[colechristensen]

A lot of these kinds of things are historians/anthropologists/whatever making things up. If something doesn’t have an obvious purpose then it is labeled as ceremonial or religious. A single artifact gets turned into an elaborate story with very shaky justification. These “just so” stories make good tales, but that’s it. The question ends up being “how could they possibly know this!?” And the answer is, they couldn’t.

Definitely the kind of thing you’d read in an art history book.

[wyre]

Ya, I’m aware of all that. It’s an interesting theorem, nonetheless.

I also have no credence for this forum to not be hypercritical of art history literature, but here I am talking about it.

[colechristensen]

I have heard artists critical of art history in the same way tech people are critical of tech journalists. Something along the lines of folks who don’t really understand a subject because they don’t/can’t do it writing from a position of authority about it and doing it badly.