Introduction

Every check-out counter in America displays tabloids with occasional banner headlines proclaiming new and startling discoveries that turn science on its head. This week's offerings include stories proclaiming documentary proof that the End Days have begun. Many of these discoveries have to do with the past as revealed through archaeology. For all of the films, books, newspaper articles reporting out the real world discoveries of science in general, and archaeology in particular, there is always a parallel dimension of hokum, bunk and fantasy with a following of avid fans. Some people reshape the past away from the credible work of professional scientists in order to validate their beliefs-- in the occult, in extraterrestials, in the historical and material truth of cherished scripture. Others are outright charlatans, out to make money by getting people to buy their books and films appealing to heartfelt desires--that wise and nurturing aliens will save us from ourselves, that ancient secret knowledge from the Lost Civilization will guide us to an enlightened future and so forth.

Archaeologists and other scientists who deal with the past are regularly confronted with fantastic alternatives to their carefully constructed interpretations of the available material evidence. There are several ways they can respond. They can expose the flaws of pseudoscientific claims about the past. Sometimes these claims are deliberate hoaxes. In other cases, they are just unfounded and unwarranted speculations about the past that do not fit the documented material record. Archaeologists can also teach people about how we know what we do about the past, and what the rules of evidence are. Most people do not understand the limitations placed on what we can know about the past subject to verification by material evidence. The processes of natural decay eliminate most of the organic materials modified by people. These “perishable” things can be enormously important to how people live—imagine all of the things made from organic materials disappearing from your immediate environment. Add to natural decay the conscious and casual destruction of things and places by people: how many seventeenth century buildings are still standing in Manhattan? The material record of the human past is full of faint residues, fragments, and indirect clues to what happened and why. That is what makes it such interesting work for professional archaeologists and at the same time such fair game for people side-stepping the rules of evidence that archaeologists must use to construct useful and enduring knowledge about the past.

Fantastic archaeology comprises reconstructions of the human past which do not follow the accepted rules of evidence and argument, but which assert that they have scientific support, use science terminology, or claim scientific validity. These can be called pseudoscientific reconstructions. They can also be called cult archaeology when they provide the core beliefs of a group or community. When they attach to religious beliefs questioning human evolution or they use pseudoscientific evidence to promote a religious belief in a supernatural creation event in the past, then they pertain to Creationism. We will look at all of these matters in the class. But the issues surrounding Fantastic Archaeology are by no means always clear cut. In several archaeological arenas, legitimate controversies by among scientists about what is known and knowable grade into speculations about the past that go beyond any possibility of documentation. Sometimes these frontiers between the legitimate and the lunatic are the most dynamic and interesting of all.

Objectives

1. Students should be able to recognize a pseudoscientific claim, particularly about the human past involving archaeology.

2. Students will learn some techniques for analyzing such claims.