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11/13/01 2:31:58 AM, "Seaborne, Mark" <Mark_Seaborne@s...> wrote: >As any self respecting archivist will tell you, without understanding the >original context of a document, and its function within that context, it is >impossible, or at least very dangerous, to derive other meaning from the >document. For example, I might study a seventeenth century hearth tax return >in order to learn about household structure in a small Scottish town, >certainly not the use intended by the originator. However without some >understanding of the administrative structure that generated the records, >and the motivations of the data collectors and the data providors, I cannot >even assume that what I mean by household is what the creator of the >document meant by hearth. Interestingly, the study of early Mesopotamian >cultures has to work pretty much the other way round. We have records of >transactions, and from those we are attempting to infer the context in which >they were generated, which is I suppose, one of the reasons why we know so >little. Imagine having to study the late twentieth century if all you had >were some building foundations and millions of EDI messages! Has anybody else here ever read Robert Nathan's short story "Digging the Weans"?
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