I'm happy to announce that I have a new (albeit still preliminary at this point) structure for the portion of my upcoming Forbidden Archaeology course in which we will be discussing the Kensington Rune Stone (KRS). As I've written before, Fobidden Archaeology (ANTH 291 for prospective students at USC) is intended first and foremost to be an exercise in critical thinking, logic, and the evidence-based methods we can employ to discriminate credible from non-credible statements about the human past. Scott Wolter's departure from the schedule doesn't mean that we're not going to talk about the KRS: the origins and meaning of the stone continue to be the focus of a multi-leveled debate that can be used to illustrate the scientific process. I'm hoping that the guests I've now lined up will help my students work through the main points of that debate and experience how scientific methods can be used to frame critical questions and develop testable expectations material evidence related to the past.  

Because of South Carolina law (I was required to settle on texts for the course some time ago), I'm locked into using Wolter's Hooked X book. We'll use that book and other sources to understand arguments supporting the claim that the KRS is a genuine medieval artifact dating to 1362.  Each guest that I've invited will address a different aspect of that claim. 

The Geology and Age of the Kensington Rune Stone

Dr. Harold Edwards will be joining the class (via Skype) to discuss the geology of the KRS as it relates to interpretations of the age of the inscription. Edwards, a professional geologist who works in Minnesota, is currently preparing a paper on the geology of the KRS. He has written lengthy critiques of Wolter's conclusions about the weathering of the KRS on Jason Colavito's blog (e.g., here), and has made comments on my blog in the past. Edwards does not accept the KRS as a medieval artifact on the basis of its geology.

The Runes

Dr. Henrik Williams will be talking to the class (via Skype) about the linguistics of the KRS. Williams is an expert in Germanic runes who has made extensive study of the KRS inscription. You can see a brief interview with Williams in this podcast from the Minnesota Historical Society. Williams does not accept the KRS as a medieval artifact on the basis of its runology.

The Kensington Rune Stone as a Modern Masonic Creation

Finally, Paul Stewart will speak to the class about his ideas of who created the KRS and why. In his 2013 book The Enigmatist, Stewart argued that the KRS was neither a genuine medieval artifact nor an intentional hoax, concluding that it was probably created by Freemasons in the 1800's (perhaps by the Cryptic Rite in 1880). I'm hoping that Stewart will be able to visit the class in person.

While the fine details of scheduling these three guests remain to be worked out, I anticipate that the KRS discussion will happen sometime in early November. Ideally, these guests would be able to interact with my class in the order listed above: geology, runology, and the "third way" interpretation offered by Stewart. I'm planning on helping my students be as prepared as possible to ask Edwards, Williams, and Stewart the toughest questions that they can, probably designating some of them to take Wolter's positions on whatever issues are raised. I want my students to learn how to arm themselves with questions and facts and how to engage with those questions and facts in ways that are constructive, productive, and fun. While I don't yet know how successful I'll be in doing that, I think all signs point to this class being a good ride. Stay tuned.

One of my goals for this summer was to spend more time on my metalwork hobby. I've managed to do that, and I've also managed to somehow get my work discussed in local, regional, and national media. That experience has been a bit bizarre. It feels good, of course, when strangers tell you that they like something that you've done. For some reason, it's also been fun to be trolled on the Good Morning America website.

Jasper Magazine is a publication focusing on the Columbia (South Carolina) art community, which I know very little about since I just moved here about a year ago and have been focused my way though moving, the first year of a new job, and all the stuff that comes with having a family life. I met with Mary Catherine Ballou (and her mother) who sent me some questions and came over to talk to me about my sculptures. I'm told the piece will be published on Ballou's blog soon. I'll post a link when it does. (Update 7/25/2016: Ballou's story is available here.)

In related news, the crow I've been working on is more-or-less done. This is one of the smaller sculptures I've made since I took up welding, and the first one that I've creating while tracking my work hours. As I said in the USC Today piece, I haven't sold anything yet and this isn't something I want to turn into a business. But realistically there will come a day when space issues require that I start getting rid of things. I tracked the hours so I would at least have an accurate idea how much time I had put into the piece.

I spent about ten hours making the crow. I used perhaps $10 of expendable supplies. The materials cost me, at most, a few bucks (about 20 pounds of scrap I've acquired here and there). If I pay myself $20/hour, I'm looking at a labor + materials cost of $210. You can find lots of simple "pricing guides" online like this one that suggest simply doubling the "cost" to calculate a wholesale price. Using that formula I should ask about $420 for the crow.  That sounds steep to me, but maybe somebody would pay that much. The way to find out, obviously, would be to put a price tag on it. I'v already moved it inside my house, though, and it's looking pretty comfortable on a corner table, so . . . my guess is that the crow is probably here to stay.

I'm going to keep this short, because life is short and I don't see much utility in expending a lot of energy on this issue.

As I wrote yesterday, Scott Wolter communicated to me that he was no longer interested in participating in my upcoming class. He told me in the email that it was because Jason Colavito would also be involved in the class (here is Jason's take). Given that Colavito would be participating at a different time and discussing totally different topics, it seemed like a strange decision to me. For that reason, I chose to let Wolter be the one to explain it if he cared to. It didn't take long for "Hutton Pulitzer" to show up on my blog and demonstrate, again, his aversion to factual accuracy. "Hutton Pulitzer's" comment provided information about Wolter's decision that I did not. So now it's a topic for discussion.

Scott Wolter decided not to participate in the class because Jason Colavito was also participating.

The alert reader will have noticed my use of quotation marks around "Hutton Pulitzer." As several people commented on yesterday's post, the language used by "Hutton Pulitzer" is distinctly un-Pulitzer-like, being largely devoid of typos, lacking the USE OF ALL CAPS, and written in more-or-less readable English. I have no way of knowing for sure, but it is plausible that "Hutton Pulitzer" was actually Scott Wolter in disguise.

Whether or not "Hutton Pulitzer" was Pulitzer himself or Wolter in a Pulitzer mask, my feelings are the same: good riddance. Team XplRr has passed my tolerance threshold for absurdity.

I'm a professor at an R1 university. I have a PhD. I do real archaeology and I teach students how to do real archaeology. The Forbidden Archaeology course is designed as an exercise in evidence-based critical thinking and communication. It exists to demonstrate to students that we have mechanisms for discerning credible from non-credible explanations of the human past. Not all ideas we have and stories we tell about the past can be correct, so how do we figure out which ones we can throw out? As I've written several times, the lack of a falsification mechanism is one of the hallmarks of pseudo-science. Holding ideas up to evidence-based scrutiny is what archaeologists do. If you're not doing that, you're not doing science. Forbidden Archaeology is designed to help students learn how to critically evaluate competing narratives about the past. 

For a class like this to work, there has to be a free flow of ideas and information. Period. The title of the course is tongue-in-cheek:  in my book there really is nothing that is "forbidden." As long as we have some mechanism for measuring the credibility of ideas and evidence, there's no reason to be afraid of examining any claim about the past. When some ideas or pieces of evidence are put "off limits," science begins to break down. It's okay to have vigorous disagreements, but at some level you have to agree on what constitute "facts" and "evidence."  Even in a dojo, where combat arts are learned and exercised, there are rules to be followed. 

When I talked to Wolter earlier this summer, I thought we had a meeting of the minds about the goals of the class and what we'd be doing. My intent was to have Wolter help us have a good, aggressive discussion of the Kensington Rune Stone, an object that remains enigmatic to this day. The students would have prepared themselves for Wolter's visit, and my hope was that they could experience some really interesting firsthand interactions with someone who has spent a lot of time and effort developing and defending his ideas about the stone.

I made it clear to Wolter in our phone call that I had no interest in having Pulitzer involved in any way. In my judgement, Pulitzer's history of misrepresentations and legal threats makes him unsuitable for interactions with my students. Based on my own history of interactions with Pulitzer, that's a pretty easy call to make.  

But it appears now that when you're talking to Wolter you're also talking to Pulitzer (perhaps literally). So there's really no way around it: whether Pulitzer speaks for Wolter or Wolter is pretending to be Pulitzer, it's monkey business that has no place in my classroom.  What's next? Demands to remove all the brown M&M's? No matter how I look at it, I cannot now imagine a good interaction with the Pulitzer-Wolter show. It's pretty weak sauce, and I'm no longer interested. The Wolter visit is off the table. What they decide to do with their partnership is none of my business, and that's the way it's going to stay.

I'm looking at other options for discussing different facets of the KRS. I've heard from several interested people already, and I'm considering several approaches that will let me meet the educational goals of the class. I wish the Wolter scenario would have played out differently, but it's just absurd to me that an invited guest (and/or his uninvited business partner) would attempt to exercise control over my syllabus. I have never misled anyone about the goals and content of this class. Forbidden Archaeology is going to be fun and educational for all involved.  I will work as hard as I can to make that happen. Wolter and Pulitzer won't be a part of that. Moving on.

That's about all I have to say about this situation at the moment. I'll keep you posted as I move forward.

On a different note, I spent my morning working on this sculpture of a crow. I'm posting an "in progress" picture because I think it's looking pretty good so far. I may enter it in the state fair.

Oh wait . . . maybe the crow is related: "Nevermore" . . . (thanks, Hartman Krug).

I'm sorry to announce that Scott Wolter will not be participating in my Forbidden Archaeology (ANT 291) class this fall. In an email exchange, Wolter told me that he has "lost his enthusiasm" for the idea. I don't fully understand his rationale for the decision, so I think the simplest and fairest thing to do is to leave it up to him to discuss his decision if he chooses.

The class will stilll be evaluating evidence and ideas about the Kensington Rune Stone (KRS), and we still be using Wolter's Hooked X book as a jumping off point for discussion (I was required by South Carolina law to choose the books for the course some time ago). My sense is that the KRS remains, over a hundred years since it's discovery, one of the more genuinely enigmatic objects used to support claims of pre-Columbian transoceanic contact. It's worth discussing no matter how we do it, so we're going to discuss it. I'll be thinking about options for bringing in someone else (probably via a remote lecture) to lay out an argument for/against the authenticity of the KRS. If I can get a prominent KRS skeptic to participate, maybe I'll set it up so the students take the position that the KRS is authentic . . . I'll think about it.

As far as the GoFundMe campaign to fund the costs of Wolter's travel, I can either find a way to return that money to the (n=3) donors or I can look into rolling it into the Jim Vieira travel fund. Vieira has agreed to pay for his own travel, but it would still be nice to offset some of the costs associated with getting him down here.

Please let me know if you have suggestions about KRS advocates/skeptics. I'll adjust the syllabus to accommodate whatever position the speaker wants to take. The class is first and foremost an exercise in critical thinking, logic, and the evidence-based methods we can employ to discriminate credible from non-credible statements about the human past.

This is a little bit cheerier than my post from this morning: there's a story about my sculptures on the Good Morning America website. Enjoy!

Gavin Long, the alleged killer of three police officers in Baton Rouge on July 17 reportedly identified himself with the Washitaw Nation, a group that claims ancient African sovereignty over a portion of North America based on their misinterpretation of archaeological data.

Last night, Congressman Steve King (Republican, Iowa), apparently disgusted that someone would ask why there are so few non-whites in evidence at the GOP convention in Cleveland, posed a question that has been a favorite white supremacist attack line since white supremacists invented white supremacists:

“This whole ‘old white people’ business does get a little tired, Charlie. I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you are talking about? Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?”

I'm still on the road in North Carolina. If you're interested, you can read about Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3. If not, you've only got a few more words to go until we get to giants.

Yesterday Jason Colavito wrote about the "Giant in My Backyard" website of Mirrell Blum. I had never heard of this one before. Blum claims to have found a letter left by her grandfather describing an encounter with a "huge, hairy beast man" that ended with the creature being shot and buried. Colavito's post discusses the strange interactions that Blum reported with Nephilim enthusiasts Steve Quayle and L. A. Marzulli. A few days ago, Blum claimed that they were actively digging up the beast man:

"We went as far as changing our phone numbers, emails, and cut off all communication about the letter and what might be buried on our property. After a couple of weeks of trying to figure out what we should do, we gathered a small group of family and friends to come up with a solution.

In the end, they were just as curious as we were and we decided pool our knowledge and skills. Myself and some of my friends work construction and other similar jobs, so we know our way around heavy equipment. We knew the general area that we needed to dig, so we rented and borrowed the equipment we needed and got to work."

 The post includes a picture of a pile of dirt and a dump truck (and a chipper-shredder). When you click a link at the bottom of the page ("Click Here To See Over 8 Hours of Video and 1,000+ Pics of The Dig") you're taken to a page asking you to provide complete credit card information for "Online Access To Pics and Video - Only $0.99." If you click the "Sign Up For Online Access" button (without entering any actual information, of course), you get the following screen (sorry - my laptop is damaged so I had to just take a photo with my phone):​

If your alarm bells haven't gone off yet, you haven't been paying attention.

When I did an image search on the "excavation in progress" photo with the dump truck and a pile of dirt, I got a hit on the website of Quality Landscaping Services in Connecticut. That site uses the exact same photo for illustration, which makes sense considering the presence of the chipper-shredded (which is not a piece of equipment I would bring on an excavation).

The photo of a hair sample being analyzed is taken from a May 2016 story about a Medieval-age plait of braided hair found in an English abbey.

So let's see these thousands of photos of the excavation of the beast man. At least we have a firm date and we won't be waiting long. Hartman Krug, fire up the countdown!

Day Three of my Carolina Junket was one of "those" days: wrong turns, locked doors, and a quantity of frowns matched only by the abundance of miles that I drove. The North Carolina piedmont just wasn't that warm and fuzzy. I'll keep this post short in an effort to keep it from being too much of a downer. Let's just go with mostly pictures.

The Dragonflies of Wilmington

On the way out of Wilmington, I stopped at the Battleship North Carolina to finish my coffee. I had a lot of miles I wanted to cover, so I didn't actually take the tour. I took some photos of the dragonflies in the park, tried to avoid stepping in goose crap, and had a look at the outside of the ship. If you've never seen a World War II era battleship . . . it's pretty impressive.  It's a porcupine with guns instead of quills.

The North Carolina Piedmont

Driving from Wilmington to Charlotte takes you across the flat coastal plain and into the Carolina Piedmont, the worn down foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.  The main artery is US 74/I-74, which in some places is labeled "Andrew Jackson Highway" and in others "American Indian Highway."  I'm sure there is a story somewhere there, but I'm too tired to investigate right now.

Traveling through the Piedmont was a little bizarre for me. In some ways, it feels strangely homologous to the oh-so-familiar Midwest. There is a feeling of rural depression, where shifting economic demography has left so many towns, so many businesses, and so many homes in a sad state of decay. Where there is shininess, it manifests in the form of scattered McMansions and a veneer of chain stores and fast food restaurants. The towns I drove through reminded me of the northeastern Ohio towns of my childhood.

While the built landscape seemed familiar, however, the vibe did not. Places were closed, some people were rude (I'm looking at you, lady in the Albemarle McDonald's), and I just didn't feel the love. I'll try not to judge, but geez . . . the Piedmont was  buzzkill. It seemed like "home," yet it felt like I was traveling through enemy territory. Strange.

Some Free Advice for Aviation Museums

I want to preface this section by saying that I support all efforts to preserve aviation history and tell the stories of that history to the public. I like air museums. I go to every one that I can. I've seen many.

I visited the Carolinas Aviation Museum in Charlotte. They have some interesting aircraft on display (some are unique), and there are a lot of staff on hand to answer questions. Those are the good things. Here are a few ways that the museum could be improved (I'm not picking on just this museum, these are common issues): 

That's it for my griping. I'm going to get a decent night of sleep and have a big smile on my face again for tomorrow. You're going to love me, North Carolina Piedmont, I swear!

My early July post about my Tyrannosaurus sculpture is one of the more popular things I've written recently, mostly because of interest from Columbia residents. The buzz attracted the attention of Mary Sturgill of WLTX 19, our local CBS affiliate. Sturgill visited me last week and interviewed me about the sculptures. The story ran on last night's 11 O'Clock News (you can see the piece here).

I'm not used to being on television and, like much of the rest of population in my age bracket, it makes me nervous to watch myself speak. It also makes me nervous to give up executive control of my message and trust someone else to do the editing.  That's why this tweet last night was somewhat terrifying:

I watched the piece this morning and was relieved to find seeing myself on TV to be a survivable experience. I think Mary did a nice job, and I thank her for taking the time and interest to hang out in my backyard and work around the noisy kid that was home with me that day. 

​There's also a story by Chris Horn about my sculptures in today's USC Today, a daily electronic publication that highlights stories related to the University of South Carolina. I like the piece that Chris wrote, and I like the picture of myself with the Tyrannosaurus.  I also appreciate that he knew much more about the plants in my backyard than I do and he pointed me toward a local source of wholesale scrap metal. Thanks, Chris!

I spent Day Two of my Carolina junket on Topsail Island, a barrier island in the Cape Fear region . I was drawn to Topsail (pronounced "Top-sul" by the locals) because of my enthusiasm for aviation history and for searching for tiny fossil shark teeth. Topsail Island may be the best place in the world to combine those interests.

Operation Bumblebee

Topsail Island was largely uninhabited before being seized by the U. S. government to serve as a the location of a secret Navy missile development program dubbed Operation Bumblebee. From 1947 to 1948, the Navy and John Hopkins Applied Physics Lab built and tested rocket-boosted, ramjet-powered missile prototypes on Topsail. (For those who aren't that into this stuff: a ramjet engine uses the engine's forward motion, rather than a rotating air compressor, to compress air. Fuel is ignited in the compressed air stream, producing thrust.  Ramjets have to be accelerated to a high speed before they become effective.)

The goal of the Bumblebee program was to develop a ramjet-powered supersonic surface-to-air missile with a range of 10-20 miles. The Navy built facilities on Topsail to build and test missiles, and many of the structures associated with those facilities survive: the former missile assembly building houses the Missiles and More Museum; the concrete launch pad serves as the patio of the Jolly Roger Inn; the firing point control tower is a house; several of the photographic towers are also houses, while others currently sit abandoned. Missiles would be assembled in the assembly building, transported the short distance to the firing point, then fired over the water to be tracked along their flights via the photographic towers.

I didn't find all the towers, but I took pictures of most of the ones I did find.  Going from south-to-north . . .

I would guess that most people who hunt for shark teeth are in "bigger is better" mode. I have come to realize that I'm doing just the opposite: I'm looking for the smallest teeth I can find. Don't get me wrong -- if I lucked into a Megalodon tooth like the ones that started washing up here last fall it would be a thrill for sure. But it wouldn't take near as much effort as collecting these tiny little buggers that I spend my time actively looking for. Megalodon tooth?  Whatever. Try finding the ones that look like they belong to sharks no bigger than goldfish. 

The appeal of the small teeth to me is, I think, the "ah-ha" of locating things that everyone else has overlooked. Not to analyze myself too much, but I think the same appeal is also part of my approach to archaeological problems: I've always liked locating and using unspectacular sources of data that others ignore and finding ways to squeeze a little bit more out of less. It doesn't matter how many times others have gone back and forth across the same beach, there's still more information there to be found: the sexy discoveries in no way exhaust the landscape of data.

Topsail Beach was the best shark tooth beach I've been to in the Carolinas so far (I've also spent some time at Edisto and Folly). Over the course of about four total hours of intensive searching I picked up 40-45 teeth (some very wave-worn and/or broken). That averages out to about one tooth every six minutes or so. That's pretty good in my book. 

A Mailbox at the End of the World

If you drive as far south on Topsail as you can, then go to the beach and walk as far south as you can, you'll soon be on a new part of the island. The southern tip of the island has been growing at a rate of about 100 feet per year. There aren't any houses there (yet), just sand, water, dunes, and plants. It was a nice place to be. And it has a mailbox.

The mailbox in the image above (taken by me, today) was back a few feet from the beach, nestled just inside the dunes. I'm not sure if this is the same installation shown in these photos from 2013, but it's clearly a different mailbox. There are notebooks inside filled with messages left by visitors. I wanted to read some, but I had to get out of the open before a storm hit.