Origyptian wrote:

> How can you insist that "physical evidence" is not intimately
> associated with archeology and Egyptology?

Easily, by focussing on the paradigmatic use of the phrase.

> "Though it may never be possible to know with one hundred
> percent certainty, the physical evidence observed
> both directly and with the aide of sophisticated imaging
> technology, combined with the Egyptological information
> regarding the burial of Ramesses I in the royal cache and the
> body's journey out of Egypt to Atlanta, supports the
> attribution of this mummy as a high status or royal body,
> probably the body of Ramesses I."
> [carlos.emory.edu]
>
> "But this bleak landscape, broken only by electric pylons,
> excited him because it provided physical evidence
> of stories told in hieroglyphics. It was proof of accounts from
> antiquity."
> [www.nytimes.com]
>
> "Analysis of the rock shows that it came from the Santorini
> volcano, providing physical evidence that the ash
> fallout from the eruption at Santorini reached Egyptian
> shores."
> [www.telegraph.co.uk]
>
> "It seems evident that this crude, clumsy, and incompetent
> “conservation” work is aimed at nothing less than the
> destruction of all the physical evidence which
> demonstrates that both ancient Egypt and Nubia are classical
> African civilizations."
> [www.raceandhistory.com]

At least you’ve given some examples — and such examples! We have two newspaper reports, one Afrocentrist site and (best of the bunch) a museum. All of which shows what wasn’t in doubt, that law has an effect on the general culture and legal phrases find their way into common parlance, often with subtle (or unsubtle) changes in sense.

I’m almost persuaded by the museum example (and others) that there is a legitimate contrastive use of the phrase, where the object is to demarcate a class of evidence properly the concern of (broadly) the physical sciences and to set it aside from other classes of evidence: textual, pictorial, linguistic, cultural and so on.

It’s you who has the problem here, not me. You’ve fallen into the scientistic trap of discounting all but “physical evidence” (so why the adjective?) and you’ve used the phrase so broadly that any distinctive meaning or useful function it might have had is lost. Selected “expert” opinion becomes “physical evidence” — and just to show how arbitrary your approach to evidence is, you’ve fallen into the conspiracist folly of dismissing whole swathes of textual evidence as “forgeries”.

> Contrary to the belief of some people, physical
> evidence is key to revealing the truth. No
> mention of "law", "legal", or any other contrivance you think
> somehow preempts the use of the concept of "physical evidence"
> from archeology...
>
> [www.google.com]

Straw man. You don’t know what I believe.

This is not, by the way, the first time I’ve commented on the misleading influence of legal categories of evidence misapplied:

<[www.grahamhancock.com];

Nothing ad hoc here. I’m working out a position and a critique for the longer term.

M.