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‘Spreadsheets of empire’: red tape goes back 4,000 years, say scientists after Iraq finds
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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Archaeology
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Archaeology or archeology[a] is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes.
Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.
The discipline involves surveying, excavation, and eventually analysis of data collected, to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Read more...
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Bureaucracy is one of the super-powers of modern civilization. It keeps the water clean, it keeps the food growing, it makes sure that someone who knows the right people can't just drive drunk because everyone in a position of power can keep them out of trouble. Having an organized system for things, and then consistently applying it so that problems can be fixed systemically and then the fix can stick in place, is the only way we have billions and billions of people on the planet right now instead of little chaotic scattered settlements.
Like any superpower it creates new problems that it introduces. Some people might say the settlements would be a better idea. But it solves a whole bunch of problems too, and the idea that it's inherently an evil thing is along the exact same lines as "the servers always run fine, why do we pay an IT department?"
Or the “managers don’t do anything” fallacy.
Found the manager
Oh absolutely. Didn’t think that was a secret.