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Showing posts from September, 2012

Patterns of Evolution in Tribal Textiles And the Confusion About Provenance

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I had recently made efforts to draw the attention of several collectors/dealers of Iranian/Central Asian tribal textiles to the recent work of anthropologists and archaeologists who have employed contemporary methods of phylogenetic analysis of evolutionary patterns, something which I have been familiar with for some time. Unfortunately, respective efforts were, by and large, unavailing and at least to me revealed an overall amateurish approach of assessing age and provenance of newly emerging or already published "antique" pieces by self-promoted experts/dealers within a by and large shady business whose main effort is to hook future "collectors". There seems also to be, well, if not an intellectual gap between scientists and those who, at an early stage of their career, had changed areas of interest from research to commerce, clearly lack of knowledge about scientific method in the latter group. I do not directly claim that they are just conscious posers or impo