talk) 21:19, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Agree on mapping out the controversy but without getting overly personal. His digs are hugely controversial among archaeologists and already in his lifetime he was accused with some justification of constructing a Hollywood Knossos. For one thing the view he suggested of the palaces was distorted, overly romantic and jugend-ish, but he was also impossibly quick or rash in digging. Both of those aspects were very typical of the turn of the century of course, but compare it to the way the tomb of Tutankhamen was located and properly, painstakingly recorded (it was a long time between the entry and the uncovering of the innermost sarcophagus!) The contrast is very striking.

No one today would excavate a site the size and complexity of Knossos in just two or three years. One thing few non-archaeologists understand is that once you dig in a particular spot, you destroy any chance to dig again there in the same strata, so if it's poorly documented the dig becomes very hard to analyze and link to finds in other locations, even within the same site. Evans, like too many modern archaeologists, was not too keen on scientific publication, but the speed at which he had things dug up was far higher than anyone would push for now. Strausszek (talk) 03:54, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I think I need to put things in perspective. Much as I appreciate the interest of you editors in the topic and believe that skepticism is what keeps us going, I must say that you are parroting and exaggerating views from the Palmer-Boardman dispute. That is not your fault. First, you have to know that Evans' reconstruction is the professional reconstruction. Arthur had as assistant in this one of the original theorists of Stone Age archaeology, his father, John Evans. Arthur's reconstruction came at the height of and continued contemporary archaeological theory. No one of any note would even think of rejecting it. How can they, when all of Aegean archaeology is based on it? These little carpings that you read, these are from persons of no reputation eager to come into the limelight as critics of Arthur Evans the Great. They are no-account, always were. Arthur, like John was scientific, representing a big leap up from Heinrich. Naturally he did not have all the tools the moderns have. Moreover, I would not rely too heavily on those much-touted tools, as they have been known to fail badly. Moreover, the traditional archaeology is often used to calibrate those same tools.

On the contrary, everyone today would excavate at Arthur's speed if they had his resources. He threw in large amounts of money, hiring hundreds of workers. Time was of the essence and still very much is, in archaeology. Resources are always a problem. Ancient sites are being destroyed at an accelerating rate due to the expolsion of population and modern construction. We can't sit around waiting for some old poop of an archaeologist to get around to digging a site. Often a few weeks is all you are going to get, and Evans' few years seems like a great luxury. There is a tendency today to take sites away from organizations that have a vested interest in non-publication, deriving from their lucrative monopoly on the topic. Evans published a monumental 4-volumes.

Evans did disagree with his foreman about the layer from which the Knossos Linear B tablets came. The two men fought bitterly. Arthur made his decision, but Duncan would not accept that. The inevitable occurred. Arthur fired Duncan. Duncan continued to protest. Arthur continued to object. No one would hire Duncan. Maybe that was Arthur's fault, or maybe the world preferred Arthur's view. Later some scholars wanted to make the date of the tablets 1200 rather than 1400 to correspond to the their date on the mainland. That view never took. The problem with it was that it required Linear B to appear suddenly out of nowhere with no evolution, and to disappear just as suddenly. There's always a precedent somewhere, just as there is always a pre-adaptation in evolution.

Arthur's "digs" are not "hugely controversial." The "digs" are actually those of Duncan MacKenzie. Make up your mind. Was Duncan a professional or not? If he was not, then nothing he said about the tablets can have any validity. If he was, then the "digs" cannot be hugely controversial. The above comments are just another example of what happens when people basically unacquainted with topics decide to write public encyclopedias. As far as the restoration is concerned, that issue is by no means settled. Some restore, some do not. If you do not restore, including any efforts to preserve the site, it is gone in just a few years. If you do restore, then only the restoration survives. I'd like to say the original photos and notes survive, but that is not so either. Let's face it, archaeology traffics in ephemera. We are glad to have the supplemental information but that too has an expiration date. Know thyself. What we can know is sadly limited and you have to be happy with what you DO have, or else just forget it. Learn the conventional myths. Who cares anyway. That old saw, "those who know nothing of history are doomed to repeat it," is just an unachievable ideal. Jim Jones used to spout that. He went ahead and repeated it ANYWAY, and so don't they all. In summary, the above criticisms of Evans are mainly wrong. He was no worse than, and was considerably better than, most.Dave (talk) 10:34, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

No need to be upset. It is a fact that the results and documentary of most excavations around the turn of the 19th/20th century have to be carefully reevaluated, and unfortunately, Evans well-meant methods of conservation turned out to be destructive. It is also a pity that, unlike Schliemann, who knew his limits, Evans didn't accept constructive criticism.2003:7A:8E08:1A39:8132:A52C:D97F:1599 (talk) 18:54, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

WPHERTS importance

Local man with significant (and controversial) international contribution to his field; hence "top" rating. Folks at 137 (talk) 18:37, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Scripta Minoa

I don't want to get into an edit war, but it is a shame that the article emphasises this, which was wrong, rather than Knossos. Doug Weller (talk) 13:07, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Start class

Your points are all very valid but let me bring to your attention that this is a start class article and the material cannot get in there until someone puts it in! Until it is reasonably complete it is going to seem unbalanced so be patient. Knossos was not built in a day.Dave (talk) 21:18, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Evans and the Ashmolean Museum

Arthur Evans

This account concentrates on Evans’ work at Knossos, but entirely omits what was his main job – that of being Keeper, i.e. Director of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. The Ashmolean Museum claims to be the oldest museum in England, but Evans is one of the leading, if not the greatest Keeper in its history. I wonder if a paragraph could be inserted along the following lines:

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In 1884, Evans at the age of 33, was appointed Keeper (i.e. Director) of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. Already the great frontage building had been erected but the museum was in disarray because a large part of its collections had been transferred to the new Natural History Museum. Evans took it firmly in the direction of being an archaeology museum and built up its archaeological collections. He gave his father’s extensive collections to the museum and also on his death bequeathed his Minoan collections to the museum, so that today it has the finest Minoan collections outside Crete. However, his biggest success was to acquire the collections built up by C. D. E. Fortnum (of the Fortnum and Mason grocery dynasty) and he also persuaded Fortnum to donate £10,000 to build the extensive rooms behind the impressive façade, buildings which have only recently been demolished to make way for the new Ashmolean Museum.

All the excavations at Knossos were done on leave of absence from the museum. Fortunately his job description required him to undertake lecturing and travel and he did both extensively. But in 1908 at the age of 57 he resigned his position to concentrate on writing up his Minoan work. In 1912 he refused the opportunity to become President of the Society of Antiquaries, a position which his father had already held. But in 1914 at the age of 63, when he was too old to take part in the War, he took on the Presidency of the Antiquaries which carried with it an ex officio appointment as a Trustee of the British Museum and he spent the War successfully fighting the War Office who wanted to commandeer the museum for the Air Board.

He played a major role in the history of the British Museum as well as in the history of the Ashmolean Museum.

He undertook his first major excavation in England at Aylesford in Kent in 1887 when he excavated an Iron Age cemetery which later became the type site of the Aylesford Swarling culture which included the first wheel-made pottery in Britain, often connected with the ‘Belgae’.

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I should say that this information comes partly from the biography of Evans, ‘Minotaur’ by Alexander Macgillivray, and partly from the Ashmolean Museum website.

Magerius (talk) 13:45, 2 February 2012 (UTC)Magerius

Slight reorg

I've been away for a while and did not get back. I think I will put this on my slow burner to cook. I see pages and pages of edits but I don't really see the additional material you would expect to see with so many edits. Palace of Minos is pretty much a blank. With regards to the Ashmoleon, I can't say that I agree with you there. Ashmoleon to me was like the bank employment of William Butler Yeats. Yeats spent most of his time at business in the bank but that was a total nada compared to his poetry. Similarly, Ashmoleon, the factory, the connections, who cares a fig for that? The same might be said of his father's contributions to stone age archaeology. No one cares about the factory (unless you are an industrial engineer). Also the stuff included above advertises Ahmoleon too much. Evans' major contribution was plainly Minoan civilization, and it was a great one, and it eclipses all others. We don't care much what he said and did at Ashmoleon. We will never forget PM. On the edits, well, for the most part you improved my English a little. Like all editors though you misinterpreted some material and introduced errors through editing. Think nothing of it, happens all the time. If I never get back to it though it never gets fixed. Now, the intent of my organization was to distinguish biography from career and those from works. You got everything under biography. If everything is biography, why bother with sections? So, I'm putting that back. Now, I can't get to eveything immediately. For example, Evans did not do any deciphering so he can't have decipered any seal stones. A good classifier, he was nevertheless not much of a decipherer, but I believe he knew that. Decipherment took a streak of brilliance (and good luck). We need one of those fellows now for Linear A. So, this is on my slow list now. I am not just abandoning it. Just because I have not corrected an error does not mean I accept it.Dave (talk) 03:08, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

who? Our dab page at Minchin lists no likely suspects

Time for this to come out. I gave the ref, and the failure of anyone to turn up on a WP dab page is utterly non-significant, except insofar at demonstrates whether anyone put him there. The fact that he may not be on WP is nothing to anyone either.Dave (talk) 13:04, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

And connector

One of the editors has a favorite dual main clause construction, with the clauses connected by and. I don't think that is an improvement. Often there is no reason for connecting them. Sometimes a series is dualized. So, I'm reediting some material to junk the double shotgun blast. Sorry. I guess this would be an English-language edit to eliminate introduced awkwardness.Dave (talk) 10:34, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

The reedit

While I appreciated being edited, I see now that the editors were only working from what I had written. They were not researching the topic or directing the flow from any knowledge. Unfortunately there are limitations to that approach. The tendency has been to rob the article of detail and simplify the prose into baby prose. The editors assumed that because they knew nothing of the topic there was nothing to know and this detail was irrelevant. Not so. To a considerable degree Arthur and his great works are the result of his family interests and connection, which I have tried to show. Arthur gets the credit but the effort was to a large degree a family one. He always had a relative, friend, advisor or connection willing to contribute their talented services if Arthur needed them. So I have restored some of the detail, trying to point out its relevance to editors not acquainted with the topic. This is a an endemic problem when editors not in a field undertake to edit material of which they are not acquainted, so don't feel bad. Oh, I see one one editor was trying to drag us into the ins and outs of cross-cousin marriage. This is definitely not the place for that, so I took the link out. Note that this is still a work in progress, so there is a lot of detail yet to come. Maybe I better get on with it so as not to confuse you and public about what the topic is.Dave (talk) 11:34, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Balance on Arthur Evans

The topic of Arthur Evans appears to be somewhat of a violent one. Some of the sources present an absolutely awful view of him. I find that the view is so bad that, if he were the person THEY say he was, he could't have done the things he did or have been the person the record indicates he was. So, I kept a careful eye on their conclusions. Most of the time I find their conclusions are gross distortions based of half-truths or things taken out of context. Let's take, for example, the "Little Evans" theme. His enemies portray him as a man under 4 feet tall, whose photographs have been staged or doctored to hide that. I don't know how they can be allowed to falsify matters like that. I studied his wedding photo, in which he appears seated next to Margaret in the front row. Either Margaret was also under 4 feet or the source lies outright. In the one description I could find the person quoted says he was not a tall man but was a heavy man. If he was under 4 feet he must have been hugely fat, which he never appears to be. He is always shown lean and rugged, which he must have been to go hopping around the mountains the way he did. And Margaret, who was slowly dying, of tuberculosis, it was said, dominated the Freeman household in a state of tyranny, raving and screaming. If that is so, why was she known for her sweetness and charity? There are a lot of things apparently not even known by some of the sources; for example, Brown seems to have concluded that because Freeman was not professor until Arthur had left Oxford, he was not at Oxford before then, and Arthur did not know him. She is at a loss to explain how Arthur could have met Margaret. It just happened somehow. There is not one single word about Freeman being charge at the embassy or Freeman's admiration of and friendship with Gladstone. Freeman was government. And there is not one word anywhere about Freeman's religious upbringing or the book of hymns Margaret published. Christian Britain is just dropped out of the map. They don't seem to be able to explain too well just why the Serbs revolted or why the British Empire took their side. Oh that's right, we're against the establishment of religion, so no even can discuss it or portray anyone as having been Christian or having done anything from Christian motives. Well, it is an atheist's map and a hateful map. Instead Arthur's works of charity are imputed to a supposed homosexuality, even though he and Margaret began them together. Ah yes. We have the awful police incident when Arthur was caught in Hyde Park at age 73 being "indecent" with a young man. I'd like to know just what indecency a 73 year old man is capable of. It would be more credible if someone said he urinated in the park. The authors are counting on the public not knowing anything of elderly people, or not wanting to know. They depict Arthur as a young person full of desires such as they might have. Both parties denied any indecency. We don't know what Arthur was doing at 73 in the park and no one cares to enlighten us. The police, you know, watched that park on a regular basis. They arrested just about anyone in it after dark. That was their pot-boiler, like the tricky intersections they use when they need to write their quota of tickets or get some extra money for the police department. Once in a while they snared a high-status person with a hooker. They seem to have snared Arthur. In short I reject the conclusions of some of the sources as being unbalanced distortions. I am not going to present Margaret as a tyrant or Arthur as a homosexual midget (no offense to persons who, though no fault of their own, are diminutive). I don't believe Arthur was entirely at fault for some of the professional conflicts that arose. These people are trying to put an image or Arthur, and you can tell by the way they present the material. In order to find out what really happened you have to buy the book or article, and if you do, you find it says nothing after all. Knossos was such a huge contribution that aggressive persons wanted to horn in on it right from the beginning. I notice there is a certain slandering through half-truth in the Ventris article as well. Sorry, I am not knowingly going along with these things. I shall not even present the police report on Arthur and if it is presented I shall tag it as unbalanced.Dave (talk) 17:13, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

The misconceptions about Arthur Evans apparently come from MacGillivray. On the one hand he seems a compassionate and revealing author. On the other he has a viciuos streak a mile wide (I think). He is the one who says Arthur never grew much over 4 feet. But, when he does so, he is referring to the child, and he vever corrects this idea later. We know from other sources that Arthur was 5' 2". Also MacGillivray states that later in the book he will show that Arthur had primarily homosexual desires. He never does do that. However, he gives a moving account of Margaret's death. Why he cannot see that a supposed distance from Margaret is not compatible with his agony at her death is completely beyond me. I think he must have some problems of his own, but when you write about other people, you leave your own problems out of it. The effect is, he alternately builds a moving scenario of Arthur and then turns suddenly to rip him to shreds. As I said, I'm going to ignore these episodes of Mac's otherwise moving narrative.Dave (talk) 00:17, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Date of purchase

Arthur Evans is listed on Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 16, the supposed anniversary of his purchase of the ruins of Knossos, but neither this article nor Knossos actually includes the specific date that happened. Is that information known, and if so, can it be added to one of the two articles? Thanks. —howcheng {chat} 00:03, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

links available

Palace of Minos and Scripta Minoa are both available online free. For Palance of Minos, I had to go here: http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/evans1921ga; the others are on Internet Archive. 71.163.117.143 (talk) 13:05, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Brief revisit

I wrote the article, basically. Well, I see you liked it. So did I. You know, I had such a different view when I started. Academics and ideological persons (which I was) can get so vicious sometimes. It is pathetic.Now, for the tag on the tone, I suppose I was trying to lead into the old boy network. I suppose there is not much point. Everyone has their networks, except possibly me. I don't think we want to get into it here. Everyone knows that anyway. For the ambassador business, that is what the Turks were calling him in the Balkans. He was a partisan there, absolutely no question. The government of Yugoslavia did not go out of its way to honor him for nothing. The Turks also were going to throw him in jail, but someone got him off. Who do you suppose that was? But this gets around to the role of British archaeologists in British intelligence, especially under the empire. Would you rather I got into that, old boy? I think not. I removed the offending passage, just let it go. He had to negotiate with the Ottomans in the Balkans and he must have done so on Crete. And yet, no one laid a finger on him. Now for the requests for more info, at some point I will be back to Aegean archaeology. Be patient. I can't do all the research for you, can't you find some things for yourself? Today almost anything can be found on the Internet, which is what its creators intended, even though it is a two-edged sword.Botteville (talk) 17:14, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

You are such an insufferable and smug blowhard. The article is pompous drivel and it will never be improved because you won't let it while the nber of editors is declining. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.93.4.19 (talk) 21:21, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

You can't do that

You can't do that because such a broad condemnation requires some explanation. There is not one other tag and there is no explanation at all except that I am "an insuffereable blowhard." This is vandalism. I don't know where the vandal is from or what his intent it and I don't care. As he is not registered his comments have been recorded on a special page. You can locate it by following the link back on his address from the history page.

Well, he sure is blowing hard, but apparently only wind. He is not the first vandal ever to attack Wikipedia. Let me reiterate, if you have legitimate concerns, and you want to put such tags on, please either state what you think is wrong in this talk page or denote what you see are the problem areas with requests for references, requests for specific information or requests for clarification. You can find the formats in the help pages.

I think at this point also you ought to start thinking about the personalism of the attack. I believe the issue is under consideration at WP now. The more you reveal about yourself here or anywhere the easier you are to attack.

For this revisit, I just noticed that some of my links do not work now; for example, the PM volumes. I'm going to be working on that, but you know, links are the most volatile Internet items (except for the wind of vandals). I might have to just take the links off. I've decided it is probably better to revisit these articles and make the corrections. Ciao.Botteville (talk) 14:05, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Later. Not to worry. The problem is really Heidelberg, which had offered Palace of Minos for free. It still is for free, but only one painful page at a time. If you don't know PM then you are missing out on Evans. I'm not sure we'll see his likes again. Pendlebury, his possible successor, stopped a bullet in the Invasion of Crete. The business people have found a way to capitalize on intrinsically priceless history, which ought to be beyond the copyright. You can now find the volumes for sale at various places. However, they forgot, or couldn't tamper with, Internet Archive. I did the lookups and they are In the Knossos article now. When I get a chance I will bring them back to here, unless you do it. Best I can do for now. By the way I had not finished this article.Botteville (talk) 18:34, 6 June 2018 (UTC)