- [<] Status Log - created:: 2021-05-23 - status-updated:: 2022-03-18 - current-status:: #articleseed - [S] Marketing - purpose:: Intended to promote [[Tt2021-05 On History]] but might also be useful for a review of [[The Amazons by Adrienne Mayor]] ``` title: [posted 2021-05-22](https://twitter.com/EleanorKonik/status/1396088222615318530) THREAD START One of my favorite things about "The Amazons" by @amayor was honestly the recognition that not everything has a "ritual use." Scythian peoples probably used cannabis recreationally. Sometimes the ancients did things for fun! --- I realize she's pulling mostly from Herodotus here, and not staking out a totally new position, but I have so many feelings about archaeologists seemingly declaring that everything under the sun must have been used for "ritual purposes." --- Maybe I'm being uncharitable but I'm at the point now that I just translate "may have been used for ritual purposes" to mean "we're not sure what this is for but we don't want to sound dumb." --- I get that archaeology & anthropology is hard — https://eleanorkonik.com/hard-history/ — I do! There's a stigma against admitting when you don't know something, and a lot of academia is geared toward forcing people to come up with theories for things... --- ...but "probably for rituals, yea?" has such an undertone of "those silly superstitious primitives" that it makes me grind my teeth. It just feels like such a cop-out. IDK. Maybe the #Twitterstorians crew can tell me if I'm way off base on this? THREAD END %%