With respect to Gillian Sheldrick, it is precisely the non-specialist
public who may be misled by actual dates, as they may not appreciate how
approximate and provisional they are. I think concepts like `Iron Age'
are reasonably familiar to the reading public and not particularly
difficult for anyone to grasp :-) To put it another way, anyone who is
interested enough to be searching a collection of this kind is likely to
find it natural to define his/her interest by a period-name (or names)
rather than by numerical date-limits. (I assume he/she will be able to
read a glossary of terms that says what the currently supposed limits of
the period in question are.)
John Palmer
69 St Cross Road, Winchester SO23 9RE, England
+44 1962 865261
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http://www.stx69.demon.co.uk/
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On Thu, 13 Jan 2000, Sheldrick, Gillian wrote:
> 2 Is it relevant to think about who the terms we are discussing are
> intend to be used by? If by fellow professionals, it is perfectly possible
> to hedge them around with definitions and caveats, but if by members of the
> general public, something is required which will be intuitively understood,
> in which case dates (perhaps qualified as suggested with a period terms to
> define the cultural context) must be a strong candidate.
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