Three years ago today, I was cleaning the kitchen floor in anticipation of the arrival of relatives for the holidays. Through Facebook I became aware of J. Hutton Pulitzer's ludicrous claim that a ""100% confirmed" Roman sword had been recovered from a shipwreck off of Oak Island. The debacle that followed remains, in my opinion, a great example of how facts, logic, and reality can triumph over lies, nonsense, and fantasy in real time. Swordgate remains the most fun I've ever had dealing with pseudoarchaeology online. I can't imagine it will ever be repeated, which is why it's worth remembering and celebrating.

​The final chapter on Swordgate remains to be written. There are still a few swords that we're aware of that we don't have many details about, and we're still missing the real "smoking gun" to nail down exactly when and where these Fake Hercules Swords were first produced. Without a doubt, however, they are all modern creations. There is and never was a "Naples Museum sword." The sword purportedly found on Oak Island didn't come from a shipwreck, was not covered in gold, did not have magical navigational powers, and it is not made using Roman-era metallurgical methods. The sword will never appear in history books. There will never be a "White Paper," and you will probably never get an admission from the principal proponent of the sword that the whole thing was a big pile of baloney.  C'est la vie.​

Note: it's not that we're snobs, but we've intentionally kept the membership of the Facebook group limited to those who have taken a more-or-less active interest in investigating the swords. It's a public group, so you can see what's in it if you're interested. But we're not looking for new members unless you've got something to contribute. It's a pretty small club.

I'm happy to announce that I'm one of three nominees for the Jasper Project's 2018 Visual Artist of the Year. It's an honor to be nominated, and a thrill to be among such good company. If you like my art, I invite you to click on the link above and vote for me. If you don't like my art, please click on the link and vote for someone else! 

​And now here's a picture of me with one of my recent pieces, just so an image will show up with the link to this post:

If you'd like to see more of my work, visit the gallery page on my art website.

​I'll have more art news in the near future, including whether or not my piece "Passenger" got into ArtFields 2019, an announcement of a major sale (hopefully), and some reflections on what I've done over the last couple of years and what I hope to do in the future. Stay tuned, and thanks for voting!

The Curse of Oak Island has started another season with a few episodes of the obligatory 1/3 recap of the previous episode, 1/3 recap of the recap, 1/6 new material, and 1/6 recap of the new material, per episode. The show airs Tuesday nights in the United States and Sunday night in Canada. To avoid any spoiler issues, this blog is being done on a Monday after the Canadian crowd has had a chance to catch up on the most recent episode.

Welcome to Pilumgate. Don't worry, it won't last long. You might be able to hold your breath until it's over.   
 
You have to wonder if Kevin Burns (Executive Producer & Writer, Prometheus Entertainment) is watching the reactions to his Oak Island cash cow as they happen after each show and season. You have to then wonder if he literally does everything for a reaction. Throw out the red herrings and the scraps of . . . well, scrap, basically . . . as it gets pulled from yet another borehole, or caisson grab, or backhoe pit, or this beach, or that piece of forest, or a full swamp, or a drained swamp . . . you get the idea. As the show keeps trying to be about something, it keeps delivering essentially nothing. Scraps of minor finds are inevitable with the amount of digging and metal detecting going on. Give any historic location in Nova Scotia the same level of effort and you wouldn’t find much of anything different. It’s all stuff from the last couple centuries, but on Oak Island there is also stuff from all the past dead end searches.

Ignoring all these scraps from the last few years, and since this blog is about fake Roman stuff, we leapfrog forward from Fake Roman Swords to the most recent fake Roman find. Kevin Burns has thrown a pilum at us.
 
First let’s build up the context. The supposed non-actors who don’t star in a scripted show have become actors portraying non-actors who do star in a scripted show. They know what they are expected to say, when to say it, and thus they know what exactly has the best chance of making the final edit back in the Los Angeles studio. As a result, when swinging a metal detector turns up a pointed piece of iron, it’s best to start with a conclusion and worry about details later. Fist pumping yelps of TEMPLAR are now mandatory. The obligatory cell phone speaker call to bring over the always conveniently close by fellowship members has to happen next. The bros then high five all around and Prometheus immediately cuts to a leap of faith confirmation fantasy historical re-enactment scene, with universally condemned narration from the “Could it be?” guy. In other words they found this iron spike thing and immediately gave it a bromance declaration as a Templar crossbow bolt.

Skip to the next episode (of course, a two-episode-per-find minimum rule applies) and it becomes confirmed as iron (duh) with manganese. So let’s just leave it at that and not even explore the complete metallurgy and possible age. Let’s just cut to a leap of faith confirmation fantasy historical re-enactment scene, with universally condemned narration from the “Could it be?” guy, and say it’s as old as any random single digit century BC while showering the screen with sparks and flames.

​Next, let’s get this guy on Skype:

I really want to think they specifically call him an "antiquities expert" for a reason. Back in the day, Mr. 100% Confirmed used a "Roman Antiquities Expert" for his leap of faith confirmation fantasy about the Fake Roman Sword. Kevin, are you messing with us for fun? Anyways, long story short: this "antiquities expert" points to a line drawing in a book and declares the iron spike thing to be a Roman pilum, which is essentially a javelin tip. Can you guess what happens next? Cut to a leap of faith confirmation fantasy historical re-enactment scene, with universally condemned narration from the “Could it be?” guy, and show Roman re-enactors carrying pilums with tips that look absolutely nothing like the iron spike thing.
 

The re-enactment pilums are an order of magnitude longer, an order of magnitude larger in diameter, and have a completely different point style than the relatively small and not too scary looking iron spike thing that our heroes found on Oak Island. Now of course any randomly made spear tip from a random blacksmith of any random past century could end up looking exactly like what they found. Perhaps some random Roman arms maker randomly made smallish versions of pilum tips. Maybe these randomly passed through the New Ross Vortex and ended up down river on Oak Island. Randomly possible. Here in lies the rub of course. The "antiquities expert" is not shown to get past his randomness. He provides no expert antiquities analysis of any depth to verify in detail that his finger pointing at a line drawing wins the burden of proof test. All other conceivable possibilities of what the iron spike could be are valid hypotheses. A line drawing based opinion is nonsense. A Roman pilum was nonetheless exactly what the scripted non scripted show wanted to see, to not look scripted, if you follow.
 
Just to add to the fun here, our "antiquities expert" is currently the purveyor of an online auction business called Ancient Resource. Several times a year he offers up hundreds of artifacts per sale to the highest bidder. We’re talking low thousands of things per year and the business is a decade and a half old. There are of course several other businesses on the net like this and several eBay shops doing the same. The math starts to become a challenge. Needless to say, ‘If it looks too good to be true, it probably is’ which is just another way of saying ‘Buyer Beware’.

For even more fun, our "antiquities expert" is a former employee and writer for the History Channel and his major claim to fame in that regard is a production called “UFOs in the Bible.”

To complete the picture, his business is 14 miles (23 km) or 30 minutes from the Prometheus offices in Los Angeles. They are literal neighbors, while being 3700 miles (5900 km) from Oak Island. On a final fun note, if back in the day anybody out there actually saw a copy of the "Sword Report" by Mr. 100% Confirmed, you might recall a section in it that was a deluded guilt by association picture gallery. "If it’s green and looks Roman, it must be Roman" was essentially the argument. A little research of that gallery at the time found that the highest percentage of pictures from dealer types were in fact from our current 'antiquities expert." Coincidence maybe, but man we are really having a good run at figuring out things that aren’t a coincidence.          

So we are going to end Pilumgate as fast as we started it. No inventory, no metallurgy study, no comparative morphology groups, no 3D models, nothing. Easy enough to say “Do your own research” to use the classic line from Mr. 100% Confirmed. Google away for 1) antique fishing spear tine, or 2a) antique frog eel spear, or 2b) antique clam (or scallop) rake (I had to get ‘scallop’ in here somehow, if you know what I mean), or 3) Nephilim fondue fork, or 4) cub scout blacksmith badge weenie roast stick, or whatever else comes to mind.  But seriously: start with numbers 1) and 2). Nova Scotia, with a history of semi-nomadic Mi’kmaq culture relying on fish and game, followed by European contact fishermen and traders, followed by modern era commercial and sport recreational fishing, is the factual material culture chronology that applies. Romans are nonsense. Occam's razor - look it up if you don’t know what it means. Do your own research.

The second student project video from this year's Forbidden Archaeology class is now posted on YouTube. In this video, three students discuss some of the evidence that's bandied about for the extra-terrestrial origin of the Anunnaki. They've already gotten their first thumbs down. Enjoy!

Tomorrow I'll be posting one on the Nephilim, but I won't write a blog post about it. Check my YouTube channel tomorrow morning if you're interested. [Update: here it is.]

As I mentioned earlier, we're making videos in this year's iteration of my Forbidden Archaeology course. The twenty students in the class split up into seven groups and have been working on developing their topics, doing their research, and preparing their scripts.

Last Monday, we taped the speaking parts for the first video and I edited it together over the break. The videos briefly explores the history of ideas/claims that the earth is hollow, and then discusses reasons why that can't be true. Here it is:

I had several goals in mind when I designed this video project. First, it was one opportunity (among several in the course) for students to go through the process of understanding the history/context of a claim and evaluating it based on evidence. Second, I wanted them to think about how to present a message in the format I gave them and all the constraints that come with it. Third, I wanted to produce what I call "persistent resources" that can live independently online and be found by curious people looking for information. I chose the video format because my sense is that we can reach a different audience than would be possible using writing.

Like many of the things I've done so far in my brief teaching career, this is an experimental project. I hope these videos turn out well, I hope the students get something out of it, and I hope they prove to be useful resources for others as well.

I spent most of my art time during the summer and fall working on "Passenger," a 10' tall sculpture depicting a bear with butterfly wings. It's my entry for ArtFields 2019, the submission deadline for which was November 5. It was a push but I got it done, got it photographed, and got it entered. I'll find out on December 18 if it made it into the competition. I'll let you know either way.

There are more pictures of the finished piece in the gallery section of my art website. I made five videos over the course of making it. It was easily my most ambitious art project to date. As with most things, it didn't turn out exactly how I had pictured it when I started. But it did come pretty close to my vision, and there are many aspects of it that I really like. 

I didn't realize until about halfway through making this piece that the posture I chose for the bear -- standing, head forward, with slumped shoulders -- is really similar to the posture I chose for a small plaster sculpture I made all way back in the early 1990's when I was living in Carbondale, Illinois. That posture, in turn, was based on the painting "Male Model" by Henry Matisse, which was the cover image on my copy of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. According to my notes in the jacket, I read that book in 1992 and 1996. I carried my little plaster man sculpture around with me for years, unfinished, until one holiday spent alone in Ann Arbor (Christmas-New Year's 2008? 2009?) I went to work. I built him a set of wings from the odds and ends I had sitting around -- worn out clothes, tin cans, old screws, umbrella parts. I poured what was left of the enamel model paints I had over his shoulders. 

I can't really put my finger on why the pose appeals to me and seems to be lurking somewhere in my subconscious. And I don't think I could really dissect the piece and explain and assign meaning to all the different parts. It just doesn't work that way. Some of you may think it's frightening, or threatening, or ugly, or whatever. Maybe it's all those things to you. But to me it's much more than that. There's beauty and currents in it that, for me anyway, aren't just about aesthetics.  I guess that's why I don't paint pretty pictures with trees and sunsets and boats. No offense to those of you that do.

Anyway, this creature is now living in my driveway until further notice. I have no idea how ArtFields makes their decisions, but I'm hoping my lack of enthusiasm for delving into the meaning of the meaning of the piece in my entry doesn't hurt my chances of getting in. Ultimately, in my opinion, good art is about feeling something deep in your heart and in your bones (whether you're the creator or the audience). If I need to explain to you how the piece is supposed to make you feel, I didn't make good art. And if I can explain to you what the piece makes me feel, I didn't dig deep enough.

This year in Forbidden Archaeology, the students are making videos as group projects. They are currently working on finishing up their scripts, and we'll start taping segments next week. There is a range of a topics, but all have something to do with "fringe" claims about the human past. Barring any total breakdowns, there will be seven student videos in all. Hopefully I'll be able to start posting them in December.

As I was planning out what to this semester, I decided that making videos would be a way for the students to work on several different elements of critical thinking and communication. It would also give us an opportunity (I hope) to engage with a different audience than the 2016 class did with their blog posts. It's an experiment, so I won't really know what the broader impacts are until the videos are done and we see what the reaction is.

I made an example video so the students could get a better idea of what I was thinking of in terms of length, graphics, etc. I chose to talk about the "red-haired cannibal giants" of Nevada, and I threw this video together in a few hours on Friday afternoon. Enjoy!

Back in June, I wrote about a week spent along the Broad River with colleagues from the South Carolina Heritage Trust and some of my own students doing fieldwork associated with a research grant I received from USC. I have finally completed a video showing some of that fieldwork. I plan on doing another one explaining the analysis and results (which will be completed this calendar year or soon after). Enjoy! 

You may have noticed that I haven't been regularly blogging about the course this year. That's by design. After wearing myself out the first time around in 2016, I decided I would put less effort into intensive public/fringe interaction. I think it has worked out well. I'm enjoying teaching the course much more. There will be still be student writing online to read eventually, and we'll be making videos this year. I'm just not killing myself to invite everyone else into the classroom.

​On Friday we finished our section on Atlantis in this year's edition of Forbidden Archaeology. We spent most of the class watching and discussing a talk by Graham Hancock titled "Is the House of History Built on Foundations of Sand?"  I wanted the students to watch carefully as Hancock made his case, asking them to think about his logic, the structure of the talk, and the evidence he presented to support his claims (many pieces of which they have already been exposed to).

I have not paid a whole lot of attention to Hancock in the past. I haven't completely read any of his books, and I think that this was the first time I have ever listened to an entire talk. He spent the first portion of the talk discussing the recent evidence for the hypothesis that an impact by a comet or meteor triggered the Younger Dryas. (The Younger Dryas is an anomalous cold period that occurred about 12,900-11,700 years ago during the transition from glacial to inter-glacial conditions.) He spent the last part of the talk highlighting some purported evidence (e.g., Gobekli Tepe, the Sphinx) supporting the claim that refugees from Atlantis occupied the Near East after fleeing their island's destruction.

The linkage that Hancock makes between the hypothesized extra-terrestrial impact that triggered the Younger Dryas and the destruction of Atlantis is, when you listen closely, peculiar. Following a quotation of Plato's description of Atlantis disappearing into the sea "in a single day and night of misfortune," Hancock describes the cataclysmic effects of extra-terrestrial impacts on the earth. He first discusses the idea that a comet wiped out the dinosaurs. He then moves on to the Younger Dryas impact research, repeatedly referring to "the cataclysm" of the impact. 

So a comet or meteor wiped out at Atlantis?

No, the dates are all wrong for that. The Younger Dryas starts at about 12,900 BP (10,950 BC). Believers set the date of the destruction of Atlantis at 11,550 BP (9,600 BC). So, apparently, all the extra-terrestrial fireworks did nothing to the Atlanteans. They prospered for another 1300 years, conquering the world and mining orichalcum while the planet suffered a return to full glacial conditions.

After all the attention paid to violent cataclysm, Hancock actually attributes the destruction of Atlantis to sea level rise at the end of the Younger Dryas. Sea levels are lower during glacial periods because more of the Earth's water is tied up in ice sheets. Sea levels rise in inter-glacial periods because more of the Earth's water is in liquid form. As far as the culprit in Atlantis demise at 9,600 BC, Hancock points specifically to "a dramatic pulse of sea level rise" known as Meltwater Pulse 1b.

It will probably not surprise you to learn that, although there is debate about the magnitude, timing, and cause of Meltwater Pulse 1b, no scientist thinks it was so sudden or so rapid that it could have swallowed up a continent "in a single day and night of misfortune." Estimates of sea level rise range from about 6 to 28 meters, occurring over a period of several hundred to over a thousand calendar years. At least one study suggests the pulse didn't even start until hundreds of years after the purported submergence of Atlantis.