I've been working to restructure my social media. I have created a new ZeroPointMechanic YouTube channel for my art content, removing all the art videos from my Andy White Anthropology channel and putting them on the new channel.  I did this after realizing that I was feeling like the multiple personalities were diffusing my enthusiasm for creating new content. If you like my art, please subscribe to the new channel. If you don't like my art and mostly like to be outraged at my take on pseudoarchaeological nonsense, please do nothing except leaving me thumbs downs. 

I've got plans for both of these channels. I'd like to do more frequent videos, and I'd like to get in the habit of live-streaming on both. I'm envisioning a weekly or perhaps bi-monthly "show" called The Mystery Hour where I will discuss pseudoarchaeology, perhaps responding to some of the comments that get left on my videos and some of the dumb emails I get. Maybe if I get in a good rhythm I'll have some guests. I'll let you know what's going on with that.

I'd like to do some live art stuff, perhaps including doing impromptu art with audience participation. That would mean having an audience, though, so . . . As of this writing that channel only has seven subscribers. I will need to build up the audience a bit. Maybe I should pledge that I'll weld in a bunny costume if I can reach 100 subscribers by Easter.

​That could work.

I'll have some other art announcements soon I hope. Stay tuned!

This is a quick post to confirm that I am, indeed, still alive. I last wrote in June of 2020 as we were moving from South Carolina to Illinois. A lot has happened since then, and I have for the most part been quite happy to not comment publicly on any of it. I would like to get back to writing more, however. So let's start with this quick update.

Work

I'm now employed as a Research Archaeologist at the Illinois State Archaeological Survey (ISAS). My position involves no teaching, which I'm finding to be a relief. Like the rest of the University of Illinois, we're operating under COVID constraints, which means I have yet to meet many of my colleagues face-to-face. I've been busy writing grant proposals, working on transportation-related archaeology projects, and pushing forward with some of my own research. I recently gave a talk on some of what I'm interested in pursuing now that I've moved back to the Midwest. You can watch it here: 

Pseudoarchaeology

Pseudoarchaeology is perhaps the part of my old life that I have the least time for right now. Most of what comes across my radar is pretty boring, honestly, and it's difficult to justify spending a whole lot of time and energy having the same arguments over and over again. I don't even read many of the comments I get on old blog posts or my YouTube videos.

The most interesting thing I've seen lately is the inter-connectivity of pseudoarchaeological nonsense and the conspiracy theory baloney about the "stolen election" that led to a bunch of idiots storming the U.S. Capitol. None of it surprised me, and none of it should have surprised anybody who's been paying attention. The mainstream media still doesn't understand the connections between these layers of conspiracy theory, anti-intellectual sentiment, and white supremacist fantasies about the past, though, and perhaps it never will. If you're looking for evidence of crossover, you need look no further than the fact that "100% confirmed Roman sword" advocate J. Hutton Pulitzer traded in his treasure hunter costume for a suit and became a star witness for Team Trump arguing for voter fraud in Georgia. I heard an interesting interview with the lawyers for Dominion (the voting machines that were under attack) where they were asked "how can you demonstrate malice if someone really thought what they were saying was true?" They answered that one avenue was to demonstrate that someone repeatedly relied on sources they knew to be not credible. Rim shot.

I would really like to promise that I'll write more often. But I'm better off just trying to do it instead of saying it. And I'll leave it at that.

I have been very bad at making regular blog posts this spring. It's been pretty busy: on top of dealing with trying to somehow teach field school online due to the COVID-19 shutdown, we've been attempting to educate our kids at home, keep my wife's business afloat, and find time for me to finish up the excavations at 38FA608 by myself.  And then we decided to move. So now we're doing that, too.

I have accepted a position as a Research Archaeologist at the Illinois State Archaeological Survey starting in September. I'll write more about that after we get settled in Champaign-Urbana.

Deciding to leave South Carolina was neither simple nor easy. We've been here since the summer of 2015 and my wife and I have made significant personal and professional connections that we will miss. We love the kids' school, and it is a tough call to uproot them from everything that's familiar. 

There are a lot of things about this place that I enjoy and will miss. I have several good colleagues at SCIAA and have really enjoyed working with students in the classroom and at field school. The archaeology here is fantastic and has been very good to me, as have those that have helped me with that archaeology along the way. The winter weather is great. The diversity of bird, insect, and reptile life is beautiful, as are the various cultural and natural landscapes of the state. I will miss being able to take day trips to the beach. I will miss the Columbia art scene which helped me turn a pastime into an emotionally satisfying and economically rewarding pursuit. I will miss all the good people that I've met, talked with, and worked with here: there are a lot.

But there are also a lot of things that I won't be sad to leave behind. First among them is the ridiculous political culture of this state: often corrupt, often mean, and in my opinion a great disservice to many of the citizens of South Carolina. The legacy of white supremacy upon which this state was founded continues to weigh the state down: look up state rankings for education, domestic violence, violence against women, etc. South Carolina's position is directly related to its history and culture, and many of its citizens in positions of power don't seem to be in any big hurry to work toward improvement.  It appears to me, in fact, that the opposite is true. The conservative elements here would like to further roll back protections for those in our society that are already vulnerable: people of color, the poor, the LGBTQ community, etc.. That's a shame, and it's a real turn off to those of us that value diversity, equity, and inclusion.

I won't go into a long explanation of the various personal and professional factors that weighed into our decision. I will just say that this move includes opportunities that were never available to us here and will result in a situation that is better for our family in the long run. Packing up and moving sucks, but it's for the best. I look forward to writing about archaeology and other issues from my new location and with the perspective I have gained from living in the south for five years.

I'm happy to announce that a selection of the flat art I've been producing (drawings on paper with ink, pen, pencil, and/or watercolor) is now for sale in the Zero Point Mechanic section of the Luna Lola website. I've put a few small sculptures there also.

I've been producing many more drawings than sculptures this year. I had a mild case of sculpture burnout after the push to finish the Dirt Dance Floor show last fall, and drawing was something I could do sitting around in the house in the morning or evening or whenever I had some spare time. It's a good activity to fill in the cracks, especially at the moment when escapism is all the more precious.

I rarely find myself short of ideas. When I do I just start dragging the pencil across the paper and inevitably something begins to emerge. Is it always something I end up liking? No. But the time and energy investment is so minimal that it's easier to be comfortable experimenting. 

The pictures above are images of some of work with India ink. I tend to draw stuff I like, which includes bizarre houses, animals, strange mechanical contraptions, people, and combinations of all of the above. If you're into this stuff, please check out my work on the website. There will be more added as I finish new things and keep going through my stacks of stuff from this winter and fall.

As the nation's response to COVID-19 began to unfold in earnest a month ago, I anticipated that we'd go through a "shut down" period of some kind in an effort to get the spread of the virus under control. I thought maybe I'd be able to use the extra time at home to get caught up blogging, do some writing, and produce some of the student videos from my Forbidden Archaeology class last fall. Surely, I thought, the experts in our government will be able to formulate and operationalize a response to this situation that will allow us as a country to navigate it fairly well and get through it quickly.

Boy was I wrong about that. 

As a scientist, it has been amazing (and not in a good way) to watch the various levels of government field the patchwork of responses that has gotten us to where we are today. Watching what was unfolding in Italy was like having a crystal ball, and yet those at the top levels of our government chose to . . . what? Fill in the blank yourself.

Things could have been much different. If we had used our headstart and data from other countries to get a legitimate testing program up and running . . . If we had used that time to ramp up production of the PPE and medical equipment that it was obvious we would need . . .  If we had figured out how to use technology to track the spread . . . If we had done those things and had the leadership and the guts to go on complete lockdown early, we could have shut this down and gotten the situation under control before there were hundreds of thousands of cases and tens of thousands of deaths. We would have been out of the woods much sooner, with much less economic pain. But instead, we are where we are. It's not that no-one saw this train coming. It's that we didn't have the leadership and collective intelligence to figure out how to step out of the way. 

You know when you yell at the idiot in the horror movie not to open the door to the basement? That's every scientist in this country a month ago.

I am thankful that I still have my job and that my family is in relatively good shape. No-one is sick, we're not going to go hungry, and we can pay our bills. My wife and I are doing the best we can to keep our two kids in some kind of routine that involves school work and exercise. I'm getting done what I need to as far as my job. We're all working to help keep my wife's business afloat in the face of all the government bungling of the "rescue" plan that's supposed to help her pay her bills while she's forced to close. No-one is sleeping well and the house is wreck. It could be much worse, but it's no picnic.

With the sudden stoppage of the field school, getting the work there to some kind of conclusion has fallen completely on me. Field archaeology is usually a team sport. So far, I've spent three days at the site on my own working on Unit 14. Next I'll tackle finishing the levels in the block. And then I'll be left to backfill. I'm not sure when I'll be able to pull all the equipment out (that's the least of my concerns right now). I've been making videos of my solo work at 38FA608 both as public outreach and to use as tools as I continue to try to teach my students something about field archaeology without actually being together with them in the field. You can find all of the 2020 videos here. Here is the latest, where I go through the steps of excavating a probable feature:

I feel bad that my students' field experience has been so abruptly abbreviated. I know that this situation has shaken some of them, as they have had to adjust to the online learning model just as rapidly as their professors have. I've tried to create assignments for them that will teach them something about how and why we do things the way we do them, but there really is no substitute for actually doing fieldwork in the field. It's a real bummer. I hope that those that wish to will be allowed to take the course over again next spring. That's presuming, of course, that our government can find its footing and get this situation under control by then.

During our spring break, I worked with Stacey Young and other SCIAA personnel to excavate several units in the "basement" portion of 38FA608. That work was funded by an internal grant program. The goal was to explore the deeply-buried deposits at the site, hoping to positively identify an Early Archaic component. We got the fieldwork wrapped up just as things started to hit the fan. I'll make a video of the work and write more about it when I get the chance.

As an "essential employee," I do have access to my lab on campus. That means I can come and go as required to get materials that I need to do my job at home. I've gotten my computer modeling stuff going on my laptop, and have been chipping away at some demographic modelling work that I was originally going to do for the physical anthropology meeting that was cancelled. I have several papers in progress that I can work on if/when I have the time. I have taken to washing artifacts in my backyard as my kids play in the inflatable pool. I take walks in the morning to try and get some exercise before most of the rest of the world is up.

At the beginning of all this, I thought I'd be able to settle into a moderately productive routine at some point and be able to start getting ahead rather than just treading water. I'm an optimist, and I think that maybe that's still possible. It certainly hasn't happened yet, however. If I can get to the end of the day with the family and the house somewhat functional and feeling like I haven't fallen so far behind that I'll never be able to catch up, that's a win. A little bit of bad TV and/or drawing a picture at the end of the day are what passes for recreation.

I'll keep you posted as I finish up work at 38FA608. I'm hoping to find a way to provide a live feed on backfill day, which should be epic. I could really use some company out there, even if it's to jeer while I sweat my ass off. Stay tuned!

It's been a pretty busy spring. I've been working on papers, keeping things going in my lab, and teaching the field school. I just got back from a visit to Texas A & M, where I gave two presentations dealing with my work on Paleoindian and Early Archaic demography, complex systems theory, etc. It was a good visit and I'll write more about it if I get a chance.

Last week was Day 7 of the Broad River Archaeological field school. If you haven't been following along, you can catch up with the videos here. We have been battling a wet spring in several different ways, but overall it's going well. We're making good progress on the excavation and things are going pretty smoothly considering the various challenges we've faced this semester. Things will likely continue to get more complicated as we get farther down in the units and into more complex deposits.

We've also got a good luck charm this year. It may look creepy, but it says "good luck charm" right there on it, so . . .

Over the last few months I have completed a draft of an interim report of the 2015-2018 work I've been directing at 38FA608. As explained in the report, it is mainly a descriptive effort that provides basic details about the various stages of the work we've undertaken, the excavation methods employed, the units excavated, and the materials recovered so far. The report discusses the initial discovery and documentation of the site, the 2017 and 2018 seasons of field school, and the backhoe trenches that were excavated as part of the Big Broad Trenching Project.

If you've followed what's been going on at the site through my blog and the videos, you'll find much of what's in the report to be familiar. There are things you haven't seen, also: descriptions of each feature, for example, images of all the projectile points recovered so far, and some images of the prehistoric pottery. I also report the four radiocarbon dates that have been obtained so far and the single OSL date.

What you won't find in this report is analysis. The report is written, rather, to present and organize information about the excavation work at the site so that analysis of the materials and deposits can be undertaken. Those analyses are what's next.

This is a draft report, meaning that the information in it is subject to change. I have been through the contents several times, but there are certainly still errors and omissions. I will make supporting documents (including raw data) available in the "Documents" section of the Broad River Archaeological Field School website as I have time. 

I'm happy to report that the 2020 season of the Broad River Archaeological Field School has begun. We spent our first day in the field last Friday and will return to work on site 38FA608 most Fridays this semester. This will be the third season of field school at the site, and it is the biggest group so far: I have ten undergraduates, a graduate student, two staff that I hired, and several folks from the Heritage Trust Program at the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources that will participate as their schedules allow.

We spent the first couple of hours of the field school in the classroom introducing ourselves, going over the syllabus, rounding up forms, and talking about expectations, etc. I gave a presentation on what we've done at the site so far. Then we loaded up the screens and some other equipment and got everyone out to the site by about 10:45.

My main goals for the first day were to: (1) relocate the block and remove a good portion of the backfill from it; and (2) assess and deal with some slumping of the unexcavated/unprotected portion of wall that that occurred since the last field school in 2018. 

By the end of the work day on Friday we had reached the floor of Unit 6 in the block. I estimate it will take us at least two more hours to remove the remainder of the backfill from the block.​

The slumping that had occurred at the wall included Feature 5, which was unfortunate. I had documented the exposed portion of Feature 5 in my profile of the original machine cut surface, but we had not yet been able to excavate units to straighten that section of the wall so that it could be better protected. In profile, Feature 5 appeared to be a shallow pit lined with fire-cracked rock (FCR) similar to the nearby Feature 4 (which remains partly unexcavated). Given its stratigraphic location, it almost certainly dated to the Late Archaic period.

We're in the process of removing the slumped sediment and screening it. We've recovered a lot of large pieces of FCR that would have originally been in Feature 5 as well as a Savannah River point. The slumped sediments also contained a complicated stamped rim sherd that would have come from above the level of the feature.
​

This year, as in previous years, each week several students will write blog posts about their work. Those posts can be found here.  I will be producing weekly videos as well. I'll post those videos here.  Here's the first one:

Back in December, I wrote a short post about Hutton Pulitzer's attempts to get me to take down or edit content related to his involvement in Swordgate. I wanted to take a few minutes this morning to provide more information and an update of what's been going on with this matter since last fall.

If you're not familiar with Swordgate, it was the debacle that ensued after Hutton Pulitzer made the public claim that a "100% confirmed" Roman sword had been recovered from a shipwreck off of Oak Island. That was in December of 2015. Over the course of the next several months, I and many others gathered a large body of evidence that conclusively showed that his claims about the sword were nonsense. Independent analysis of the sword by the television program The Curse of Oak Island reached the same conclusion. A lot of bad behavior on Pulitzer's part followed.

I hadn't really thought much about the sword story or Pulitzer's activities over the last couple of years until he emailed me in October of 2019 demanding that I remove use of his name ("Jovan Hutton Pulitzer") from all my content. In his communication, he asserted that he had trademarked his name and that my use of it violated his rights.  He threatened to have my material taken down if I did not comply with his request voluntarily.  He CC'd this communication to various departments and individuals at the University of South Carolina (my employer).

Following that communication, I consulted with an attorney specializing in intellectual property law. His conclusion was that Pulitzer's threats were baseless. I chose to not respond.

Pulitzer followed up his October communication in November with a document that he sent to various individuals at the University of South Carolina and elsewhere. That document contained numerous untrue statements about me and was apparently sent in an effort to damage my reputation. His letter was clearly defamatory, and I am currently exploring my legal options for addressing that aspect of his behavior. 

Following his November communication, my attorney sent a letter in December to Pulitzer's attorney (Steve Green) informing his that his claims of trademark infringement are baseless (indeed, Pulitzer has only applied for -- not received -- trademark status for his name) and that I would defend myself and my reputation against his claims.

Steve Green responded with a letter dated December 18, 2019, alleging that I have participated in a "well-planned Civil Collusion" to cause harm to Pulitzer. Green also argued that Pulitzer's communications to USC could not constitute tortious interference because he followed the proper procedures for filing a complaint about a state employee.  The letter asked for nothing specifically other than to have a phone call to discuss the matter.  

I indicated to Steve Green that I would be willing to discuss the matter, but that I preferred to do it writing (i.e., via email) rather than over the phone. My reasons for this were several: (1) Pulitzer/Green have not demonstrated to me that they are willing to have a discussion based on verifiable facts -- every substantive communication so far from them has contained inaccurate information; (2) Pulitzer has demonstrated (and bragged about) his penchant for recording conversations and then trying to use them for his benefit; and (3) I remain confused about their claimed legal basis to compel me to remove or edit anything. And so that's how the current conversation started.

First (1/13/2020), Green wrote that what they wanted was removal of an unspecified "libelous article" that they said presented as fact that Pulitzer had engaged in crimes.  Along with that, they also wanted me change the URLs of my blog posts so that Pulitzer's name wasn't in them. 

In response, I wrote this on 1/13/2020:

Mr. Green,

As a starting point, please provide me with a list of my blog posts which you are referring to. I have never, to the best of my knowledge, written anything about Pulitzer that is untrue. So as a preface to any discussion I would like to know, specifically, exactly what you allege is "libelous."

Andy

Steve Green responded (1/13/2020) that I should, basically, remove Pulitzer's name on all sites I own or operate. So, rather than providing specific posts/statements that they allege contain inaccurate information, they simply assert that I should take down everything with his name in it.

Here is my response (1/13/2020):
 
Mr. Green,

I admit that I am now confused, as we seem to be right back where we started when Pulitzer first contacted me last fall claiming trademark/copyright violation. As my attorney communicated to you in his letter, Pulitzer's trademark/copyright claims are baseless.

When I did not respond to Pulitzer's trademark/copyright claims, he sent a defamatory letter to my employer, again demanding that I take everything down with his name in it. That letter contained numerous false statements. I am sure that the procedures for filing a complaint to the University of South Carolina do not include making false statements about an employee.

Then, you sent a letter alleging that I was involved in some kind of conspiracy and that you wanted to talk to me on the phone. I responded that I would rather have the discussion in writing, and this email exchange we are having demonstrates why: you first said that you wanted removed the "huge libelous article presenting as fact that my client engaged in crimes of the nature such covert/secret nude recordings, or pillaging artifacts and such" and when I asked for clarification which "article" that was, you reverted back to ""remove all posts with J. Hutton Pulitzer in it."

If there are specific posts with inaccurate information, as you allege, I would be happy to discuss them. In order to do that, however, you have to tell me which posts you are referring to and which parts of those posts are inaccurate. There is really no other way to have a discussion about your allegations. You have claimed that I have knowingly made false statements about your client. I have not. If you really disagree, please tell me which statements are false.

I have no plans to take down any material based on Pulitzer's allegations of trademark/copyright infringement, which are baseless.
 
And to be absolutely clear: I did not create the "Critical Thinking" channel on YouTube, I did not create any of the content on that channel, and I do not control that channel. Is it not my content to take down.

Green's response (1/14/2020) was, frankly, amazing.  First, he asserted that they had learned from YouTube that I did indeed own the Critical Thinking channel and he would provide the evidence in the email (spoiler alert: he did not provide the evidence, and I don't own that channel). Next, he told me the case actually isn't about trademark anymore. Then, he asserted that "each statement provided to your University, State Investigators, Academic Boards and such are all based on information and screenshots taken directly from your owned and managed blogs, etc." Then, he offered a pdf that showed some of his evidence of "Civil Collusion."  I won't reproduce the pdf, but I will tell you that it consisted of screenshots of links that I posted on the J.Hutton Pulitzer page on the Argumentative Archaeologist website. Specifically, he pointed to a post written by Carl Feagans (that no longer exists) and posts (by Jason Colavito and I) about the infamous "plying us with porn" piece that Pulitzer wrote about Kevin Burns following Burn's statement that he bought the "Roman sword" partially in an effort to discredit Pulitzer.

It's worth taking a second to highlight this aspect of what's going on here. Jason Colavito and I both wrote posts about Pulitzer's piece, which came out on February 2, 2016. The fact that we both wrote about it on February 3 is, apparently, his evidence of "Civil Collusion" (as if all the newspapers writing reviews of the same bad movie on the day after it comes out are all colluding).  The fact that Pulitzer has since deleted the original post doesn't change the fact that he wrote the post and it remains part of the Swordgate story. I directly quoted Pulitzer's words in my post about it, as did Jason in his. As far as I know, my post contains no inaccuracies: it was accurate then and it's accurate now. I provided Green with a screenshot from Pulitzer's original post just in case Pulitzer had forgotten what he wrote.

I've spent much of the last two weeks getting my ducks in a row for this year's field school, which starts tomorrow. It's going to be a busy season: the undergraduate enrollment is full, and I've also got one of my graduate students enrolled and another who will be attending some of the time. I'll have two staff members and assistance from some personnel from the South Carolina Heritage Trust. The staff members I hired for the season will be paid from the donated funds I raised in anticipation of the 2019 season of the field school, which did not materialize. I would again like to thank those that donated to the effort: your dollars will not be wasted.

I'm looking forward to this semester's work as a substantive change from last semester. My ongoing engagement with pseudo-archaeology becomes tiresome, especially when I'm also teaching "Forbidden Archaeology."  I get tired of hearing the same dumb arguments over and over again and listening to the same baloney claims about "rewriting history." My grouchiness with the idiocy has bubbled up a couple of times during the last several days -- I'm just not in the mood. I officially resigned my position as an administrator of the Fraudulent Archaeology Wall of Shame group on Facebook after I identified it as one source of my burnout with these topics (Carl Feagans is now running the show there). This morning I got an email from someone wanting Graham Hancock's contact information so he could tell him where the Ark of the Covenant really is (I declined to provide assistance, reasoning that anyone who can find the long-missing Ark of the Covenant has the research faculties to locate an email address). I just need to take a breather and sit on the bench for a few minutes.

And that bench, for me, is 38FA608. I hope to be posting weekly videos of our work again this season on my YouTube channel. Given the number of participants, this may be the biggest season yet.

Also, I spent much of November and December working on an interim report of our work at 38FA608 so far. I'll make that available online when it's done, and I'll tell you about here.

Here is quick video from the site yesterday, taken as DuVal Lawrence and I moved some equipment and took a look around to size things up. Stay tuned!