It’s entirely possible that they noted similarities with other sites that had sacrifices… I doubt that the people working the sites were just randomly assuming. I’m guessing they have some working knowledge of such things…
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I agree with your point re their ‘working knowledge’ but, in turn, how did they know THOSE sites were sacrificial? I watch a lot of these historical/archaeology tv documentaries and the likes of Neil Oliver, and the crew with Tony Robinson (will only be meaningful to UK viewers) are always claiming ritual or sacrificial but never actually say why or how that assumption is a valid conclusion. Obviously it is a speculative conclusion but the detailed inferences drawn from the site(s) that lead to this conclusion are rarely mentioned, beyond ‘anomalies’ that have no other likely explanation, so they give the impression of defaulting to ritual or sacrificial without saying why. I have also formed the same impression as @anon27007144 and wish they’d treat viewers as a little more adult and intelligent, and actually explain things (“just stop that now” says the producer “we’re making TV here not course lectures - they’ve got the attention span of a butterfly so don’t burden them with detail - just excite them with high-level tittilation”) rather than assume we are titillated by those words - which do often appear to be ‘get-out’ terms for ‘we do not know’.
So yeah, I’m sure you’re right, but too often they don’t deign to explain themselves, leading to our scepticism.
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That would be a really reasonable explanation. Right now I’m subscribed to two different archaeology magazines, and they are possibly distorting my perspective. But here’s where I’m coming from: Archaeologists assume intent behind every single discovery. If they find anything in a place where it wouldn’t normally belong, they consistently jump to “ritual purposes.” While humans do consistently engage in rituals, devoid of other context or actual knowledge of these long-extinct cultures, it is irresponsible to conclude “ritual purposes” and then tell that story to the world. It fails to acknowledge the overwhelming uncertainty.
If an archaeologist finds a gold necklace in a creek bed, he confidently assumes it was intentionally placed there, and probably as part of a ritual. But if you find a gold necklace in a creek bed, you would assume it’s there by accident.
Here are two examples from my current magazine:
Plausible: Archaeologists find 700 decapitated skulls beside the gates and under the floors and walls of Shimao, possibly the oldest city in China. The skulls are almost entirely female. Human sacrifice? Maybe. Or possibly war trophies. But almost certainly placed with intent as part of a ritual.
Implausible without other information: Archaeologists find obsidian knife blades, ceramic bowls, and incense burners at the bottom of a lake in Guatemala. Water was sacred to the Maya, so archaeologists assume anything found in the water is there for ritual purposes. But we don’t have any reason to think that those items are there on purpose. We have some access to Mayan written culture, but we don’t have a description of a ritual to pin this on. We can’t rule out that these artifacts are in the lake through accident (boat capsizes), or calamity (earthquake, mud slide, flood). We can’t rule out that a toddler someone with dementia threw a household worth of goods in the lake. And we only have the permanent objects. Items made from wood or textile would have disintegrated long ago, so our picture is incomplete.
And once a poor conclusion is drawn, it will reinforce future poor conclusions:
Paper 1: an obsidian knife was found in a lake. Because this was a valuable item and water was sacred to this culture, we assume this knife was thrown in the lake for ritual purposes.
Paper 2: an axe head was found in a river. It is established that this culture threw valuables into water for ritual purposes (Paper 1), so we can confidently conclude this axe head was in the water as part of a ritual.
In fact, for Paper 1 a guy with an obsidian knife fell out of a canoe and drowned, and for Paper 2, a woman digging in a tree trunk for grubs lost her axe head into the drink on the backswing.
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Clearly you have a bone to pick with one particular type of human.
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They likely are building on earlier scholarship, which of course can lead to making assumptions based on that older work, but it’s generally an educated, informed view. Is it necessary to recite all the reasons they came to that conclusion for them to have some sort of authority with regards to the lay public in their field? I’m sure plenty of books and the like can be found that show how these conclusions are made, and I’d wager a bet that some of them are made from at least some written documents, since this is during the Roman period?
I get your point here (and fully agree that people in the field need to constantly readjust our views based on new evidence, etc), but given how these particular bodies were found and (presumably) drawing on older scholarship, it seems like it might be a case of the former rather than the latter. Again, as this was 3000 years ago, there are some written records (through the eyes of the romans, of course, but still) that might corroborate this particular conclusion…
[ETA - there is also the problem of media translation - what the people working the site were meaning, that these are preliminary beliefs based on their previous work or experience in similar digs, might have been translated into certainty by CNN. This happens all the time in a variety of fields, hard and social sciences, where preliminary findings that might be incorrect are made to seem like hard and fast facts by the popular media… I’d guess that what they found will likely be studied for a decade or so, until they are more fully understood and contextualized, compared with similar sites, consulting the writtten records that do exist, etc, before a full conclusion is made.
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I’m not saying that academics have to justify their authority or recite all the reasons. But given that the lay public ends up thinking along @anon27007144 's lines when the experts drop this “ritual or sacrifice” line in a majority of “lay” tv documentaries (the focus of my comment), they may want to recite one or two possible reasons now and then, to demonstrate their authority (as opposed to justifying it). Maybe the tv talking heads don’t realise how much the viewers roll their eyes when they hear this “ritual” or “sacrifice” line. I’ve lost count.
The upside is that we do have a LOT of archaeology/ancient history documentaries on television in the UK. The downside is that this means we do get to hear it a lot.
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It’s too bad that they found those Garfield phones in that cave. Archaeologists would have had fun with that.
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In service to your point, I’ve lost a few items that I thought were secured while hiking, bicycling, etc. I imagine more than a few people simply lost stuff way back when while migrating.
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