-The excavation at the purported site of the "Zarahemla Temple," which I first wrote about here, has apparently already taken place.

As I indicated in my last post on the topic, all indications were that the "temple" property was purchased in January of 2015 (for $300,000) with intent to excavate in the spring of 2015. The (now-defunct) webpage for the project proclaimed that a professional ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey had identified the location of a rectangular wooden "temple structure" with walls extending 5-22' below the ground surface. Dr. John Melancon, ridiculously billed as "one of the few American archaeologists fully certified to conduct digs in Israel because of his training in Hebrew archaeology" was supposed to head up the investigation.

I found a series of photos of the excavation on the Hidden in the Heartland group on Facebook. The photos were posted over a period of several days in May of 2015. They show Wayne May, Melancon (I think), a camera crew, and a gaggle of volunteers excavating in a field. Unsurprisingly, the photos do not show the discovery or excavation of a 20' wooden wall associated with a burned temple. The only "artifacts" pictured are a table full unidentifiable rocks, including a small round one which seems to have been the star of the show (many pictures of that).  Over the course of several days, the strategy apparently moved from hand excavation blocks (n = 2?), to dowsing, to bulldozing, all apparently in effort to locate a wall that's not there. 

If you enjoy looking at photos of a sloppy, sandy excavation that careens from optimism to desperation over the course of just a few days, I encourage you to go and look at the photos yourself (I suspect they won't be there for long). Here are few samples:

Anyone with any serious archaeological background will immediately recognize this effort for what it is: an undisciplined treasure hunt. Here's my summary on what I think happened (I wasn't there, of course, so this is conjecture). The goal of this effort was to find a buried wall that someone told them was there (based on GPR data that they didn't understand). The effort begins with using actual tape measures, nails, and string to lay out excavation blocks. These blocks were placed in areas where they should have come down on the walls of Zarahemla. After starting relatively carefully, however, impatience quickly sets in when all that materializes is more and more sand. Various additional "technologies" (i.e., metal detectors and dowsing rods) are employed to solve the mystery of where the walls are, and the units are aggressively dug downward because surely those walls are down there somewhere. This effort begins by tunneling down by hand in the excavation blocks, but even eventually impatience wins here also and mechanical excavation equipment is desperately used to blow a big crater into the earth. And still there are no walls. And so the dirt is pushed back in the holes and everyone goes home.

Or perhaps I'm totally wrong and this was a very careful, precise effort that located and responsibly documented all kinds of cultural wonders. There was film crew there, so maybe the "temple excavations" appear in one of the episodes of "Hidden in the Heartland." I hope they do -- then I can see if I'm right.

Last weekend I wrote this post about a planned excavation by Heartland Mormons to search for the temple of Zarahemla in Iowa. That excavation was justified by a map produced via a ground-penetrating radar survey. Today, thanks to a comment on a recent blog post by Jason Colavito's blog post, I learned of another example of ground-penetrating radar data being used to propel the excavation of what is almost certainly a fantasy, this time in association with Oak Island.

First, an update on the Zarahemla excavation.

The webpage for the project proclaimed that a professional ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey had identified the location of a rectangular wooden "temple structure" with walls extending 5-22' below the ground surface. I pointed out that that level of specificity was impossible using GPR and questioned (among other things) how those outlines were determined and how they could possible serve as the basis for an actual archaeological excavation. Coincidentally or not, that webpage (dated January 2015) is not currently available, and the entire Book of Mormon Evidence site is currently "under maintenance."

I couldn't find any details about the excavation, but I suspect it has already taken place. Blog reader and friend of archaeological reality Mike Morgan located a report of the record of purchase, showing that the 13.8 acre "temple of Zarahemla" parcel was sold to Zarahemla Holdings, LLC, on January 20, 2015. Another of my online friends told me that he recalls seeing images posted on Facebook showing an excavation in progress some time ago, but those images were later removed. That an excavation was planned for the spring of 2015 is also supported by comments on message boards like this one, posted the day before the sale of the parcel closed.

A comparison of aerial photographs of the parcel from June 2014 (before the sale; image from Google Earth) and summer of 2015 (image from the Iowa Geographic Map Server) suggests that excavations were, indeed, undertaken in the area identified as the "temple" in the first half of 2015. The light-colored areas marked with arrows appear to show the areas of backdirt piles and newly-filled excavation areas. Those areas correspond to the location of the eastern wall of the "temple" (unfortunately, since the webpage is gone, I can't reproduce their aerial with the "temple" superimposed [Update: you can see the figure on this website]).

[Update: I found this image from June 2015 that reportedly shows Wayne May, apparently dowsing, in an excavation at the "temple" site.]

A machine excavation into the "temple" area would have quickly revealed that there was no buried, 15-foot-tall wooden wall. Without seeing the raw GPR data and details of how it was processed, there's really no telling what kinds of anomalies, if any, the survey actually detected. But I presume that if the Temple of Zarahemla had been found we would have heard something about it by now. So my money is on nothing. I just hope that no real cultural deposits have been damaged so far in this pursuit.

And now for the new example.

This webpage, dated the 28th of October, 2016, makes a bold proclamation:

"OAK ISLAND RELATED UNDERGROUND FACILITY FOUND ON MAINLAND LUNENBURG COUNTY, NOVA SCOTIA!"

Here we go again.

You can read all the Shakespeare stuff and then get down to the brass tacks of the "proof" that (1) there's an underground facility and (2) it's related the mystery of Oak Island.  That "proof," apparently comes down to GPR data. Here's what the site says:

"In March 2015, I conducted GPR scanning around the X marked boulder and have had the files analyzed by very skilled GPR analysis experts. Disturbances in subsurface features can be seen in the data. The experts say such disturbed structures should not be present in normal ground conditions.

In the summer of 2016, a professional GPR firm conducted a second, more extensive scan of the site. The result and report from this scan is still pending. The analysis is complicated due to a number of factors that has to do with GPR settings for best possible data collection. I also have instructions from the Nova Scotia Communities, Culture and Heritage to keep results confidential until a decision has been taken on how the province will react on a report showing interesting results. The 2016 scan was financed by Paul Lappin and Knut Skofteland. I’m very grateful for their contribution to this project."

So, somehow, from these incomplete GPR results, the authors have "proved" that there's an "intact underground facility" or "vault' that contains important things.  Let's get the backhoe!

Anyone who understands GPR is shaking his or her head. As I said in the previous post, GPR data are complicated. The equipment works by pulsing radar waves into the ground and detecting the reflections that occur when the waves encounter a material with different electromagnetic properties. Depth can be estimated based on analyzing the two-way travel times of the reflected waves. That's it. Anomalies in GPR data can be caused by any contrast in the electromagnetic properties of the materials that the waves are passing through: open spaces (such as rooms or caves) can cause anomalies, as can buried rocks, changes in sediment, the water table, and numerous other things. Often in a natural setting (i.e., when you're not looking for something really obvious like buried storage tanks) you can't really tell what's "anomalous" until you get data from a large enough area to understand something about what you're looking at.  

So . . . yeah, like the Zarahemla example, I'll go on record with the position that what you think the GPR is telling you is not what it's actually telling you. 

I think these two examples are part of a trend of the fringe embracing new technologies that they think will provide "out-of-the-box" credibility to their ideas and conclusions. In some cases, the abilities of these technologies are probably being intentionally misrepresented to wishful thinkers. In others, it's apparent that the people using these gee whiz technologies don't really understand them. The screen on a GPR doesn't beep at you and say "alert! buried vault!" The XRF meter doesn't have a "detect Roman brass" setting. And tiny flashlights don't have "old" and "not old" icons to discriminate ancient from modern stone inscriptions.  You might as well be using dowsing rods and flipping coins. 

Try learning something about the tools you're using and then collecting and presenting data in a way that they can be evaluated. Then maybe someone would take you seriously.

We have reached the point in semester where those of us involved in the educational parts of academia -- faculty and students alike -- are starting to feel the strain: you can see it in the body language, the class attendance, and in my Facebook feed peppered with complaints from colleagues about plagiarism and requests for extra credit.

For me, the grind of the "fringe" material we're dealing with in Forbidden Archaeology is contributing to the fatigue. I've been immersed in this stuff since August. The silliness, lies, and willful ignorance are wearing on me.

The feeling of fatigue crystallized as I listened to this presentation by Alex Koritz, a so-called "Heartland Mormon" who believes that events described in the Book of Mormon unfolded in eastern North America. I played a short chunk of the video (from about 9:00-20:00) in class as part of our discussion of claims about the "missing copper" of the Great Lakes, and asked the students to try to identify and evaluate Koritz's claims and figure out his orientation on the fly. I listened to the remainder of Koritz's presentation over the course of a few days during my walks to and from campus. Between what Koritz says and the questions from the audience, it's really a depressing brew of so many of the concepts we've dealt with this semester (claims about giant skeletons, re-dating the Sphinx, "Mound Builders," government and academic conspiracies, misrepresentation of Native American oral traditions, misconceptions about what archaeologists think and do, misuse of genetic data, etc.). It is sad.

One of the most distressing things that I heard from Koritz was that the Heartland Mormons apparently plan to excavate an archaeological site in Iowa. During the question/answer session, Koritz mentions that Wayne May, editor of Ancient American Magazine, is "overseeing" an excavation of a Hopewell site (about 1:12:30):

"Even in the Midwest there are still Hopewell digs going on. We were back in Illinois recently . . . um . . . if you know Wayne May, he's actually overseeing one on the Mississippi River."

What?

Fetishizing fake artifacts and making fantastic maps is one thing, but excavating a site?

[Update (11/13/2016): I think that an excavation has already taken place.]

This webpage, dated January 2015, describes the purchase of property and the intent to excavate a Hopewell site that the Heartland Mormons claim may be the sacred city of Zarahemla:

"For the past several  years Ancient American Magazine publisher Wayne May has been exploring the possibilities of what could be one of the most significant archaeological finds in history, the Zarahemla temple site of the Nephites of the Book of Mormon!  Before this can be positively established, archaeological work must be done to verify that this was anciently a Hopewell Mound Builder Civilization site along with having evidence of a temple structure."

The site shows aerial photographs of the property across the river from Nauvoo, Illinois, where May et al. claim there is evidence of a rectangular "temple structure" and provides a figure that purports to show the locations of buried walls as determined using ground-penetrating radar (GPR):

I can't fully evaluate the GPR work without seeing a formal report, of course, but I can tell you that I'm extremely skeptical of the accuracy of the information in that image. GPR works by pulsing radar waves into the ground and detecting the reflections that occur when the waves encounter a material with different electromagnetic properties. By measuring the strength and travel time of the reflected pulses, it's possible to collect information about subsurface deposits.  But those data are not simple. GPR data do not come in maps such as those shown above: such maps are produced from careful processing and analysis of dense datasets. GPR cannot, by itself, tell you the kinds of materials that are buried or give you precise depths. The resolution of GPR varies with antenna size -- the greater depth penetration required, the lower the frequency of antenna that must be used and the lower resolution that you'll receive. I don't know what kind of hardware, software, and methods were used to produce this illustration of a buried rectangular structure, but I will tell you that GPR did not identify the material as wood and did not provide those direct depth figures.  

Who produced this drawing?  The website address on the image is not functional. I found a single page for a company called H3 Tec here. There is additional information about H3 Tec's claim of a technology for long-range detection of precious metals scattered around the web (e.g., here, here).

Shooting radar waves into the ground and drawing maps are non-invasive activities: you can do that all you want without permanently affecting the archaeology. But apparently this GPR study is just a prelude to an actual excavation. The webpage says the following:

"I would like to invite you to join with other fellow "Heartlanders" to help us raise the funds for the purpose of conducting the archaeological studies and dig.  The dig will be conducted by non-Mormon semi-retired archaeologist, Dr. John Melancon, who is also one of the few American archaeologists fully certified to conduct digs in Israel because of his training in Hebrew archaeology."    

So who is this famous archaeologist who, with your generous support and Wayne May's guidance, is going to uncover the temple at Zarahemla?

Melancon apparently runs a company called Underground Discovery & Exploration. From that website, we learn that: 

"Dr. John Melancon is a world renown archaeologist that maintains a semiprivate museum in HENDERSON TX. Dr. John Melancon is notably the worlds foremost authority on Spanish and Knights of the Golden Circle Society treasure maps, symbols and signs.

As an archaeologist, Dr. John Melancon desires to preserve the integrity of history. Treasure hunters seek out the knowledge Dr. Melancon has amassed over the past 35 years of the secret Civil War society, KGC."

As you can see from the screenshot, the posts on the Underground Discovery & Exploration website are not about archaeology. The focus is on treasure hunting.

I was unable to find much about actual archaeology that Melancon has done. I found several announcements for presentations he has given to church groups (e.g., this one, this one, and this one). He has a listing on "Worldwide Who's Who," an "international branding and networking organization" that charges membership fees. I did find several others things of interest, however, including this 2013 newspaper story about a treasure-hunting controversy in New Mexico involving Melancon.  He apparently started and ended this blog with a single post in 2014. His LinkedIn page states that he has been Senior Vice President of a Bible museum in Branson, Missouri, since 2015, with responsibilities that include:

"Curating and displaying artifacts, procurement of artifacts, archaeology overseas and in America. Translation of some inscriptions and oversight of the archaeological portion of the museum. Assisting in operation of the balance of the the museum."

[Update (3/14/2017): Dr. Bobby Sparks, President of the Bible History Museum in Branson, Missouri, informed me via a comment below that Melancron "was associated with the project early on, but due to circumstances, he is no longer identified with the project"].

This page from 2011 crows about the treasure hunting expedition that Melancon will be leading to Black Mesa (perhaps the same one later described in the newspaper article above?). The language will sound hauntingly familiar to those of you who have followed this blog closely: 

"As one well known treasure hunter said, “How did you get permission on one of the biggest treasure sights in the world?” Simple. We are Expedition Resources: an unbeatable team, experience, technology, and a solid track record. What are you waiting for? Call us today to be a part of the greatest team, greatest treasure hunt, and greatest expedition! MAKE HISTORY!!!"

That's a bold statement. Can Melancon claim an A-Team van and a costume to compete with those fielded by the TreasureForce? 

Whatever kind of van he might have, it's not at all clear to me that Melancon has the expertise to excavate a Middle Woodland site in the Eastern Woodlands. I cannot comment of the actual archaeological excavation he's done before (I would love to see an example), but I will tell you that doing "Hebrew archaeology" in the Middle East is different from doing Hopewell archaeology in the Midwest. The techniques are different, the deposits are different, the cultural materials are different, and the research questions are different.  And once shovels go in the ground, you can't put things back.

So what's the plan here? What's the goal? What's going to happen if human remains are encountered? How are the deposits that are exposed going to be documented? What's going to happen to the cultural materials after they come out of the ground?  Can my archaeological friends in Iowa tell me anything about what's going on?

I'm all for public interest in archaeology, but I'm not for the sacrifice of a legitimate archaeological site for the purposes of fantasy.

I've spent the last several hours doing my prep for Monday's Forbidden Archaeology class. Following an introduction to the topic of pre-Columbian transoceanic contact last week (mostly an overview of the historic, political, social, and scientific debate about the "mound builders"), we'll be jumping in by discussing two classic cases of inscribed stones: the Newark Holy Stones (1860) and the Bat Creek Stone (1889).

It's been fun reviewing these two cases. In my opinion, neither is strong evidence for anything "real" other than late 1800's hoaxery. Their historic contexts are interesting, as are the differences in the motivations of the hoaxers. Both the Newark Holy Stones and the Bat Creek Stone still have their share of fans, but apparently there's some tension over what exactly the stones mean. ​

Brad Lepper and Jeff Gill have written extensively about the Newark Holy Stones, a pair of stone artifacts inscribed with Hebrew lettering purportedly "discovered" in southern Ohio earthen mounds. Lepper argues that the stones were created in attempt to show that the indigenous peoples of the Americas were related to Old World peoples as known in the Bible, thereby undermining the polygenist framework that was being used to justify slavery. After the first stone (the Keystone) "found" by David Wyrick didn't pass the sniff test of those who examined it, he miraculously found another soon after (the Decalogue Stone).Thousands of person-hours of careful excavation on Ohio Mound by people other than Wyrick has failed to produce any more ancient Hebrew artifacts. Brad Lepper, however, did succeed in finding an illustration that may have been the source of design that Wyrick used for the Decalogue Stone. 

To me, the most interesting thing about the Newark case is that the hoaxer (presumably Wyrick) was apparently attempted to "humanize" Native American populations by bringing them into a Biblical framework, rather than de-legitimize them by providing evidence that others built the mounds.​

I'm still catching up on a backlog of blog-related emails and comments that accumulated during those heady weeks of #Swordgate. I've never been great at promptly returning emails, and going to the mattresses for Swordgate made the problem worse. I apologize if I haven't gotten back to you yet. I hope to answer everything eventually.

Almost a year ago, I wrote this post about some purportedly late radiocarbon dates for mastodons and mammoths that are being used as "evidence" for the accuracy of the Book of Mormon (BOM). The BOM (Ether:16-19) describes elephants in the New World at what would have been about 2500 BC.  The current scientific consensus, however, is that mastodons and mammoths did not survive in the Eastern Woodlands past about 9500 BC. While Mormon scholars continue to cling to a small suite of Holocene radiocarbon dates to argue for much later survivals, it's pretty clear that those anomalously young dates are probably attributable to either contamination, context/association problems, or both. I provided a table of five radiocarbon dates that seem to be embraced by Mormons not because they are good science, but because they remain the "best fit" to the Jaredite time period.  No-one else takes those dates seriously.  They're probably mistakes. 

When I wrote the original post, I was unable to track down the primary sources for the Devil's Den mastodon. Dr. Eric Butler, a biologist at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, kindly found a copy of Martin and Webb's (1974) report and took a look at it. He provided a synopsis in a recent email.  I'll summarize two main points:

Mastodon Remains.  In a long list of fauna from Devil's Den, there is a single entry for Proboscideans: "2 vertebrae, a last cervical vertebrae and an anterior thoracic" from juvenile mastodons.

​Dating and Associations. The age estimate of 7000-8000 BP pertains to an entire fossil assemblage, not just the mastodon remains. While it is not exactly clear how this age estimate was produced (this description sources an unpublished research paper by H. K. Brooks that purportedly references radiocarbon dates, but no specifics are provided), it seems that the young age is not generally accepted by paleontologists in Florida and elsewhere. An age of 7000-8000 BP for the entire Devil's Den assemblage would mean that horses (Equus), saber-toothed cats (Smilodon), giant ground sloths (Megalonyx), Florida spectacled bears (Tremarctos floridanus), and dire wolves (Canis dirus) were running around in Florida at about 6700-5700 BC. There is no other evidence, at archaeological sites or elsewhere, for those species surviving into the Middle Archaic period in Florida or anywhere else.

The long and short of it is that it appears there's good reason to view the late dates of Devil's Den fossil assemblage with significant skepticism.  If it's good evidence for a late survival of mastodon, it's good evidence for a late survival of an entire "Pleistocene" fauna that has no precedent elsewhere.  A simpler explanation is that the age estimate for the assemblage is not accurate. As Butler suggested in his email to me, this assemblage would seem to be a prime candidate for re-dating using modern AMS methods. I wrote the following in my original post:

That offer still stands. If you're serious about resolving the issue of late-surviving Proboscideans, let's make it happen and re-date this material using modern methods and standards.

One final note to show you how these things fit together: Dr. John Sorenson, an advocate of late mammoth/mastodon survivals and one of the primary defenders of the historicity of the BOM, is a prominent advocate for pre-Columbian transoceanic contact in the Ancient Artifact Preservation Society, the hyperdiffusionist organization backing the "100 percent confirmed Roman sword from Nova Scotia" that turned out to be a piece of modern brass tourist kitsch.  Maybe we should do a blood residue analysis on the sword and see if it was used to kill mastodons. Finally . . . it all makes sense! 

I'm about to get on airplane for some holiday travel. I'm hoping to spend much of the coming week not doing much work, but I've been working hard over the last few weeks to finish a "beta" (i.e., mostly complete) version of The Argumentative Archaeologist website. It's done!  Go have a look!  Please spread the word.

I don't have time to write much about it now, so I'm just going to paste in the content from the About page:

The Argumentative Archaeologist is a website that organizes and compiles links to fact-based information and analysis related to fantastic claims about the human past.  While not all "fringe" (i.e., non-mainstream) claims have been shown to be untrue, many have (some of them over, and over, and over again . . .).  The goal of this site is to provide road maps to information that will help you both identify what's BS and understand the history and context of some of the many claims about the past that can be shown to be false.  They can't all be true, right?.

Who Are the Intended Audiences?

This site was conceived and designed with three main audiences in mind:

• The Public. Almost by definition, most "fringe" ideas come from outside the professional archaeological community.  The marketing and selling of those ideas, not surprisingly, are largely targeted to audiences that are also outside of the professional archaeological community ("bypassing the mainstream" is a common part of the pitch). The "fringe" community has done a good job of exploiting traditional print and television media as well as utilizing the internet to uncritically spread sensational claims about the past.  While many of those "fringe" claims can easily be shown to be false, the voices of the few individuals and organizations that have made a concerted effort to address the factual basis of those claims are often drowned out the megaphones that the "fringe" community has built for itself.  This site is an attempt to assemble links to openly available, critical analysis of "fringe" claims into one central location to make it easier for interested members of the public to get the other side of the story. It wasn't aliens - see for yourself!

• Educators. College courses that engage with the history, context, and evidence associated with "fringe" claims about the past are becoming increasingly common. I know several people that teach them, and I myself am planning on teaching one in the Fall Semester of 2016. While traditional textbooks are available that cover many facets of pseudo-archaeology, I feel that much of the real work that is being to address and understand "fringe" claims as they emerge and develop is being done online in formats such as blogs.  Blogs can and have been used to address many different aspects of "fringe" claims with a timeliness and forthrightness that would be impossible in the context of a traditional textbook. I hope that people teaching courses on pseudo-archaeology find this site useful in terms of both the kinds of information it presents and the organization of that information.

• Researchers (Both Kinds). I hope the links compiled on this site will help those of you out there interested in performing research on many different facets of pseudo-archaeology: where do these claims come from? why are they popular? what do we know about artifact x or site y? I know that I have learned several things I did not know just through the process of initial construction of the site (and that is without actually reading in detail the large majority of the content to which this site links). While many claims have been addressed repeatedly and are fairly well understood, many have not and are not. I think it would also be of great benefit to "fringe" researchers to make an effort to understand the arguments against their claims.  I know that may be difficult when you really, really, really want something to be true . . . but if you want your ideas to be taken seriously you will have to someday address an evidence-based critique.  I'm not optimistic that will happen (evaluating the willingness to actually test an idea is one of the key ways to discriminate between archaeology and pseudo-archaeology), but it would be nice. Maybe try not just repeating the same dumb, incorrect thing that someone else already said? Just an idea.​​

How Do You Choose the Content?

The content in this site was not chosen to give "equal time" to skeptical and "fringe" voices.  As mentioned above, the "fringe" side of the equation has developed a powerful set of tools to communicate its various messages: it does not require any assistance.  This site is intended to serve as a counterpoint to "fringe" claims, providing links to critical analyses of components of those claims, links to critical reviews of "fringe" media, and a structure that lets the user explore and understand how various components of "fringe" claims are inter-connected.

During the initial construction of this site (October-November 2015), I mined the blogs of several of the major skeptical online voices of which I am aware: Jason Colavito, ArchyFantasies, Bad Archaeology, Glen Kuban, Skeptoid, Le Site d'Irna, Michael Heiser, Ancient Aliens Debunked, Hot Cup of Joe, and my own website (Andy White Anthropology). This site does not link to all posts on those websites, of course, but it links to many that are related to the topics of interest here. My plan is to monitor those sites and add links to new posts (and new topics) as they become available. I would love to hear about articles, posts, and other skeptical sites of which I am unaware (please use the Suggestion Box).​

Why Do You Present the Content the Way You Do?

The work of critically evaluating "fringe" claims about the human past is being done by very few individuals.  I hope that this site brings attention (and web traffic) to their efforts.  My guess is that most of us who take the time to investigate and write something about the nonsense that's being sold as knowledge aren't making any money by doing so (in stark contrast to the "fringe" side, which has a large commercial component). Credit should go where credit is due: write an email and thank your favorite skeptic for his or her hard work.

I have used block quotes to introduce many of the topics, artifacts, and sites for which I have created entries. Many of those quotes are from Wikipedia.  I chose to do this not because it is the best source of information, but because it probably reflects a reasonable consensus view.  And it's designed to be "open."  I've attributed the textual quotes that I use, and I've attributed the sources of images that I use by linking to my sources.  I have added internal links (i.e., links pointing to other pages within this website) and indicated those changes with the designation [links added]. I do not believe that I am violating any copyrights or other prohibitions by presenting the material the way I do. If you disagree, please let me know via email (aawhite@mailbox.sc.edu).​

What Do I Do Now?

Begin your search for information by Topic, by Person, by Geographical Area, by Title of a book, film, or television program, by Meme or Image, or Alphabetically. ​Please use the Suggestion Box to offer topics or links to information, and please sign the Guestbook.

​Enjoy!