I don't know how much overlap there is between my regular blog readers (if there are any left) and those that watch my videos on YouTube. Since many of the comments I get on YouTube seem to be from viewers that don't hold my skeptical (i.e., evidence-based) perspective in high regard, I think I'm probably reaching somewhat overlapping but non-isomorphic audiences. That's the point of branching out into videos, so that's a good thing.

I wanted to make my blog readers aware of two videos that I posted this week. The first documents my trip to the Grave Creek Mound in Moundsville, West Virginia. The Grave Creek Mound is a large earthen burial mound that was constructed during the Early Woodland period. Nephilim enthusiasts such as L. A. Marzulli and Fritz Zimmerman claim there are or were giant skeletons buried in the mound. There is no good evidence for any such thing. Here's the video:

The second video is a follow up to Josh Reeves' claim that Graham Hancock plagiarized him. In the video I demonstrate that the large majority of what Josh Reeves says about the site of Moundville (Alabama) in his (2013) film Lost Secrets of Ancient America was read, word-for-word, from a series of articles by Greg Little published in 2012. You can follow along here if you like.

I really do like blogging. Or, at least, I did at one time.

I have written only a handful of blog posts this calendar year. I do not intend to stop writing altogether, but it seems like circumstances have just kept pushing the blog down on the priority list. I'm sure that some issue will re-light the fire at some point and change my cost-benefit calculation, but for now I'm enjoying getting done what I'm doing without writing about it multiple times per week. So I see no immediate end to the hibernation. But here's some of what I've been up to recently (work first, then play). 

38FA608 Write-Up

I'm working on writing up the first two seasons of excavation work at 38FA608 (the site of the Broad River Archaeological Field School). I know what I'd like to do for the first journal article about the site, but I also need to document the nuts and bolts of the excavations, results, and materials recovered in report form. It makes sense to do that before writing anything more particular, as it will force me to go through everything and fix the problems/errors before they proliferate. My goal is to publish is the field documents and data from the site online so that it is freely accessible.

Nipper Creek Collections

In the mid-1980s, SCIAA archaeologists did two seasons of excavation work at the Nipper Creek site (38RD18), another stratified site along the Broad River. The report from the 1985 season is here. Results from the 1986 work were included in a journal paper, but the material from the site remains under-published. I've got the boxes and paperwork in my lab now, and have started the process of going through the materials and notes to create a database and begin working with the collections. The site, interpreted as a location for fall aggregation, will be excellent for comparison to 38FA608.

Lithic Tool Curation/Transport Modeling Paper

I did much of the work for a modeling paper on lithic transport patterns last spring. The summer break were a stick in the spokes of that wheel, but I hope to return to the analysis and write-up soon and hopefully get the paper submitted somewhere this fall.

"Dirt Dance Floor" Coming to Tapp's

I'll have my second solo art show beginning October 3 at Tapp's Arts Center. Back when I first scheduled the show (over a year ago?) it seemed like I would have plenty of time to get everything done. I spent a large part of my discretionary time/energy over the summer working on new pieces, and I have created many (and I have not yet shared photos of many of them). With only a few weeks to go, however, I'm still not where I want to be and I'm not sure how close I'll be able to get to my vision. I normally work well under pressure. I'll keep you posted. Follow my art account on Instagram for work in progress.

"Passenger" is a PokeStop

My winged bear sculpture has lived at Stormwater Studios since its return from ArtFields. When I went there earlier this week to remove the wings in case we got some strong winds from Hurricane Dorian (we didn't), I discovered that someone had made the bear a PokeStop for Pokemon GO. Because I am always so on top of the trends, I just started playing the game with my family this summer. It has been a great way to get more exercise (I was doing morning running/walking loops of 4-5 miles earlier this summer before I hurt my knee). If you play add me as a friend! My code is 6154 3024 8537.

Art at the Gervais Street Bridge Dinner

I'm happy to announce that several pieces of my art will be on display at the Gervais Street Bridge Dinner on October 20. I have not been to it before, but it sounds like a great event that serves a lot of good causes. I'm looking forward to it!

My Vacation Drive Home

This summer we spent our family vacation in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which is a great place to be when it's 100 degrees in South Carolina. After visiting family in Michigan and Ohio, I drove the van back (alone!) to Columbia and got to take the long way. I stopped at Grave Creek Mound in West Virginia, visited several interesting places near Natural Bridge, Virginia, and photographed many abandoned structures as I drove through North and South Carolina near I-95. I meant to write a "Travel Diaries" post as soon as I got back, but I did art instead. That's the way it goes. I did take some video at Grave Creek, however, and I still hope to post some of my photos and observations from the rest of my trip. And oh -- you can stop searching for the lost city: I found it.

SEAC 2019

I guess I have circled back to work. At this year's Southeastern Archaeology Conference (SEAC) in Mississippi, I'll be giving a presentation titled "The Size and Structure of Eastern Paleoindian Social Groupings: What We Do and Do Not Know." Here is the abstract:

Social groupings such as families, foraging groups, and bands comprised the building blocks of the Paleoindian societies of eastern North America. Our inferences about the characteristics of those social groupings are based on a combination of ethnographic, modelling, and archaeological data. This paper will synthesize those data and attempt to summarize what we do and do not know about the size and composition of eastern Paleoindian social groupings and how those groups articulated with one another to form larger societies.

And there you go: I have ripped off the band-aid. And now you are up to date. 

In a video I posted last week about Josh Reeves's claim that Graham Hancock plagiarized a section of Reeves's movie discussing Mississippian cosmology (specifically related to Orion), I showed how some of Reeves's script was taken word-for-word from a 2007 article by George Lankford. I was able to show this because Hancock quoted the same passages --properly cited -- from Lankford in his book America Before.

In the last portion of the video I expressed skepticism that Hancock had independently "stumbled upon" the general idea that ancient Mississippian and Egyptian religions were related through their similarities regarding Orion, the Milky Way, etc. My skepticism came from the knowledge that there were, in fact, other sources out there at the time of Hancock's trip to Moundville wherein such comparisons were discussed. At the end of the video I invited Hancock to clarify where he got the idea.

I'm reproducing the three emails we exchanged below, in full (at his request). Hancock states that he had not read Greg Little's (2014) book Path of Souls at this time of his trip, and he points out that he did credit Little and Andrew Collins for their prior discussion of the idea. He also states that I am not telepathic and not inside his head. He is correct in both of those assertions, and it was wrong of me to speculate that he improperly took the idea from someone else. 

Here is a short video I made to follow up on the original video:

Dear Dr Andrew White (aawhite@mailbox.sc.edu)

Thank you for clarifying (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbWhm7zfoaE) who plagiarised who in this Josh Reeves issue, and thank you for recognising that I do properly reference my sources while it seems Josh Reeves does not.

As to the second half of your video, from around 9 minutes in, you talk about comparisons between the religious ideas of ancient Egypt and of the ancient Mississippi Valley, and you effectively accuse me of fabricating the claim that I stumbled across that comparison by chance and unexpectedly when I came to Moundville.

9.26ff: QUOTE "The interesting thing, though, in Graham Hancock's book -- he presents it as though he kind of stumbled upon that comparison all by himself..." END QUOTE

You then quote me on how I try to prepare thoroughly and how I realised it looked like I had missed something important in my background reading before starting out on this trip... But I should have known about this...

And you say that you don't buy for one second that QUOTE "he [Hancock] had no idea that those similarities were out there. He would come all the way here and got to Moundville and not have done the very basic reading on Mississippian religion just seems silly. I don't know. Were we all born yesterday?" END QUOTE

With respect, Dr White, you cannot know how and in what order I set about the research for America Before, and you cannot know the workings of my mind, or the chain of connections in my past research that framed how I approached what confronted me at Moundville. You are accusing me of lying and that is a pretty heavy trip to lay on anyone, especially so since you did not contact me in advance to get my position on this and, more importantly, since you deliberately omit mention of the fact that I DO give credit where credit is due and that I do make direct reference in my main text to other researchers who noted these comparisons before me -- e.g. on page 310 of America Before I write as follows:

QUOTE (emphasis added) The Milky Way, the connection with Orion, the perilous afterlife journey of the soul, and the notion of creating an image or copy of the realm of the dead on the ground were all genuinely present in the Mississippian religion, just as they were in the ancient Egyptian religion. No one familiar with the Pyramid Texts and the Book of the Dead could fail to notice these obvious resemblances. I’m not the first to do so. Andrew Collins and Gregory Little made passing mention of them in 2014 and there was earlier brief recognition of the same issue by others in 2012.2 To my knowledge at the time of this writing, however, no in-depth comparative study has ever been undertaken to determine whether there’s a real connection between these two otherwise very different cultures, separated not only by geography but also by time."
END QUOTE

It is this in-depth, comparative study that follows (roughly between pp 310 and 362 of America Before) that I claim to be original to me. You will not find anything in those pages that you can spin as plagiarism, lying or misrepresentation of any kind on my part. All this is my own original take on the content of the ancient Egyptian funerary texts and the comparisons that emerge from my close -- and fully referenced and properly credited -- reading of the work of George Lankford and others on the Moundville religion.

It is disingenuous of you to insinuate that I falsely claim priority in noting the obvious similarities between the ancient Egyptian religion and the Moundville religions when I clearly do not claim priority and when I clearly do state on the record on page 310 of America Before that I am not the first to notice these similarities. The force of your insinuation would be lost if you had quoted me specifically disclaiming priority as I do on page 310. I wonder why you chose not to do so in your video and thus to mislead your viewers on my true position?

To give you some background, when my wife Santha and I began the Mississippi Valley leg of our America Before research trip I was indeed not well prepared. My intention early in the project had been to focus on the Southwest, and I was particularly interested in Gary David's Orion correlations in Arizona. But while in Arizona in late May 2017 (travelling with Gary David, Randall Carlson and others) I suffered a massive episode of epileptic seizures described on pages 297/298 ff of America Before, as a result of which I was knocked sideways in almost every imaginable manner possible. I lost all memory of the research I had done in the Southwest, and all interesting in reporting it. When I came to Moundville however, on the long road journey up the Mississippi Valley (with Santha now doing all the driving) that eventually got us to Serpent Mound for the summer solstice -- and having at that point read not a word of the work of George Lankford et al -- I did indeed, as I describe, find myself overtaken by a massive sense of deja vu to do with the blatant and obvious similarities to ancient Egypt. Subsequently I researched the subject in depth, and what I have written speaks for itself, namely I give full credit to Lankford et all for breaking the code of Moundville symbolism and I correctly attribute priority to Greg Little, Andrew Collins and others for preceding me in noting the blatant and obvious similarities between the Moundville and ancient Egyptian religions.

I then go on to mount my own detailed investigation of the similarities, and it is this investigation, (roughly between pp 310 and 362 of America Before) that I claim as original to myself. If you feel I have plagiarised anyone in that investigation please indicate where and who.

Something else that you (and others) appear to have failed to note (or prefer not to note?) is that I have my own deeper background with the "Path of Souls" concept in ancient native America and its connections to ancient Egypt. I review this background (which is reported in my 1998 book Heaven's Mirror) on pp 446 to 448 of America Before, where I write:

QUOTE
I have explored the mysteries of the Maya, and of their predecessors the Olmec, in my earlier work, so I have not retold their extraordinary story here. I will mention in passing, however, that in 1998, long before I knew of the Mississippi Valley civilization and its afterlife beliefs concerning the constellation Orion and the Milky Way, I drew attention in Heaven’s Mirror to a discovery by archaeologists Jose Fernandez and Robert Cormack establishing that the settlement core of the Maya city of Utatlan was designed “according to a celestial scheme reflected by the shape of the constellation of Orion.”9

Fernandez was also able to prove that all of Utatlan’s major temples “were oriented to the heliacal setting points of stars in Orion,”10 and noted that the Milky Way, alongside which Orion stands, “was thought of as a celestial path connecting the firmament’s navel with the centre of the underworld.”11

This should be familiar territory to the reader by now and hopefully you can guess what comes next. “Very much like the ancient Egyptians,” I reported inHeaven’s Mirror, the Maya regarded the Milky Way as a particularly important feature of the heavens:

They conceived of it as the road that led to their netherworld, Xibalba which, in common with other Central American peoples, they located in the sky.12

I also commented on Mexican traditions of the postmortem journey of the soul in which the deceased, just as in the ancient Egyptian Duat, would face a series of ordeals and “a final judgment in the terrifying presence of the death god.”13 Noting numerous other striking similarities in beliefs and symbolism around the mysteries of death and the afterlife, I concluded:

In Egypt, as amongst the Maya, the stellar context involves Orion and the Milky Way. In Egypt as in Mexico a journey through the netherworld must be undertaken by the deceased. In Egypt as in Mexico religious teachings assert that life is our opportunity to prepare for this journey—an opportunity that should under no circumstances be wasted.14

Such correspondences led me to speculate that both ancient Egypt and ancient Mexico had shared in the legacy of an even more ancient cosmological religion, “wrapped up in sophisticated astronomical observations” and specifically focused on the afterlife journey of the soul. Neither Egypt nor Mexico had originated this religion, nor had they transmitted it directly to one another. Rather each of them had inherited it from a third, as yet unidentified, civilization.15

It was a hypothesis. What would help to strengthen it, and perhaps even confirm it, would be evidence of other civilizations with no direct relationship in which the same legacy could be identified.

This evidence, I submit, now exists in the astonishing proximity of the religious beliefs, iconography, and symbolism of the Mississippi Valley to the religious beliefs, iconography, and symbolism of ancient Egypt outlined in part 6. These deep structural connections are, in my view, unexplainable by any means other than a shared legacy from a very ancient source—a source predating the separation of peoples when the Americas became isolated from the “Old World” by the rising oceans at the end of the Ice Age. 
 END QUOTE

I wonder if those who accuse me of plagiarism and false claims of priority, etc, are aware of this earlier encounter that I had with ancient Native American religions and their similarities to the ancient Egyptian religion -- all thoroughly documented and referenced in my 1998 book Heaven's Mirror. For example Greg Little (cc'd here, together with his co-author Andrew Collins) seems to be unaware of my earlier work on this subject in his comment and speculations posted beneath your video:

QUOTE
atagreg123 hours ago

Graham had a copy of our "Path of Souls" book before visiting Moundville as well as my Encyclopedia of Mounds. If you look at the "index" in Path of Souls you'll see the Egyptian connection discussed many times. However, on page 310 of his book "America Before" Graham says about comprehending the link between Egyptian beliefs and mound builder beliefs: "I'm not the first to do so. Andrew Collins and Gregory Little made passing mention of them in 2014..." My guess that because of his adherence to Orion being the only important link that he became impressed enough at Moundville to truly comprehend how real the connection is.END QUOTE

Greg's "guess" seems uninformed by my earlier work in Heaven's Mirror, and I don't know if he has read the whole of America Before where that earlier work is referenced. But certainly, Dr White, you should have been aware, since you make much of having read the whole of America Before, just as you should have been aware -- and should have reported -- my specific disavowal of priority on page 310 of America Before. Yet you speculate (12.33 of your video ff -- emphasis added): "I think it's very likely that he took the whole idea of a connection between Egypt and ancient Mississippians -- he got that from somewhere. I don't buy for a second that he just stumbled on it when he got out of his car at Moundville."

Of course, Dr White, you are welcome to your own speculations about my processes, inspiration and chains of thought and connections, but you surely do not claim to be telepathic and a more thorough investigation of what I actually wrote in America Before might have led you to speculate less unkindly.

Wishing you joy on your path
​
Graham Hancock

Hi Graham (et al.),

Thank you for the message. It does help me to clarify something of the history of these comparisons between Mississippian and ancient Egyptian religion/cosmology. I'm not overly familiar with the idea, as most of my work focuses on much earlier parts of North America's human past. 

It appears I may have misunderstood that passage of your book about you being "nonplussed" at Moundville. It read to me as though you were saying you were unfamiliar with Mississippian/Egyptian similarities (specifically regarding Orion) until you arrived at Moundville.  You said you had missed something in your research -- that implied to me that you were not familiar with the other discussions that came before yours in "America Before" (i.e., Greg Little's) at the time you got to Moundville. I know that you credited Little and Collins for their discussion. I don't have the book at home with me, so I can't review how the different sections are organized. I take you at your word, however, that it was a misreading on my part, and I apologize for that.

I'll gladly make another video to clear things up. Could I quote your email? Also, to better understand the history of ideas about this, can you tell me if you remember when and how you first became aware of the Mississippian/Egyptian Orion parallels? 

As a side note, I wonder about the  incorporation of Orion and the Milky Way into religions/cosmologies around the world. Those two features are among the most distinctive and easily recognizable things in the night sky, and I would be surprised to learn that they are not central to many belief systems. I would not be surprised to find (if there was actual any way to know) that they figured into Paleolithic religions that existed tens of thousands of years ago.

Anyway . . . I will re-address the plagiarism issue. It's a holiday weekend here in the U.S. and I'm on summer break, so I'm not sure when I'll be back in the office next. I'm planning on discussing other things in your book over the course of the summer as I have time. As I said in my video, I think there are many interesting ideas in it but also some logical and factual issues. I will do my best to be fair, accurate, and objective, and to not rely on my powers of telepathy, which remain extremely under-developed.

Cordially,
​
Andy

Dear Dr White

My replies interpolated with your comments. Your comments are highlighted yellow. [I've changed the highlighted text to purple italics so it will show up --AAW]

Thank you for the message. It does help me to clarify something of the history of these comparisons between Mississippian and ancient Egyptian religion/cosmology. I'm not overly familiar with the idea, as most of my work focuses on much earlier parts of North America's human past. 

If you are not familiar with these comparisons then it was irresponsible of you to be in such a panty-twisting hurry to make defamatory statements about me in your video -- particularly your insinuation that I had lied about my first encounter with Moundville (e.g. QUOTE "This whole, you know 'I had never realised that Orion was a thing in Mississippian religion' -- the story [holds up book] that we get from Graham Hancock -- I think just doesn't pass the smell test to me. Surely he was aware of that... I think it's very likely that he [Hancock] took the whole idea of a connection between Egypt and ancient Mississippians -- he got that from somewhere. I don't buy for a second that he just stumbled on it when he got out of his car at Moundville... in terms of the stealing of ideas [holds up book]... I don't know [tone of voice significant here]... I'd like to see Graham Hancock clarify that all this stuff just poofed into his head -- cause that arrival story [facial expression significant here] -- I'm not buying it." END QUOTE

In these sneering, false and damaging statements (as well as others in your video) you specifically and clearly insinuate that I am involved in QUOTE "the stealing of ideas" END QUOTE. That is an extremely serious charge, capable of causing lasting harm, to lay against the reputation an internationally-known, New York Times bestselling author. If the charge of "stealing ideas" were true, and if it could be proven true, you would have been justified in making it, but since the charge is not true there is no justification whatsoever for your snickering speculations about my integrity. The bottom line here is that you failed to do due diligence before rushing rashly off to Youtube with your libels. Since you make much of the "fringe" failing to do due diligence, it is right and proper that you should be held to account when you yourself fail to meet the standards that you demand of others. 

It appears I may have misunderstood that passage of your book about you being "nonplussed" at Moundville. It read to me as though you were saying you were unfamiliar with Mississippian/Egyptian similarities (specifically regarding Orion) until you arrived at Moundville.  You said you had missed something in your research -- that implied to me that you were not familiar with the other discussions that came before yours in "America Before" (i.e., Greg Little's) at the time you got to Moundville. I know that you credited Little and Collins for their discussion. I don't have the book at home with me, so I can't review how the different sections are organized. I take you at your word, however, that it was a misreading on my part, and I apologize for that.

Rather bizarre squirming logic in the above Andrew (shall we use first name terms?). You misunderstood nothing. How I described my reaction to Moundville in the book is exactly how it happened. I certainly had the Little/Collins book "Path of Souls" in my library before that but I had not read it. I did, however, read it after my Mississippi Valley research trip -- as also I read Lankford et al. You state, QUOTE "I know that you credited Little and Collins for their discussion". END QUOTE. But this merely makes your rash and hasty rush to defame me even more reprehensible, since you knew I had credited Little and Collins with priority on the specific Moundville/Ancient Egypt connection yet failed to inform viewers of your video of this. As I said in my earlier mail, QUOTE "It is disingenuous of you to insinuate that I falsely claim priority in noting the obvious similarities between the ancient Egyptian religion and the Moundville religions when I clearly do not claim priority and when I clearly do state on the record on page 310 of America Before that I am not the first to notice these similarities. The force of your insinuation would be lost if you had quoted me specifically disclaiming priority as I do on page 310. I wonder why you chose not to do so in your video and thus to mislead your viewers on my true position?" END QUOTE

I'll gladly make another video to clear things up. Could I quote your email? 

I will return to this suggestion of yours at the end of this mail.

Also, to better understand the history of ideas about this, can you tell me if you remember when and how you first became aware of the Mississippian/Egyptian Orion parallels? 

If you were a responsible scholar (and do you not, yourself, demand responsible scholarship from what you call the "fringe"?) you would have asked me this question first, before rushing to defame me on Youtube with your unevidenced  "telepathic" speculations. It is peculiar that you are asking me this question now -- especially so in the light of the information given to you in my lengthy, opening email, and in the light of what I actually state in print in the book -- namely that I first became aware of the Mississippi/Egyptian Orion parallels during my 2017 visit to Moundville. I did indeed feel that I had missed something important in my research prior to that visit -- precisely because, as I also outline in my opening email, I have been talking about parallels between ancient Native American and ancient Egyptian religious ideas (with specific reference to Orion and the Milky Way) since I researched and published my 1998 book Heaven's Mirror. Having long previously commented on these parallels in the case of the Maya it would be bizarre indeed if the notice-boards at Moundville had not caught my attention and made me aware that essentially the same "path of souls" complex was present in the Mississippi Valley. But it was not prior knowledge of this that brought me to Moundville. It was just one stop on a long drive up the Mississippi Valley from New Orleans to Ohio during which Santha and I visited many mound sites on our way to witness the summer solstice at Serpent Mound.

Again, you failed to do due diligence (e.g. reading and reacting to pp 446-448 of America Before) which would have shown you that I have a  history (in my 1998 book Heaven's Mirror)  with the "path of souls" complex amongst ancient Native Americans and the similarities of this complex to ancient Egyptian religious ideas. It's either that (i.e.you failed to do due diligence and did not in fact read the whole book as you claim) or, if you did read the whole book, then you must have deliberately ignored these pages in order to give illusory force to your insinuations that I am involved in "the stealing of ideas". 

As Greg Little acknowledges in his email cc'd to you earlier in this thread with reference to Heaven's Mirror:

QUOTE
There is a lot more relating Egyptian beliefs to the Americas in the book [Heaven's Mirror], but it is very clear that he [Hancock] has had some ideas about this for a very long time. 

Far longer than me.... as I related in Path of Souls (p. 139) I first became aware of the specifics in the mound builder ideas in 2006. 
END QUOTE

As a side note, I wonder about the  incorporation of Orion and the Milky Way into religions/cosmologies around the world. Those two features are among the most distinctive and easily recognizable things in the night sky, and I would be surprised to learn that they are not central to many belief systems. I would not be surprised to find (if there was actual any way to know) that they figured into Paleolithic religions that existed tens of thousands of years ago.

It's a reasonable point you make here and once we have got the deceit and hypocrisy in your video properly apologised for and corrected, I might be willing to discuss it with you. 

Anyway . . . I will re-address the plagiarism issue. It's a holiday weekend here in the U.S. and I'm on summer break, so I'm not sure when I'll be back in the office next. I'm planning on discussing other things in your book over the course of the summer as I have time. As I said in my video, I think there are many interesting ideas in it but also some logical and factual issues. I will do my best to be fair, accurate, and objective, and to not rely on my powers of telepathy, which remain extremely under-developed.

Yes, you do need to re-address the plagiarism issue, and you need to do so in a timely way, regardless of your "summer break" -- especially so if you wish to preserve any semblance of being an honest and objective commentator on the work of those of us on what you call the "fringe". I would suggest the proper format would be to leave your existing sloppily-researched and defamatory video online, with a health-warning, as a matter of permanent record, and prominently link it to an article that you will write and a new video that you will make in which you correct your errors and omissions in that existing video. 

Returning to this offer of yours, highlighted earlier -- I'll gladly make another video to clear things up. Could I quote your email? 

The answer is 'Yes, you may quote my mail if you do so representatively rather than cherry-picking passages in order further to spin your own agenda. So that there is no doubt about what I did in fact say in my mail I suggest that you reproduce it in full within an article linked to the new video that you have offered to make "to clear things up".

Thank you for your 'Cordially' at the end of your mail. Cordial is as cordial does. If you honestly and openly put right the mess you have made by publicly correcting the false and damaging accusations you have levelled against me, then yes, sure, let's be cordial with each other in the future.

Please note also, in case you are concerned, that I have no intention of taking this matter to law. What a stupid waste of everybody's time that would be!  But you set yourself up as an honest and reliable commentator on the supposed errors and misrepresentations of the "fringe" so it should not be too much for me to expect honesty and reliability from you in correcting your own errors, misrepresentations and libels.

All the best

Graham

My copy of America Before should arrive tomorrow. I can't promise I'll dive right into it, but I have found myself getting drawn into thinking about Graham Hancock's broader message as well as the specific claims I've heard him make during recent interviews. Perhaps what he writes is more nuanced (and more accurate?) than what he says. So far, listening to his performances on YouTube I am struck by the combination of hearing someone who is simultaneously very well-spoken and so very often so very wrong. Ultimately it doesn't matter how slippery you can be, however -- facts are facts.

Anyway, I've made a couple more videos reacting to components of Hancock's argument.  The first is my reaction to his contention that archaeology is not a science:

The second addresses the contention that finding true north requires "advanced astronomical knowledge." I've heard this claim many times and I've never understood it: Anyone who lives/works outside experiences and understands the linkages between the movements and angles of the sun, changes in the length of the day, and the annual tempo of the seasons. Finding and marking the solstices and the equinoxes is not at all difficult if you observe the horizon in the morning from a fixed location, and ancient societies would have had many reasons to do that. The "mystery" of finding true north is really no mystery at all. What's really a mystery is why so many people invested in "alternative" archaeology assume that ancient people were as ignorant as they are of the way the natural world.

Yesterday on my walk home I listened to another chunk of Graham Hancock's appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast. Most of what I listened to was about the new discoveries in the Amazon, which Hancock claims include large geometric earthworks (aka geoglyphs) produced by "squaring the circle." Hancock misuses/misunderstands the term (which refers to constructing a square the same area as a given circle, not just drawing a square around a circle), and consequently concludes that the societies who made the structures had advanced geometrical knowledge.

Rather than write about it, I made a video to demonstrate my point:

If you're interested in pseudoarchaeology, you probably know that Graham Hancock's new book America Before is now out. I haven't read it yet. I will probably take at stab at it at some point over the summer, but I have to face the reality that I'm just not excited. ​

My lack of enthusiasm stems mostly, I think, from a gut feeling that there is not a whole lot in the book that is particularly new, thought-provoking, or even interesting. The summary reviews I have read so far bear that out (you can read Jason Colavito's review here, and Carl Feagan's take here). I already knew Hancock was going to going to claim that a comet wiped out some kind of fantastical "advanced civilization" that existed during the Ice Age, and I already knew that he would try to connect his claim to the archaeology of North America in whatever ways possible. I predict anyone who has any legitimate expertise in this region of the world can see through Hancock's game in two seconds. I guess if you're blissfully ignorant maybe it all sounds very exciting . . . I wouldn't know: as someone who has been doing real archaeology in North America for 25 years now I can hear the sound of this book ringing hollow before I even crack the cover.

I listened to the first half hour of Hancock's recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience this morning on my walk to work. After opening with a book-selling pitch, Hancock discusses the Cerutti Mastodon (the 130,000-year-old remains of a mastodon near San Diego, CA, that Steven Holen and colleagues claim were modified by humans  using stone tools) as an example of both the great age of the human occupation of North America and the "dogmatic" (take a drink!) approach of archaeologists to their beloved Clovis-first model. Hancock's willingness to misunderstand and/or misrepresent reality is on full display with statements like this one (about 23:30 in):

What a bunch of nonsense.

I'm not sure exactly how to interpret the modifier "rather," but I can tell you that there has been no "refusal" to investigate the pre-Clovis occupations of North America for decades now. But don't take my word for it, have a look at published papers on the pre-Clovis lithics from Gault site and the Debra L Friedkin site (Texas) or the pre-Clovis occupations at Page-Ladson (Florida). Or look at the landmark 1997 declaration on the antiquity of Monte Verde in Chile. Or the many other sites that have been put forward as candidates for pre-Clovis sites in the Americas.

It is my impression that there is now neither a stigma attached to nor a "dogma" (take a drink!) preventing archaeologists from looking for and investigating possible pre-Clovis sites.

Just because pre-Clovis is a legitimate thing to investigate, however, does not mean that every site that is claimed to predate Clovis has been interpreted correctly. Figuring out which ones pass the smell test and which do not is important if  you want to get the story right. As I tell my students: adding more weak coffee to already weak coffee does not make strong coffee (I stole that from someone and I can't remember who -- I apologize).

So it matters what evidence you accept and use to build your narrative. I wonder, does Graham Hancock include the Calico Early Man Site (California) in his analysis of the human occupation of the Americas? The purported "artifacts" from the site have been said to date to 200,000-135,000 years ago. The materials from Calico were vetted by none other than Louis Leakey himself. If Jeffrey Goodman is correct, humans might have been at Calico as early as 500,000 years ago. 

If there were people here half a million years ago, the Cerutti Mastodon is young like Tupperware. If Hancock is not aware of Calico, he really missed something. If he is aware of it, however, he presumably had some reason for not focusing on it. Perhaps he wasn't convinced by the analysis (does he know more about Paleolithic stone tools than Louis Leakey?) or maybe he was suspicious that the people doing the work misinterpreted the archaeological/geological context of the materials.

I would guess that Hancock has heard of Calico and simply chose not to focus on it (like I said, I don't have the book yet and am just going by the reviews). So . . . he's open to the idea of pre-Clovis (obviously) but doesn't automatically accept all claimed pre-Clovis sites as legitimate, even if competent people were involved? 

Guess what? That's what all the rest of us do, also. When the Cerutti paper first dropped, my response was not "oh crap, does the dogma say I have to reject this?" (take a drink). No, it was this blog post. I'm just going to quote myself at length:

It's the evidence, stupid.​

I didn't write a single blog post in February or March. That's probably the longest I've ever gone without writing since I started blogging. As usual, it isn't because I haven't been doing stuff. If/when my blog dies it won't be because I don't have things to talk about. It will be because I don't have time to talk about them.

Here's a taste of what's been going on over the last couple of months.

Our family got bigger this spring. We now live with three German Angora Rabbits (Eileen, Dolly, and Bruce) and a corn snake (Okie Junior).  There are backstories, but those will have to wait for another time. Now I need to pack up some art for a display downtown, look over my lectures for next week, siphon the gasoline out of our old 4Runner before it heads to the junkyard, and maybe take a chainsaw to what remains of our rotted deck. And, oh yeah, Happy Holi!

It has been a busy few weeks. As usual, I have more topics than time. At this point, I'm going to just accept that my blog sometimes functions as an open access journal. Here is the bullet point version of what I've been up to. We'll do art first, then archaeology.

The Jasper Artist of the Year Is . . . Not Me

As I wrote in December, I was one of three finalists nominated for Jasper Artist of the Year (in the visual arts category). The awards ceremony was last Friday. I did not win the award: that honor went to Trahern Cook. I met some new people, drank some wine, and had a good time (the picture above was taken there). Congratulations to all the winners!

New Pieces Over the Holidays

In addition to "Desire," I completed several other smallish pieces over the holiday break. 

I'm still working to finish up editing the student videos from my Forbidden Archaeology class last semester. I finished one on Atlantis last week and one on pyramids today. You can find them on my YouTube channel, along with videos about my archaeological fieldwork and my art.

New Grant For Collections Work

I'm happy to announce that I have received grant monies from the Archaeological Research Trust to continue inventorying and preliminary analysis of chipped stone projectile points from the Larry Strong Collection. You may remember me writing about working with the Early Archaic materials a while ago. I'm still working with those (more on that later), but now I'm going to move on in time and process the Middle and Late Archaic stuff. Part of the rationale is that I'll be dealing with those time periods in the materials we've been excavated at the field school.

South Carolina Archaeology Class: We're Making a Movie

I'm teaching South Carolina Archaeology (ANTH 321) this semester. The class is bigger than in years past. That's good from an enrollment standpoint, but a challenge from a teaching standpoint. In the spirit of experimentation, I decided to build in a class video project. We'll be making a video attempting to showcase the archaeology of this state. I've divided the students up into groups and given them topics (mostly organized chronologically) that they're responsible for. They're going to research their topics and develop proposals about what issues, artifacts, sites, and people should be included the video. Then we'll take it from there.

Go Deep!

Today I submitted  a grant proposal for systematic exploratory work on the deep deposits at 38FA608 (the field school site). We know now several things about the sediments below the Middle Archaic zones: (1) they're deep; (2) they're Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene in age; and (3) they contain artifacts. I don't believe I've mentioned it publicly, but I submitted a sample for OSL data from the deepest stratum we've documented so far (about 5m below the original surface) and it returned a result around the Last Glacial Maximum.  Also, we've found an Early Archaic Kirk point in a disturbed part of the site. What all that means is that the landform did indeed exist at the end of the last Ice Age and (minimally) Early Archaic peoples were using it. In other words, there's a really good potential for some very high integrity buried archaeology there. Fingers crossed. 

Other News

In other news . . . our 2003 4Runner finally suffered a terminal injury. And I'm tearing out our rotted deck. And I've started working a rabbit sculpture that's big enough to sit on. It will have a tractor seat. And a gear shift. And a dashboard.

And now you are up to date.

Flavia Lovatelli and I have several things in common: (1) we both live in Columbia; (2) we both do art using discarded junk; and (3) we're both finalists for the Jasper Artist of the Year award. We also both ran "summer selfie" contests last that were largely ignored by the public. The result is that we won each other's contests, which means we're making each other art.

We decided that we'd make each other the "same" thing. Flavia picked the subject: crows. I picked the title "Desire." I don't know when they'll be done, but I do know we've both started. I settled on an idea and started putting pieces together earlier in the week. I know that Flavia's got a least a couple of coats of paint down. That's about all I can say at this point. Maybe we can exchange the pieces at the awards ceremony.

In other news: the domestication of the dog continues unabated. Have a nice weekend!

One of the most gratifying personal aspects of moving to Columbia has been having the time, space, and resources to do art. I've got a notebook, some tools, a supportive family, a half of a garage, plenty of ideas, and a bunch of neighbors who give me their junk. In the last couple of years those ingredients have let me go places I never thought I'd be able to go. I've won things, sold things, met some great people, and had a lot of fun in the process. 

When I started messing around with sculpture about ten years ago (in the capacity that I could at the time), memory and sentimentality were core components of what I was interested in. Those remained central thoughts as I ramped up here in Columbia, and were the organizing theme of the "Afterburner" show I had at Tapp's in the spring of 2017.  Over the last couple of years I have continued chasing those feelings while trying to lean forward, pushing my vision, improving my technical skills, and expanding the range of materials I work with.

The end of this semester was a busy one for our family, and I found myself working more in the evenings than on the weekends. After I finished "Passenger" in November I worked mostly on two pieces I had started earlier during the summer: "Painted Swan" and a dancing fox I'm calling "Kiss Goodbye." It was while working on the fox over the course of several rainy evenings listening to the radio that I realized that I'm at a pivot point in my art: the Afterburner series is over. Fifty is a nice round number.

I based the posture of the fox on a line drawing I found online. I wanted the animal to be light, dynamic, and playful. And I wanted the base to be the opposite. The fox is springing off a dead weight (an engine block), saying goodbye to a heavy, broken mass that won't ever move again.

As an archaeologist, I take it as axiomatic that you can't understand the present without knowing something about the past. The past provides context, texture, richness, and direction. Memories of the past are important. But they can also be toxic. They can be limiting when they become an obligation. Sometimes it's best to let them be what they are and move on -- take the power but leave behind the handcuffs.

Over the last few years I have developed my own style, created a cast of characters, and scratched out -- though both creation and discovery -- a vague grammar of symbols, shapes, and colors. I have a lot of ideas and a lot of energy, and I feel like I'll be able to both harness and unleash a lot more of both if I let myself out of the memory box. And so I'm out. The memories are there, but I'm going to attempt to defang them. Let's see what happens next.

Here is a video: