Unfortunately, Your Child Is Displaying All The Symptoms Of Becoming an Archaeologist

While we're on the subject of documentaries, did anyone see the BBC thingy on ABC Television last night about Boaedecia? What a load of old cow bollocks that one was! Fat, prematurely balding men stomped about in the dirt waving pieces of rock about and shouting away from the camera, "This is potentially an important potential find!" Old dudes in museums would turn the pieces of rock over, and say, "This is a very potentially interesting find indeed!" Young bespectacled blondes*, sitting in darkened laboratories with microscopes, handle rusty old pieces of metal and announce in weird, piping northern English accents, "This is certainly a very important, very potential find! Although the details about it aren't quite clear to me yet, a casual scrutiny tells that it obviously comes from the Very Late Iron Age, That Bit That Was Not Quite The Bronze Age But Just Leading Up To the Bronze Age Although It Hadn't Reached It Yet. Wow!"

Probably off camera, all these weirdos started having fights about whether the find was more Very Important or Very Potential, or whether it came from the Very-Very-Late-Bronze-Age-Indeed or just the Very-Late-But-Nothing-To-Write-Home-About-Bronze-Age.

What possesses these crazy kids to do it? Why do potentially normal people suddenly get possessed with an urge to dig great big holes in the dirt and get enthused over shabby pieces of old rock? It is one of the great mysteries of our age: instead of frollicking around in the fields, or throwing eggs at people on the street, or painting graffiti on pieces of wall, young people are turning in increasing numbers to the recondite arts of archaeology. Heaven only knows if we can reverse the trend before it is too late...

*I tell a lie. She didn't have glasses on.