Re: BBC article: Face of Stirling Castle warrior reconstructed

Peter A. Kincaid wrote:
From: Ian Goddard <>
Subject: Re: Fw: BBC article: Face of Stirling Castle warrior reconstructed
Date: Sat, 22 May 2010 22:33:24 +0100

[snip]

The stable isotope ratios suggested an upbringing in the S of England or
W France which would have cut out a fair proportion of the other
possibles which is why they went trawling TNA. The archivist seems to
have considered at least one other possible but been able to eliminate
it - maybe others were also eliminated.


Everything seems to actually be pretty shoddy work with
little consideration of alternatives.

Such as the French force they looked at? And which, to pick up on your point below, also seems to have had pretty thorough documentation in terms of names.

First of all, during the period
in question, 1290-1400, the Scots predominantly controlled
the castle. The odds are vastly in favour of them. They seemed
to have jumped on the isotope evidence to say they had to
be English. This clearly gives no regard for the fact that 1) a
number people on the Scottish side once held estates in England,

Sufficient to have their children raised from about age 8 to 15 mostly if not entirely in the home counties?

and, more importantly, 2) many Scots (in particular young heirs)
were sent south as hostages for ransom purposes or to enforce
good behaviour by thier family.

Fair point.

The well so called well documented occupants of Stirling castle
would be the English accounts for their garrison there. They
list names payments were made to but do not list everyone there
(ie. for x and a number of knights and men at arms).

It didn't look like that to me; it looked like a list of names. Maybe you saw it differently. However, given the conclusions they had come to from from the osteology all they really needed would have been the list of knights.

Many of them were actually Scots who kept joining the then winning side.


I was expecting some kind of more solid correlating evidence like
coat of arms,

In what context?

or Y-DNA lining up with a clear surname.

The arrow would have shortened the odds on this expectation.

This seems more like entertainment archaeology rather than real archaeology.

It seems a little unfair to judge the underlying investigation on the TV presentation.

Remember this isn't the Beeb that produced "Chronicle" or even "Meet the Ancestors". This is the modern Beeb producing dumbed-down programmes for the Twitter generation who are deemed incapable of following a thought that can't be expressed in the confines of an SMS or tweet. You aren't going to see a thorough examination of the work done. For instance the cough-and-you'll-miss-it explanation of carbon dating gave the impression of straight-line decay.

--
Ian

The Hotmail address is my spam-bin. Real mail address is iang
at austonley org uk
.

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