brian long

one final point about our evidence that helps explain where Symes is coming from: grave goods

years ago, (racist) scholars constructed these whole scholarly edifices around grave goods like these fibulae

they believed that if s.o. ended up in a grave with goods of a particular style, it was demonstrably true that you were from a particular ethnic group

but this is obviously bullshit, and no one believes this anymore

(credit: James Steakley/wikimedia commons)
https://scholar.social/media/z-oTRv6LvrVM_Nm3W4U

Nov 5, 2017 at 12:57amWeb
Show threadbrian longNov 5, 2017

because the "ethnic groups" that Germanic grave goods got attributed seem to have been largely or entirely fictive (and the stories they told about their origins are pretty clearly made up), and appear to have actually been heterogeneous groups

now that we can DNA test and bioarchaeologically study their corpses, we can see this a lot more clearly

Show threadbrian longNov 5, 2017

and-- surprise surprise-- the people who were often most involved in creating the story of these "Germanic" peoples were racist and/or nationalist European scholars who engaged in the worst kinds of scholarly malpractice and motivated reasoning

so there's a lot to unpack there, I guess, and lots more to back up what Symes is saying than what her brief piece goes into