Hypothesis Development Techniques

VALUATION & ECONOMICS FOR DISCOVERY

From the activity of decades of developing hypotheses, I’ve developed:

(a) the Landscape Economics Analysis technique described here.
(b) The Proximity of Desire (POD) land valuation technique [link] is also useful to investigators.

Hope this sparks new questions that lead to interesting avenues of enquiry.

LANDSCAPE ECONOMICS ANALYSIS (“LEA”) TECHNIQUE

a) Questions to frame discovery:

This is to delve into the nature of the economics/market system that developed the site – to reimagine the site, culture, and technologies of the day:

- What technologies were available?
- What energy sources were available?
- What events influenced and might change the economics of production?
- What might the landscape have been like, and could there have been virgin territory?
- What was the economic value of the lands and how might this influence construction?
- What was the unit of mass production?
- What might the weather be over the four seasons?

b) Egyptology Analogy:

Consider the on-going challenge of determining the method of construction of the Pyramids at Giza.

Use the LEA questions’ framing technique to investigate the problem:

- What technologies were available?
  - Slaves, hydraulics (sluices, dams, canals, pipes), donkey+gears+wheels, shadufs (water moving tech), barges and boats, slings, river fords, wagons, wind, timber
- What energy sources were available?
  - Wind, water, sunlight, oil lamps, torches, labour
- What events influenced and might change the economics of production?
  - Dynastic change, Success in wars = more slaves, climate changes = starvation
- What was the unit of mass production?
  - Until modern times, this was the working population (slave, serf, fief-holder, parishioner) paid in various ways (slavery, food, tithes, faith, money). If a farm, how many hands were needed to sustain x-hectares of production, to feed x-population and a surplus?
- What might the weather be over the four seasons?
  - Climate change, seasonal cycle of the Nile and tributaries.
- What new information updates the query set?
  - Recently scholars used lidar to discover a former channel of the Nile that passes near the main Pyramid sites at Giza:
    - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pyramid-mystery-long-lost-river-discovered-egypt/
    - This generates investigation avenues, such as:
      - What might the landscape have been like? (Lidar evidence of roads converging on ports and canals for materials transfer?)
        
        What was the economic value of the lands and how might this influence construction?

c) A British Example:

- I noticed an oddity whilst watching the Whitestaunton Roman Villa episode of Time Team.
- This led to the question: Why did the Romans locate a villa on the ‘high value’ bottom land of the holding?
- https://davehuer.com/cartoproblematica/flungian/whitestaunton/re-settling-the-pocket/
- Whitestaunton Manor image shown above is by Roger Cornfoot under CC BY-SA 2.0