A Friday Fringe History Grab Bag

9/19/2014

Tristan (he goes by one name online) produces the new Anarchaeologist podcast and holds a degree in archaeology, though he is not a professional archaeologist. He believes that archaeology needs to engage with the wider public in order to remain useful and relevant, and he is particularly interested in how the public perceives archaeology and how archaeology as a field presents itself to the public. After producing a podcast on archaeology in new media, Tristan decided to take a look at what happens when the public tries to find information about archaeology on YouTube. It shouldn’t surprise anyone what he found using the keyword “archaeology,” but it was nevertheless amusing that Tristan was taken completely by surprise by the overwhelming number of videos advocating the existence of a conspiracy to suppress the truth about Bible giants.

This and many other videos really get my goat in terms of representing Archaeology on Youtube, either a ludicrous cover up of ancient culture or as evidence for biblical archaeology. I am almost furious that we as a discipline have allowed our online presence to become a haven for what can only be called fringe archaeology. Most archaeologists will scoff at the mention of ancient aliens and other such fantasies but it seems for many on Youtube, these are real and believable theories. In addition, someone attempting to learn more about archaeology in general is swamped by hour long documentaries talking about Sodom & Gomorrah, Confirming the Bible through Archaeology and the Secret History of Archaeology. I want to be clear that I don’t want these types of programs removed, nor do I want to silence people’s opinions; I just wish that the online landscape of archaeology better reflected the real world of archaeology.

That’s not going to happen anytime soon! It’s giants all the way down. Even ancient astronaut theorists are obsessed with Bible giants!

Tristan notes the existence of hundreds of high quality archaeology blogs, but regrets that they are drowned out by well-financed “made-for-market media that dominates search engines and has money assigned for promotion.”

The problem is that the conspiracy theories are pretty much all the interested layperson sees when looking for information on television, on YouTube, are on much of the open internet. And virtually no one is immune to mistaking slickly produced propaganda for truth. Take the case of Dorothy Turcotte, who by most accounts is a very nice senior citizen from Canada who has devoted much of her later life to writing a newspaper column for a succession of local newspapers and producing a variety of nonfiction books, mostly on subjects of local interest to her community of Grimsby, near St Catharines and Niagara Falls.

Earlier this month Turcotte wrote a column for the Grimsby Lincoln News that went over Niagara Falls in a barrel, plunging straight into the foaming depths of lunatic fringe history. She got there thanks to Scott Wolter, whose America Unearthed she watches regularly, despite not quite knowing who he is. She calls him “Scott Wolper,” perhaps thinking of the twentieth century filmmaker David L. Wolper, who produced many famed historical documentaries. Anyway, Turcotte thinks that what she saw on America Unearthed and then learned from researching its claims is “sure to pique children’s interest in learning more.” She’s like to see it taught in schools.

Turcotte’s investigations into fringe history are unfathomably sad, and someone at the Gimsby Lincoln News needed to fact check the article, or suggest to the author that something was amiss. It is frankly, embarrassing, and a sensitive editor might have done something about it.

Turcotte claims that the Vikings discovered Manitoba after finding “Anse l’Meadows,” by which she means L’anse-aux-Meadows by way of Ansel Adams. Her evidence for Vikings in Manitoba rests on the community of Gimli, which has no Viking archaeology but does have giant statue of a Viking erected in 1967 in honor of the province’s Icelandic residents, commemorating an ethnic heritage festival held in the town since 1932. Icelanders founded the settlement in 1875.

She then adopts all of Gavin Menzies’s various claims about Chinese voyages to America uncritically. She claims that Native Americans have “Chinese” DNA and speak languages influenced by Chinese, and that a Chinese junk was excavated from the Sacramento River and carbon dated to 1410. The trouble with that claim, of course, is that the junk doesn’t exist, at least so far as anyone other than Gavin Menzies knows. Menzies refused to reveal the ship’s location, provide documentation of its recovery, or release the data behind his alleged radiocarbon test. He offers not even a photograph, let alone the documentation needed in California to actually conduct a recovery expedition, as was allegedly done in 2002 and 2003.

Turcotte then asserts, embarrassingly, that Western and Russian scientists discovered a perfect match for Atlantis on an island “in the Atlantic Ocean east of Gibraltar.” East of Gibraltar is the Mediterranean Sea. The Atlantic is to the west, and there is no match for Atlantis on either side.

She also believes that science has found information about the “universes” beyond ours, and it isn’t clear whether she is referring to the multiverse or confusing galaxies with universes.

Her call to action is depressing on many levels:

Is any of this being taught in our schools, in place of the traditional historical and geographical material? I hope so. Those who doubt its truth can easily find sources to support these claims. While such amazing information must change our entire thinking about the past, it must also be disseminated, rather than being suppressed. Young people today need to have their vision of this planet broadened, and be given the opportunity to learn much, much more than was previously available.

Scott Wolter couldn’t have said it better himself. In fact, he didn’t say it better yesterday when in comments on his blog he accused me (and those he calls my “minions”) of “negative agendas and deception” before delivering this stunning rant:

If it weren't for Lance Aux Meadows we'd still hail Columbus Day and the Roman Catholic Church would be giddy. The fact is the same 'serious academics' turn a blind eye to the obvious conclusive evidence behind the "Big Three", the Kensington Rune Stone, the Bat Creek Stone, and the Tucson Lead Artifacts. To accept them throws the last 2000 years of North American history upside down completely.

This is rather untrue; as I’ve pointed out more than once, the Viking discovery of America around 1000 CE was a standard part of American textbooks even before the discovery of L’Anse-Aux-Meadows. In Charles H. McCarthy’s History of the United States, a standard high school textbook used in Catholic schools in 1919, the author wrote: “The first white men who ever came to America were Northmen. Our continent was discovered through accident in the year 1000, by a Northman named Leif, who was on his way to proclaim the Christian faith in Greenland.”

And just to be clear: Leif Erikson, the founder of Vinland, was a Catholic according to the sagas. So, too, were some of the people who allegedly created the Tucson Lead Artifacts, forged (supposedly) by Christians who accompanied some Jews to Arizona. Needless to say, the Norse who supposedly carved the Kensington Rune Stone were putatively (though not in Wolter’s imagination) Catholics who inscribed the stone with “Ave Maria” (AVM). I’m not sure why the Catholic Church would have much interest in the question, except in Wolter’s imagination, where there is an elaborate conspiracy to fabricate history to suppress heresy. I’ll remind you that McCarthy’s textbook was for Catholic schools and endorsed the Viking discovery in 1919!

If you’re not a conspiracy theorist, you might be interested in this final item: There is a group trying to save the fields around the Chesterton Windmill, which was likely the model for the Newport Tower in Rhode Island, presuming you accept that the Tower is a colonial era windmill and not the secret clubhouse of itinerant Templars. There is a move afoot to develop the land around the Chesterton Windmill, and this could compromise the historic landscape and the beautiful views of the windmill. I don’t know much about the plans or their impact, but I told one of the preservationists that I’d pass on the link.

41 Comments

Duke of URL

9/19/2014 03:46:50 am

She is obviously in line to become CNN's Lead Science Correspondent.

Only Me

9/19/2014 05:43:49 am

Doo, doo, doo
Another one bites the dust!

Why is it so hard for people to fact check the claims they find? Aren't they the least bit curious about both sides of the discussion? What happened to the wisdom of "Trust, but verify"?

Rev. Phil Gotsch

9/19/2014 05:50:15 am

Of course, as we now know, the first - accidental -- Norse discoverer of North America was actually Bjarni Herjolfsson …

Leif Erikson bought his ship and followed up on Bjarni's discovery ...

666

9/19/2014 06:33:05 am

>>>Leif Erikson bought his ship and followed up on Bjarni's discovery ...

YOU ARE NOT THE SOURCE OF THAT STATEMENT
IT DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU

REFERENCES, PLEASE

9/19/2014 06:41:22 am

Grœnlendinga saga
https://notendur.hi.is/haukurth/utgafa/greenlanders.html

Carol

9/19/2014 02:26:18 pm

The story of Bjarni Herjolfsson is discussed in Farley Mowat's 'Westviking'. Bjarni was blown off course on his way from Iceland to Greenland, and drifted south west until he hit land in (probably Newfoundland) before making his way north to Baffin and across to the settlement in Greenland from there. Mowat uses the sagas for his narrative.

Zach

9/19/2014 06:09:49 am

I can give another example as to how scholars accepted the fact that the Norse made it to North America before Columbus. I actually own a textbook titled "A Primary History of the United States for Intermediate Classes" which was published by a company called A.S. Barnes & Company back in 1885. In the edition I have, there are descriptions (though very brief) from pages 12 to 14 of both the Native Americans (who they obviously call "Indians"), the Mound Builders and the "Northmen." I unfortunately don't have scans of it yet, but the descriptions were the following:

"The Indians -- Perhaps you may have seen some of these people. They are of a reddish or copper color, and dress in a strange way. They like to wear beads, feathers and other trinkets. In times of war they paint their faces and make themselves look as fierce as possible.
The huts or tents in which they live are made of bark or skins and are called wigwams. Hunting, fishing and war are the occupations of the men. All the hardworking is done by the women.
No one knows where the Indians came from; but they must have lived in this country many hundreds of years, as they do not look like any other people in the world. Possibly, they first came from Asia.
All the tribes of Indians found in the country that is now the United States, were such as we have described. The Indians of Mexico, and of Central and South America, however, were a very different people. They had many of the arts of civilization, and lived in cities and towns. Their manners and customs were not at all like those of the savage races of the North. Nearly one half the people of Mexico, to- day, are Indians, and they probably live in about the same way as their forefathers did hundreds of years ago.

The Mound Builders -- There must have been still ANOTHER RACE of people here, before the Indians. This is shown by the remains of weapons and tools which are quite different from those made by Indians. They were probably the builders of those great mounds of earth which are found in some of the Western States.
Pitchers and bowls of burnt clay, and many other curious articles, have been found in these mounds. We know, therefore, that the Mound Builders must have been PARTLY CIVILIZED. They were doubtless DRIVEN AWAY or KILLED BY the INDIANS who afterward TOOK POSSESSION OF THE COUNTRY.

The Northmen -- The people of Iceland and Norway claim that their ships sailed across the Atlantic a THOUSAND YEARS AGO, and that they PLANTED SETTLEMENTS ALONG OUR COAST. None of their settlements could have prospered, however, since the people did not remain in the country. Even the FACT OF THEIR COMING was for a LONG TIME FORGOTTEN."

I just want to note that this was a textbook that was used in the Rhode Island school systems as that is the source I had received it from, and according to information in both the book and the school records suggest it was mandatory reading material for students of other school systems throughout New England as well. This makes me bring up an important point: the book was published in 1885. In the phrases I emphasized in the capitol letters shown in the section on the Native Americans and the Mound Builders, this tells us that despite the fact that the myth of the lost race was disproven by 1885 the speculation was still very popular, so much so that it was still being published in a textbook for students. And at the expense of the Natives of the country, who are clearly depicted in racist terms as uncivilized savages, as was the practice of the period despite the fact that we now know that those same people were the ones that did indeed build those same mounds. Looks like they were more civilized than this idiotic Victorian historian thought. I also wanted to point out how it's stated as a MATTER OF FACT in this 1885 text for public education that it was FORGOTTEN that the Norse had come to North America, nearly 15 years before the Kensington Rune Stone came to public attention, and about 75 years before l'anse aux meadows was discovered in Newfoundland. This also tells us that the Norse sailing to the Americas was in print in New England, especially Rhode Island of all places, in the late 19th century which should put the recent events in North Kingston, Rhode Island in regards to the alleged rune stone in context with our state's history and fascination with the myths of transatlantic Vikings having settlements along the north eastern coast.

9/19/2014 06:27:32 am

I was able to find a link to the text if anybody is interested:

https://archive.org/details/primaryhistoryof00donn

Jason Colavito link

9/19/2014 06:55:26 am

Thanks for that excerpt, Zach. We could compile pages upon pages of similar texts. Consider this from the single most popular history book of its era, H. G. Wells's "Outline of History" (1921 edition, p. 741):

"In Iceland men know of Greenland, and adventurous voyagers had long ago found a further land beyond, Vinland, where the climate was pleasant and where men could settle if they chose to cut themselves off from the rest of humankind. This Vinland was either Nova Scotia or, what is more probable, New England."

The book sold 2 million copies and influenced popular history for a generation. Yup, the conspiracy is really suppressing that truth.

9/19/2014 07:05:06 am

...all the way back to Rafn's Antiquitates Americanae (1837), which was promptly translated into English and treated seriously.

9/19/2014 07:19:33 am

It says a lot when an author as famous as H.G. Wells was writing that in the early 20th century, and was popular among people. This whole "Academics Reject Norse Voyages to America" myth is the same argument as the "Belief in the Flat Earth" myth. We really are a society with short term memory if we can't even bother to look up how these are urban legends created to promote the false facts that the scholars and people of the 19th century and the Middle Ages were really that ignorant of the claims of the Greek philosophers and the Norse explorers.

9/19/2014 07:27:46 am

Hey, if people think that Newton "discovered" gravity...

9/19/2014 07:36:09 am

>>>Hey, if people think that Newton "discovered" gravity...

Just as Columbus didn't discover America, Newton did not actually discover gravity - the Egyptian pyramids and Roman coliseums prove that people understood the concept well before Newton. Rather, he used math to explain more precisely than anyone before him how gravity works. While this contribution is certainly important, it's not the same as discovery.

9/19/2014 06:15:49 am

IOW, the existence of authentic pre-Columbian Norse rune stones in North America is entirely plausible ...

9/19/2014 06:31:37 am

>>> existence of authentic pre-Columbian Norse rune stones

Where would those fantasists be without the 1950s pulp fiction magazines that inspired their activities

9/19/2014 08:02:31 am

Here is something I don't get about the alleged "conspiracy to suppress the truth about Bible giants". Let's say there are these giants. Let's say there is an anti-Bible conspiracy. What would be the point of hiding the giants?

It's not like the Bible is the only ancient source to speak of giants. It's not like the giants are central to the Bible or any of the religions using it as their sacred text. It's not like people lose faith in the Bible because the giants are the most incredible part.

I mean, I get why some people are so obsessed with finding Noah's Ark, or defending Biblical dinosaurs. But giants?

Shane Sullivan

9/19/2014 08:29:13 am

They don't have to suppress all that fake stuff like dinosaurs or Noah's Ark.

But Bible Giants-- I once saw one beating up Jose Canseco!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqsLJKeyR0w

9/19/2014 08:36:26 am

Choi does call himself "Techno Goliath" apparently...

9/19/2014 10:09:20 am

It seems to go back to the early days of Biblical literalism where the idea of "giants in the earth in those days" became a sticking point for proving the Bible (particularly the KJV) literally true. The Cardiff Giant exploited this, and it looks like creationists have spent the last 150 years trying to live it down by proving the giants really existed and thus the Bible is true in all its details.

9/19/2014 10:24:02 am

Well... true in this one specific detail. But it's not like it was ever the one doubtful part, right?

That's the question: Why is so much activity directed at answering the critics of Biblical literalism on this one specific point?

spookyparadigm

9/19/2014 10:54:46 am

While there have been giant skeleton reports for a while, including some explicitly modeled off of folk versions of Nephilim (multiple sets of teeth, extra fingers, etc.), this does seem to have really grown dramatically recently.

The "lazy" (as a religion professor I know called it when I described this to him, he used some other choice words) conflation of elements of conspiracy theories since mid-20th-century of Anunaki, Reptilians, Nephilim, Nephilim, Illuminati, etc., seems to have really started to metastasize. It is becoming the catch-all conspiracy theory myth of a deep history hidden race.

I am biased on this, as probably cryptozoo and ufology are the woo-fields that I paid attention to earliest and most often, but I'd say the death of traditional ufology probably has a lot to do with this. As Jason and others have chronicled, the UFO movement materialized the forerunners of the current myth in conspiratorial and technological forms, with a side of paranormal. It is all but dead, and I suspect a lot of the "heat" is flowing back to a new version that is closer to the old roots that we all know informed UFO conspiracy theories like MJ-12 and Roger Lear and such: Shaver, Lemuria, Protocols, Mt. Shasta, Dulce, etc. etc. etc., broken record, broken record, broken record.

I don't know how long it will last, but ancient aliens and weird bones are becoming what the flying saucer once was: a signifier for weird. One giants promoter can suggest Nephilim. Another, aliens. Another, the Forest People. And so on.

And as for why hide them? Creationists and co. sell the idea that somehow their enemies (scientists, teachers, universities, liberals, city people, etc.) are both using complete control of society to destroy Christian beliefs, yet somehow sitting on an incredibly weak facade so that one crocoduck (or lack thereof) will bring it all down. It's a very dramatic narrative ripe for heroism and useful for selling hope.

Of course, the problem is, anyone can quickly debunk it. Churches are everywhere. Religious schools are everywhere and in many states get voucher or other forms of state support. The state of Kentucky is pledging millions in tax-breaks to the Noah's Ark park to accompany the Creation Museum. Most of the hated professors are likely Christian, but just not the right kind of anti-elite populist literalist. God (meant as the Christian God) is on the money, in the speeches, and pretty much everywhere except the science books.

That this one place is not allowed gives those who want to tell the dramatic narrative, the place to do so. And while that goes specifically for Creationism, remember that Creationism is an argument in the US at least which can't be divorced from both regional and/or class-based identities that are constructed in opposition to an urban elite. In that sense, while it is easiest to describe the Creationist rhetoric against science because it is the largest and many times the loudest shared anti-elite ideology in the US, it is just the most visible version of a larger populist style of resistance against real or imagined victimization.

Anyone can see, if not warping reality to support political rhetoric, that popular beliefs including religious or other ideologies not in agreement with mainstream science are allowed and thriving in the US. But that doesn't mobilize outrage.

Now make up a conspiracy to hide sacred evidence. That mobilizes outrage, and makes the struggle all the more mythic in resonance.

9/19/2014 11:02:42 am

Broken records? Or Akashic records? :)

So what you're saying (on the question of giants) is that they are sufficiently generic and established to fill this niche? I guess I can see that...

9/19/2014 11:32:44 am

Not really

They weren't always generic. While Giants have been a "thing" for a long time, they've recently surged in the occult/conspiracy theory world. I'd suggest that giants, in the American context, had one of two basic meanings

- Nephilim

- lost super-race of white people who were killed by Native Americans (aka the Moundbuilder Myth). While some old accounts of giants tried to suggest they were Native American, the two would go hand-in-hand, sometimes due to the idea that "these Indians had some other blood" (see discussion of Templars gifting North Americans with their wisdom and genetics for a similar idea).

This is sort of like how flying saucers in the 1950s had a meaning of "metal craft of advanced beings from another planet" but by the 1970s, had become "image of weird mystery with some outer space associations"

Giants that had once been either a lost white race and/or Nephilim, spun around in the archives of greater Fortean forbidden knowledge, alongside ancient aliens, Sitchin, Icke, more "mundane" forms of pseudoarchaeology such as hyperdiffusion, bigfoot, etc.

In doing so, it started melding with them a bit. When the combination of the decline of traditional UFOs and related conspiracy theories, the increasingly vocal conspiratorial political and religious fringe of the Religious Right in the US, and the surprise success of the TV show Ancient Aliens all hit, giants were in the right place to become the new flying saucer. Not so much generic, but rather they had tumbled around in the Fortean bin enough to get a little bit of UFOs (big pointed heads), biblical literalism (Nephilim), and Illuminati conspiracy (lost super-race) attached to them.

I think that it is impossible to understand things in this sphere as independent symbols, which is the approach usually taken by outsiders who want a quick perspective. One must, unfortunately, track the long history of personalities and mutating uses of these strands, strands that are often impossible to isolate as individual topics, to see how they work.

Here's another example: Chupacabras. Why on earth did a blood-sucking little beast get tied into UFOs, made to look like a gray alien, etc.? Well, much of the initial "work" on the beast was done by a UFO group in Puerto Rico. Why would people interested in UFOs be interested in dead chickens? Partly, there is the general mystery button that gets pushed, and that can't be minimized. But beyond that, one has to see the history of cattle mutilations being tied to UFOs decades earlier. All of a sudden, that button gets hit very easily, and makes a lot more sense.

9/19/2014 11:20:54 am

Now, as for Tristan's efforts, I applaud them, but as an American archaeologist interested in these topics, I do feel like some elements that are not intended as criticism but may sound that way, should be mentioned.

First off, I suspect this is almost entirely off the radar of those reading this, but there is something of a tripartite divide in archaeology, one largely split between Europe and America on the one axis, and based on age on the other axis, that needs to be considered.

First, many archaeologists of the older generations have no significant interest in addressing these topics or engaging with those who have an interest in them. Further, many not only have no interest, but openly recommend against doing so, either personally, or as a profession. They write the lot off as crackpots, and that engagement is a waste of time that only cause problems. Experience and history shows that in terms of actual engagement, sometimes they have a point, sometimes they don't (I've got some material on this working its way to press). In terms of the larger phenomenon of pseudoarchaeology, this attitude has not impacted it in the slightest (those who hold this attitude would not care, they would see fighting such as a waste of effort).

A smaller group in archaeology of the older generations disagreed, and decided to begin taking these claims apart. You know the names of these people and their works.

Once you get under 40 or so, the interest within the field regarding these interests picks up some (not dramatically, but it is noticeable). More broadly, it gets conflated with the discussion about archaeology and media as per Tristan's blog, whereas for the older "skeptics" they focused mostly on pseudoarchaeology as a failure of logic and critical thinking. There is a growing interest in these topics.

This is where the regional perspective comes in. The namesof the "archaeo-skeptics" that get mentioned on Jason's blog and are likely known to a number of the readers here are by and large, American or British, and/or older. But they are not the only people who write about these topics. There is a school of thought in European archaeology that suggests that we need to be less judgmental and more inclusive, and that alternative archaeologies should be part of the discussion. The biggest metaphorical bomb-thrower in this regard is Cornelius Holtorf (I'd direct readers to a 2005 article he wrote in World Archaeology, and a reply by Ken Feder and Garret Fagan), but he isn't the only one who finds the archaeo-skeptics too polemic.

The thing is though, that's not because they support Nephilim, or Ancient Aliens, or the Bat Creek Stone or such. Their theoretical stance, in addition to the usual generational reactive nature of academic politics, is largely coming from self-reflexive critique of archaeology's past and present relationship to power, politics, and colonialism. Examples commonly found in calls for a more inclusive archaeology include neopagan access to sacred sites, indigenous archaeologies, and other topics rarely discussed.

These calls are usually tempered by some form of statement (see also Schadla-Hall 2004) that they don't think more inclusive means you let in racist or nasty (subjective, and usually meaning having actual political power) ideologies. I've never really seen this attitude explore the kinds of material that is routinely covered here, the more directly occult or conspiratorial approach of Ancient Aliens, hyperdiffusion of Templars and such, Nephilim skull conspiracies and the like.

I suspect this is in part because these are far less common in a Europe that still has plenty of religion, but not as much of the literalist type found in America or elsewhere. Further, archaeology has a very long history of being the "prehistory of us" whereas in America or in international expeditionary archaeology, archaeology is seen as "the relics of Them".

This is a long walk through a situation that I suspect many people are not aware of, to explain why someone interested in archaeology and the media, but based out of the UK rather than the US, would be shocked that archaeology is associated in corporate media, and almost synonymous in user-created media like on youtube, with the supernatural and conspiracy theories. I could see how it is a bit of a rude shock, just as I, as an American, was initially floored by calls for inclusive cooperation. Feder and Fagan's response to Holtorf was, in part "Have you met these people?!" and I think to some degree that for a lot of those who approaching this topic, no, they haven't.

Of course, the older generation of archaeologists would then point and say "see, this is why I told you never to get mixed up in all this nonsense."

9/19/2014 02:52:09 pm

"There is a school of thought in European archaeology that suggests that we need to be less judgmental and more inclusive"

Yeah, it's the same story in most disciplines in the humanities and "softer" social sciences. And as far as I can tell they all emerge from the same philosophical roots. Fuck those guys.

Perhaps there is a more pronounced continental divide in archaeology than in, say, history of science, but as you obvioulsy are aware archaeology isn't neatly separable from other disciplines. (It's not really shocking that Alice Kehoe is an American.)

------

On a less depressing note, have you read Vico's New Science (or at least the parts on giants)?

9/19/2014 03:23:27 pm

No, I haven't.

I'm sympathetic to some of where the "inclusive" folks are coming from. But not entirely.

9/19/2014 03:40:24 pm

Just read Holtorf (2005). At first I was like "What the fuck am I looking at?" Then I saw "It has been demonstrated... (Feyerabend, see Holtorf)" and everything became clear.

I hope this guy is taken as seriously as his "flip-to-view technology" book suggests he should. Holtorf is rehashing some of the worst ideas in philosophy of science from the last 40 years and somehow managing to strip them of any intelectually redeeming features they may once have had.

9/19/2014 03:50:30 pm

I think some of the core messages in his "Archaeology is a Brand!" book are good and useful, but the book itself is either too long or too short. It either needed a lot more research, or should have been a long good article. That book's audience appears to be the heritage industry, and there the big font and cartoons may make some sense (it makes the book feel like a Powerpoint presentation).

I'm not a fan of his earlier book. Other articles on this topic, including a short discussion article in a BAR 2012 volume, range in quality, but he has become something of a go-to. In terms of how archaeology students see him, the pairing of Holtorf vs. Feder and Fagan isn't entirely off the mark. Not because of any fault on Feder and Fagan, but their approach to this material isn't much taught in archaeology classes because this material isn't taught in most archaeology classes (my students are reading both 2005 articles this semester as well as Sax et al's Crystal Skull article, I am curious as to how they will react). Whereas Holtorf gets more exposure (though its not like if I named him to anyone in American archaeology outside of those with an interest in pseudo, they'd have any idea who I am talking about) because as I suggested, his arguments about the field are part of a larger theoretical discussion community.

9/19/2014 03:55:25 pm

So I went and hit up wiki for Vico. The tripartite giants, great men, and then an age of irony is interesting, though it feels a lot like the classic Socrates bemoaning "these kids today" in that it is timeless.

But I reply in large part to state my love for Wiki redirection statements, and how they read like a modern bizarre version of the old Victorian long post-colon title run-on sentences. To wit

""Gigantes" redirects here. For the Giants in other cultures, see Giant (mythology). For the giant figures of Spanish culture, see Gigantes y cabezudos. For the Greek bean dish, see Gigandes plaki."

9/19/2014 04:06:07 pm

It's definitely more than the classical "ages of mankind" narrative, that's for sure. Or less, if you're strictly interested in giants. Check out his explanation for "why" they were gigantic...

But as historically important as it is, I wouldn't recommned reading New Science in its entirety to anyone who isn't a severe masochist.

9/19/2014 02:58:54 pm

"they don't think more inclusive means you let in racist or nasty (subjective, and usually meaning having actual political power) ideologies. I've never really seen this attitude explore the kinds of material that is routinely covered here"

Except sometimes they let such ideologies in by mistake and then can't get them out once they become institutionalized. Thus Afrocentrism and its analogues in Women's and Native American studies. And some of these people are no better than Biblical literalists in terms of their distortion of the truth and reason.

9/19/2014 03:41:26 pm

From a pure evidence perspective, right. A creationist is a creationist, whether it be Genesis or the Popol Vuh that is used in a literal geological manner (I've never heard of anyone using the Popol Vuh that way, whereas I have seen some discussion of "we were always here" in other conflicts involving indigenous history, but that usually gets brushed over for more pressing concerns).

Where they'd differ, and some say this more explicitly than others, is on the notion of structural power. They would see minimal harm from Afrocentrism being allowed in because it doesn't have much power backing it, vs. Creationism. So they'd throw out a lot of what gets discussed here because it is so easily tied to current and past racial ideology of white supremacists and such.

Which frankly comes off as condescending IMO.

Personally, I would privilege two things: age and honesty.

If a place has had some kind of meaning for "a long time" (definitions), that has become part of the place, even if it is completely ascientific, I'd be more comfortable at least discussing as part of the meaning of the place.

And if a place or object has had a meaning as part of a cultural tradition, integrated with other elements of a functioning, vibrant society, I'd also have less of a problem of that being part of the place's meaning.

So, for example, I'd be a lot more willing to talk about the faerie stories that have accreted to a megalithic site in Scotland. Or stories of water people or other "spirits" responsible for modifying petroglyphs in Vermont.Even if in both cases other evidence suggests to me that these constructions are older and had different meanings, the meanings they've had in later centuries, often from the descendants of those who made them, have become part of the story.

I'm a lot less amenable to giving similar consideration to something someone purposely wearing stereotypical symbols of science, but abusing or ignoring the scientific method, in the last century who imposed their ideas about alien gods and lost continents on sites or objects they know nothing about and to which they have no ties.

I know that's fuzzy, but I guess in some senses I'm driven here by decency. I don't think finding scientific evidence should be halted, but if a place has had another lived meaning for people for generations, I don't feel I should ignore that. Whereas someone coming in, pretending by title or style to be something they aren't (for if they didn't do so, no one would listen to them), and making up a story about someone else, with no respect for evidence or logic, takes some of the most disrespectful elements of the bad side of archaeology's history, magnifies them, and cloaks it in the martyrdom cloak of the underdog rather than the more appropriate dudebro salmon shorts of the obnoxious jackass.

9/19/2014 04:15:50 pm

Power backing comes and goes. But the shame of having a William Karenga or a Ward Churchill as a colleague lasts for eterinty.

More importantly, the "bad guys" don't care about these subtle distinctions, and their audience isn't really capable of grasping them. Wolter (as his discussion of peer review and academics makes clear) is ineptly parroting things he kinda remembers from Alice Kehoe, who I hope is not too far gone to realize that she offered support to a man who caters to the forces she so vehemently opposes. (And Holtorf is parroting Feyerabend et al. in a mannder similar to some creationists' use of him.)

9/19/2014 04:39:23 pm

That's a critique I would agree with, except that it isn't like we really need to provide material to those are going to be dishonest anyway.

For example, I wouldn't criticize Stephen Jay Gould for giving ammo to Creationists to say "look, someone is criticizing Darwin!" Even if Gould overplayed the revolutionary aspect of punctuated equilibrium for career purposes (an allegation I've heard), I wouldn't lay what the Creationists did with him on him.

Having an eccentric colleague or two is not the worst thing in the world. If they aren't either (a) somewhat right or (b) supported by already existing bias due to real political power, their eccentricity generally will not survive them. This starts to become a baby-bathwater discussion, especially since standards against "eccentricity" can be misused.

And I do think eccentricity is an appropriate word. At the end of the day, if an idea or expression of an idea largely lives and dies on the charisma of a single professor, it isn't going to have that much power in the real world.

I'm not saying excuse any case. But I think the issue is less weird ideas than it is competency/honesty. IIRC, that's what caused Churchill's fall once people started looking at him after the spotlight was on him: not his ideas, but his credentials and activity more generally.

That's not so much an academia problem as it is an HR problem. And while one could point to tenure, in the majority of cases I'd guess that the individual's departmental colleagues often supported them (nasty intra-departmental rifts happen all the time, but usually over personality or resources, less often over ideas). This would make it not that much different than a mismanaged division in other business.

9/19/2014 04:51:43 pm

"it isn't like we really need to provide material to those are going to be dishonest anyway."

It is, actually. They aren't just dishonest. Arguably more importantly, they are intellectually and creatively bankrupt.

"supported by already existing bias due to real political power"

There are levels of power, much like there are levels of politics. Having relatively little power on the national scale doesn't mean one has relatively little power on the local scale (region, city, institution, demographic...)

And as far as eccentricity, Chomsky is an eccentric. William Karenga is a vicious racist who abducted and tortured two women and still somehow ended up a chair at a major public university. Churchill is a hack fraud (and the likes of Deloria and Cornel West are just hacks, as far as I know). This comes back to power: regardless of their power in society, I cannot imagine a Christian fundamentalist getting away with half of what these men got away with (outside of hardcore dedicated fundamentalist institutions, perhaps).

9/19/2014 05:05:40 pm

And of the people you mentioned there, only one is going to be likely to be quoted or cited much when they're gone: Chomsky. For his linguistic work, and for his political writings and speeches.

Do I excuse those others? No. But expecting perfection in hiring practices is ridiculous. The list of nutjobs and frauds in any field is going to be long, but because of the public nature of academics, and because we associate names with ideas, they get more scrutiny.

Are some fields (and no, I'm not going to go into it more than that) more political than others? Yes. Does that make for political hires sometimes? Yes. Is there some top-down ironclad rule for fixing that which wouldn't easily be used to narrow hiring practices in less reputable ways? I suspect not.

A quick trawl through the history of any field starts to find all sorts of oddballs, some extremely reprehensible. The difference between them and the examples you mention is that they weren't politicized. A racist asshole in a _____ department in 19xx might be remembered today as a footnote, and one usually has to go looking for them. For good or for bad, fields seem to have a way of hiding the history of questionable practitioners (I think it is bad, personally).

But an asshole in a _____ Studies Program in the last 20 years is going to have a whole peanut gallery of right-wing political activists documenting everything about them to show the worst side of universities, and the juiciest bits will be run on Drudge Report/Breitbart. That's not transparency, that's cherry picking.

Oh, and assholes on the other side don't need to get away with stuff in universities. That's what billionaire-funded political think tanks are for.

9/19/2014 05:21:45 pm

I agree there is no ironclad rule for fixing this problem. What I'm saying (and I don't think you've disagreed so far) is that one of the reasons the problem has reached the proportions that it has is that the "pluralistic", "inclusive" principles have undermined the standards that to some extent counteract political pressures. (Incidentally, for all the bad apples professional academics have always been among the most progressive and socially conscious elements of society. Obsession of "x Studies" and diversity hasn't obviously changed it for the better.)

Now we have mainstream academics who aren't really qualified to know better citing Feyerabend has having "demonstrated" stuff, while anti-science elements alternatively mock them and appeal to the paradigm of "tolerance", depending on what better suits their momentary interests.

(As an aside, I haven't ever encountered anyone serious referencing Chomsky on anything other than linguistics and know that he's widely ridiculed by social scientists regardless of their political views.)

9/20/2014 01:26:45 am

Oh, and while I'm not going to talk out of school, I can think of white guy professors from very conservative religious backgrounds that have allowed these to impact their work. They get quietly ignored after a while.

Though here's one, outside of archaeology, that might ring a bell: Grover Krantz.

Byron DeLear

9/20/2014 02:38:51 am

Interesting sidebar EP and Spooky, albeit a little inside baseball. Regarding Chomsky, Dr. Wikwiki cites the non-linguistic work furiously: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Noam_Chomsky

But seriously, EP you seem to not like Cornel West and Chomsky, or at least echo how they've been "widely ridiculed" and how West is a "hack," is how I think you said. I've been a fan of both West and Chomsky, particularly in regard to their movement building. Let's see some of that criticism from the academy you're talking about, is it as heavy to be referenced as widespread ridicule? I hope you can point out a couple links that encapsulate this view ---- like, for instance, would you say this a commonly held view of a majority of academics or just a faction perhaps?

9/20/2014 04:44:34 am

"I've been a fan of both West and Chomsky, particularly in regard to their movement building."

Good for you. In general, however, "movement building" need not be reflected in the quantity or "quality" of citations or in general academic respectability.

"is it as heavy to be referenced as widespread ridicule?"

I was speaking of my personal experience, rather than any published discussions. If you read what I said again, you'll see that I said that "I haven't ever encountered anyone serious referencing Chomsky on anything other than linguistics".

Like, I'm obviously not saying that his political writings are not discussed ever, with or without approval. They certainly are. (In particular, various "Media Studies" types tend to cite Chomsky a lot, but I am not too wamiliar with or interested in that literature.) Given that it's not something I've encountered I (a) assume that their *academic* impact is niche at best and (b) cannot give citations :)

None of this is intrinsically a knock on Chomsky, by the way. There have been many enormously influential public intellectuals who are not widely cited in serious scholarly literature.

Let me know if this doesn't help.

Titus pullo

9/20/2014 11:59:35 am

I've enjoyed reading the back and forth on this topic. I only spent time in as a student in two darartments that tend to be pretty apolitical, physics and business school (even in b school we were too busy with classes that the most political discussion I remember was in macroeconomics between Keynes and hayek theories. I did see on occasion fellow students in say English lit or sociology into paranormal or esp or crazy fringe political views, less often in hard science majors.

I would like to see a show that uses critical evaluation of these claims, I guess it would be boring as we know how each episode ends.