How to contact the BBC

Factual Questions
1

Really silly question … if I wanted to contact the BBC, how would I go about it?

I was casually surfing Fortean Times, and read an article.

I would love to tell them that the bronze age mystery conical items at the bottom can probably be explained in a number of ways but I seem to find them most easily explained as a weight, either for a warp weighted loom, drop spindle, throwing net for fishing/birding. Heck, it could even be for a game of conkers =)

Honestly, I have seen conical weights used for all the applications on display in museums …

2

From your link:

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3

That there are various conceivable uses for the object doesn’t change the statement in the article, that its actual function ‘remains a puzzle’.

In any case, why use ivory to make a basic tool such as a weight, when there’s wood or bone in far greater adundance?

4

I think you would be better off contacting Dr Lev of the Russian Academy of Sciences or Jeffrey Brantingham at UCLA as these seem to be the sources used for the article.

5

The contact us function from the help section works quite well. I’ve commented on factual errors a bunch of times and always got a reply thanking me for pointing it out (and they changed the article as well of course)

6

ah, I have found frequently the contact us function leads to the web people … rather than commentary about articles [I like news reports where they have a comment section] =)

and as to making something with ivory, it is a fairly dense and easily worked material, and as we may think ivory is something special and important, it was simply another material to be worked into something useful. In a non monetary based society, there simply isnt a ‘value’ assigned to something other than usefulness and ability to turn into something that can be bartered, and when you have a job that needs doing like spinning, or weaving, or fishing you use that hunk of ivory that would nowdays be carven into a cute little statue of an elephant or kuan yin. Doesnt mean you cant decorate it by carving or scrimshaw, but you made items to be used.

And instead of calling items mystery items, most museums will make note that they believe items had certain uses … although the funniest thing I ever saw was a bunch of us people in the SCA drop spinning some thread and a curater getting hissy because she thought we had helped ourselves to the display pieces to do it with until she discovered a small r2d2 carven on the spindle whorl =) Unfortunately many archeologists until the 50s and 60s were men and didnt really understand ‘womens culture’ which frequently in low tech societies can go for thousands of years unchanged.