Category: Copper Culture

Happy Thanksgiving, Critical Thinkers: "The Argumentative Archaeologist"

11/21/2015

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!

7 Comments

Hutton Pulitzer Gives Self "Most Socially Powerful Explorer" Award, Still Lags in YouTube Popularity Behind Justin Bieber, Pumpkin Dance, and Anonymous People Who Unwrap Kinder Surprise Eggs for Toddlers

10/10/2015

10 Comments

S cott Wolter, Josh Gates, and Don Wildman may be surprised to learn that, whatever else they may have accomplished, they're just not as popular on social media as J. Hutton Pulitzer (aka J. Jovan Philyaw aka TreasureForce Commander). This is the startling yet inescapable conclusion one reaches when viewing the "social fan base" data assembled by . . . wait for it . . . J. Hutton Pulitzer. Sorry, TV personalities, you're just not cutting it: the 2015 Award for Most Socially Powerful Explorer goes to . . . wait for it again . . . J. Hutton Pulitzer!

Well, okay, that's not a 100% accurate statement: I'm not sure what the actual title of the award is, and Pulitzer didn't formally announce that he'd won. I'm also not sure if there's a statue or a plaque or something that goes with the title. Perhaps I can create some kind of certificate to mark this special distinction.

I think this comparative plea for recognition (titled "Do Explorers on TV Impact Our Social Lives?"), like many things associated with Pulitzer, is pretty funny. But I also think it reveals something interesting about the struggle for credibility, influence, and identity in the crowded arena of "forbidden history." From the first time I saw Pulitzer on The Curse of Oak Island, my hypothesis about him has been that he's all about getting himself on TV. Nothing I have seen since then has changed my opinion, and this comparison with TV "explorers" reinforces it: this is a person who very much wants to be in the TV club. But he also wants you to think he can be influential without being on TV. He's working on making his case for being on television even while pretending he doesn't want or need to be on television. It's a little bizarre.

It's fair to ask why television appearances retain such prestige in the internet age. There are, after all, now a lot of ways to spread a message that don't require an investment from a production company or a television network: blog posts, YouTube videos, podcasts, Twitter, Facebook groups, etc. My gut feeling is that the combined impact of all of these "ground up" mechanisms and avenues for spreading ideas is probably significantly greater than television programming, especially among people in their twenties and thirties. There is some evidence suggesting that the popularity of "fringe" television programming ( a growth industry over the last few years) may be starting to decline. Perhaps television appearances retain a special allure as a signal of success not because they are the best way to communicate an idea, but because the outside investment in that communication appears to represent an independent nod of approval.

Divorced from its "I should be in the TV club" subtext, Pulitzer's point is a fair one: influence really can't be measured simply by success on television. I don't think anyone would argue that. But I also think it's silly to claim that "social power" can be measured by YouTube views (or Twitter followers, or Facebook group membership counts). Taking YouTube views as the metric, for example, Pulitzer's influence lags far behind such icons of "social power" as Justin Bieber and many anonymous people who systematically reveal things hidden inside toy eggs. By his count, Pulizer's "social power" is neck-and-neck with this guy who recorded himself in a pumpkin mask and leotard dancing to the theme from Ghostbusters nine years ago.

A comparison of "social power" based on YouTube views. I used a log scale since Bieber's "Baby" video swamps the competition with over a billion views.

But I'm not even sure Pulitzer's YouTube comparison is fair. How does Scott Wolter have a zero? A search for "Scott Wolter" on YouTube returns a long list of videos, many of which have thousands of views. Do those videos not count for some reason?

I'm also not sure what videos Pulitzer includes in his own total. Does he count the 1,439 views of the "Who Is J. Hutton Pulitzer?" video where he states that his "instinct to excel" is "part of his genetic legacy"? Does he include the whopping 249 views of this video about the "Copper Culture" that includes allegedly fake artifacts?

Lack of clarity about actual data (and what they mean) is not a surprise from Pulitzer: it's typical and, I think, symptomatic of the real reason he doesn't have his own television program. Unlike Wolter, Pulitzer has neither an idea of his own nor the understanding of how to make a compelling argument about one. And, in my opinion, he hasn't demonstrated the charisma, personality, or minimal expertise necessary to successfully or credibly host a travel-based program like Gates' Expedition Unknown. But I'm not a TV producer, so what the hell do I know? I'm just a simple archaeologist who has never been on television (other than a few minutes of local news here and there) and had no part in inventing a product that contributed to the demise of RadioShack.

I've been criticized in the past for going after Pulitzer's style rather than the substance of his ideas. My defense to that is simple: what ideas? Show me an actual argument based on evidence and I'd be happy to have a look at it. I have yet to see anything interesting backing up the fluff and bluster, and I think it's pretty easy to see through all the silliness (it's much easier to simply re-label photographs and do interviews than it is to actually collect data and perform an analysis). What's left when you strip away the show business? Not much. For me, Pulitzer's case has become an interesting one to watch to see how far the guy can get by re-inventing himself as an "explorer," growing a beard, and asserting that he is exposing "forbidden truths." How do you measure success in that endeavor? Pulitzer seems to be making the argument that you can measure success by "social power" (as well as, presumably, television ratings, paid speaking appearances, book sales, etc.). There's undoubtedly something to that. But if YouTube views are supposed to be some kind of indication of substance, I present to you the Justin Bieber and Pumpkin Dance evidence as Exhibit A of my counter-argument. And I still can't find Pulitzer's newly-minted term "OOP-gly" on Wikipedia. So it seems full mastery of the online environment remains an unattained goal, with plenty of room for growth.

10 Comments

The Pulitzer Pageant, Fall 2015 Edition

9/20/2015

2 Comments

Note (12/28/2015): I have decided to respect J. Hutton Pulitzer's wish to be known by his current name and have renamed this post. I took the post down temporarily at the beginning of Swordgate (mid-December of 2015) after Pulitzer claimed that some of the comments were libelous (explained here). While I do not believe that they were, I have removed them from view pending consultation with a lawyer. In the meantime, please keep the comments civil or I'll just close them down. Thanks!

If you woke up this morning wondering what J. Hutton Pulitzer has been up to, you're not alone: you've got me to keep you company!

I lost track of our friend after he kicked me out of one his Facebook groups this summer and I quit another. Previous to that, I had written about such weighty Pulitzer-related topics as the idea of Jurassic-age "Super Ancient Copper Culture" in Michigan, an interview where Pulitzer marveled at the SECRET ARCHIVES hidden in plain sight in the Allen County Public Library, Pulitzer's use of lots of exclamation points to "prove" that Minoans discovered Tennessee, and his use of allegedly fake copper artifacts to "educate" his fans.

Catching butterflies with my kids trumps talking to Hutton Pulitzer about his imagination any day.

I declined to participate in Pulitzer's radio show about the Indiana "mummy" while I was on vacation with my family, and I think my lack of interest hurt his feelings. I listened to the show later (an interview with Wayne May of Ancient American magazine) and found that Pulitzer had added a new weapon to his communication arsenal: alliteration. He referred to me as "Andy the Argumentative Angry Archaeologist" (about 44:30) and explained to May that

"he's a guy out here that actually tags on every one of my posts, calls me a fool and an idiot . . . and he's started debating this mummy thing and saying there's no such thing as mummies and it's native and it's this and whatever. Now, Andy did help me track down some images, but he would not come onto the program. I tried to tell him, you know, I said 'Andy' -- and that's why I call him "4A:" Andy the Argumentative Angry Archaeologist -- 'come on, tell the other side of the story. People want to hear the other side of the story.' But he won't even do that. They are so upset that this might be something here. All they can do is poo-poo it and call everybody idiots."

I'm not sure where Pulitzer's "mummy" research stands now. The last I heard (as I wrote in this post), calling the human remains found in northwestern Indiana a "mummy" was an error: a July 2 story corrected the initial account, stating that the remains were not those of a mummy, but "just turned out to be really old." Pulitzer knows that, and he knows (because I told him) that the photo he's using with his interview is the mummy of Minirdis from the Field Museum. So don't hold your breath waiting for Pulitzer to follow through and produce anything interesting about this story. If his "team" can't effectively use the search capabilities of Google Image and admit that the press and those who talk to the press sometimes make mistakes, I'm not sure what else to say.

Since July, Pulitzer has written about a few things that I think are worth mentioning. If you're interested in following his journey as both a writer and a misunderstander of scientific methods, you can check out this blog post from early August. He expands his discussion of "Andy the Angry and Argumentative Archaeologist" while also deftly demonstrating that he doesn't actually know how archaeology is done. It is quite a piece of work: I may assign it to my class next fall as it nicely illustrates several important points about how difficult it is to mount an effective critique of something you don't understand. In the meantime, I have purchased the domain www.andytheargumentativearchaeologist.com. I'm not sure how I'll use that website, but it may include t-shirt sales.

In early September, Pulitzer wrote this ham-handed post comparing the "Black Lives Matter" movement to the actions of ISIS, equating the defacement and destruction of monuments honoring the Confederacy and Confederates with the destruction of ancient archaeological sites and materials in the Near East. What a mess. I can think of several recent cases where groups and societies decided to take down monuments, and they're not all the same (compare the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in 2003, the removal of the statue of Joe Paterno from the campus of Penn State in 2012, and the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the South Carolina Statehouse in July of 2015). I'm not advocating vandalism, but sometimes monuments are taken down for good reasons (I think that there's still plenty of work to be done at the South Carolina State House, for example, which is practically a memorial gardens for famous South Carolina racists). There is more to be said on the interconnected issues of race, history, society, and the "fringe" here, but I'll wait and say my piece about those things at another time.

In his latest post, Pulitzer couples an attempt to put his brand on "forbidden" history with an assault on the English language by coining a new term: "OOP-Gly." He provides a "wiki definition" of his new term:

"Out-of-place Glyph (Oop-Gly) is a term coined by American Publisher, Author, Expedition Commander and Historian Hutton Pulitzer for a symbol, glyph, language, script, ideogram, pictographic, ideographic script, engraved images, astrological carvings or hieroglyphic writing of historical, archaeological, or paleontological interest found in a very unusual location or seemingly impossible context which directly challenges conventional academic and historical chronology for being “not known to or used by the indigenous population of a specific area or region, but are known to of been used by a group, society or people specifically not connected and not patriated to the locations such indigenous peoples”,

Well, that's a mouthful.

The exciting results of my Wikipedia search for "OOP-gly."

As of this morning, I was unable to find the definition of this exciting new term on Wikipedia, so I'm not sure where exactly Pulitzer has chosen to make this great advance available to the world. When I Googled "OOP-Gly" the only results I got were Pulitzer's post and this page showing me what other words I could make out of those letters (goopy, loopy, and glop are among them, should you ever find yourself Scrabbling with OOP-Gly).

So the beat goes on . . . Pulitzer's re-invention of himself as a maverick explorer and seeker of the truth has yet to yield much of substantive interest. He appears to have done a good job of talking, creating websites, using capital letters, and distancing himself from his past exploits. I have yet to see anything that constitutes an interesting idea or argument about prehistory coming from him, however, just a lot of promises about "testing" this and "proving" that. So far it's been just talk, which is pretty cheap and gets pretty boring after a while. And so I'll conclude this edition of the Pulitzer Pageant with a quote from Jay Z:

Some fools just love to perform. You know the type: loud as a motorbike, but wouldn't bust a grape in a fruit fight.

Archaeologists have a lot of problems, but Pulitzer ain't one. Moving on . . .

2 Comments

"May the GREAT RAVEN GOD TAKE YOU STUPID" and Other Treasures from My Vacation

7/14/2015

14 Comments

As the four readers of this blog may have noticed, I haven't written anything for several weeks. I've been on vacation. I spent a couple of weeks in Michigan's beautiful Upper Peninsula, watching lawnmower races, visiting the beach, photographing dragonflies, and spending a lot of time with my family. Then last week I took a short road trip with my daughter to see Against Me! in concert in Grand Rapids. And we also saw "Mad Max: Fury Road" and visited the graves of Frank L. White (the man on the Cream of Wheat box) and Mr. Chicken, a rooster with plastic legs that was a blood donor to a parrot then died fighting a raccoon. So . . . you know . . . vacation.

Me and Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! This was the only time I have ever waited around after a concert to meet the band. If you don't know the back story of Laura Jane Grace, look into it: it's interesting and compelling.

For better or worse, I didn't completely tune out anthropology, archaeology, and fringe nonsense during my vacation. I don't have anything ground-breaking to talk about, but I wanted to share a few vignettes that I think illustrate what goes on outside "mainstream" archaeology.

The Indiana "Mummy" That Wasn't

On June 27th, www.nwitimes.com ran a story with the headline "Ancient burial ground? Mummy found in Lake County could be 2,000 years old." Calling the remains a "mummy" turned out, of course, to have been an error: a July 2 story corrected the initial account, stating that the remains were not those of a mummy, but "just turned out to be really old."

But the fringe crowd has decided that the lack of an actual mummy from Indiana shouldn't detract from the joy of talking about a mummy from Indiana. They're milking all the mileage they can from it, and the correction to the story is now taken as evidence of a cover-up. J. Hutton Pulitzer contacted me and asked me to be on his radio show to discuss the "mummy." I declined. I was on vacation watching three kids, and, believe it or not, contributing to Pulitzer's campaign of manufactured crap masquerading as an interest in history is about as low down on my priority list as it gets. As best I can tell, much of his silliness is calculated to get him on TV or sell his treasure hunting books. I'll pass.

Anyway, there's no mummy from Indiana. The story is relevant to understanding fringe archaeology culture for two reasons, though:

It illustrates how a small error ("mummy") that makes a story more sensational can encourage it to spread. The "mummy" mistake made the story interesting to those who don't really understand prehistory and archaeology. Without a "mummy," the story goes nowhere: the "it's a mummy!" story has been "recommended" on Facebook over 3000 times; the "oh wait it's not a mummy" story, in contrast, has been "recommended" just 188 times.

It illustrates how reluctant fringe theorists are to let pesky details mess up a good story. I originally learned of the "it's not a mummy" follow-up story through a Facebook post by Pulitzer. He has since removed the link to the actual story that says there is no mummy, presumably because it is inconvenient. The photos of Egyptian mummies circulating with the news stories don't have anything to do with the remains from Indiana, but that doesn't get in the way of Pulitzer discussing the meaning of the "mummy's wrappings," or the RundownLive posting the pictures along with the story. The photo attached to the WGN story, perhaps the one most commonly reproduced, was from the mummy Minirdis in the Field Museum.

The mummy of Minirdis, which was not buried in Lowell, Indiana. (Source: http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/scientists-work-to-conserve-2-500-year-old-mummy-711422)

This embrace of the patently untrue to further a story brings us to the next vignette, another J. Hutton Pulitzer special.

Allegedly fake copper knives shown in Pulitzer's "flashcard" video.

Fake Artifacts Are Evidence Too, Apparently

When there's a market for artifacts, fakes will be produced in an attempt to capitalize on that market. This is true of some lithic artifacts from eastern North America (such as fluted points). It's also true of copper artifacts: they have a value to collectors, and fakes are produced for the purposes of making money. If I were attempting a serious artifact-based analysis of some aspect of prehistory (say, for example, trying to demonstrate that copper artifacts from North America were the product of craftsmen from the Old World), I would want to have some degree of confidence that the artifacts upon which I based my analysis were genuine.

But I guess that's just me.

Pulitzer made a video of "flashcards" to help his followers quickly recognize what a copper artifact looks like. It turns out that some of the artifacts shown in the video were allegedly fake (i.e., not ancient, but modern reproductions that were produced to sell). An artifact collector (Lee Born) who claims to have been defrauded brought the presence of the alleged fakes to Pulitzer's attention in a post on one of his Facebook groups. Pulitzer's response was to accuse Born (who had taken the case to court, and won) of libel, saying there was no court case.

I got involved in the discussion and posted links to a Green Lake County, Wisconsin, court document which showed that Lee Born won a judgement in 2008 for $2,264.80 against Mary Ann Peltier. The document doesn't say what the suit was about, but reportedly it concerned the sale of modern copper artifacts that were represented as ancient. From what I gather, there is a long story behind "Mary's Copper" (see this website, and the discussion on this forum) and the controversies about it. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the legal proceedings or the story behind them, or to have the expertise to discriminate ancient from modern copper artifacts. But it's demonstrably true that Born took Peltier to court and won damages.

A person really interested in understanding prehistory would want to know about allegedly fake artifacts that were contaminating his analysis. Pulitzer preferred not to know, I guess, and really didn't want to talk about it (he eventually kicked me off the site, and the alleged fakes remain in his "flashcard" video). As long as we're making videos with fake things in it, we should at least spice them up a little bit. I recommend adding some stuff about the Flat Earth. Or maybe some pictures of unicorns. Which brings me to my next story.

Photo Of Unicorn Barfing Rainbow Brings Out The Best In People

One of the "archaeology" groups I follow on Facebook is called Archaeology & Prehistoric& Ancient Wonders. This group has over 73,000 members, and I've learned a lot from it. Most of what I've learned, however, has more to do with how people view the importance of the past and less to do with anything in particular about the details of prehistory. Many of the posts in the group are related to various pseudo-science ideas about ancient aliens, Atlantis, giants, the existence of worldwide pre-Flood civilization, etc. Some people post some interesting ethnographic and historic photos, and I have learned some things about the archaeology of different parts of the world that I did not already know.

One of the most interesting things about monitoring this group is the cultural/ethnic/linguistic fault lines that are exposed in discussions about the past. Tensions among peoples who identify as southern European (Greeks, Albanians, Serbs, etc.) are especially prominent, with lengthy arguments arising frequently and seemingly out of nowhere.

"This is as relevant to prehistory as about half of the stuff in this group, so I thought I'd go ahead and, you know, post it."

This was illustrated to me yet again just yesterday. Bored, I had posted an image of a unicorn with a rainbow and a caption saying that it was as relevant to prehistory as many of the posts in the group (a true statement). As of now, there have been 212 comments, most of them related to an ugly homophobic argument among southern Europeans. All I did was post a picture of a unicorn with a rainbow.

I don't know if/how/when arguments like these break out in other places on the internet, but I find it interesting that a group that is purportedly about interpretations of the past serves so readily as a battleground for unleashing the tensions of the present. If you think the past doesn't matter to people . . . my experience says otherwise. Someday I'm going to do a quantitative analysis of the posts and the comments in this group, and I think it will reveal some interesting patterns.

"May The GREAT RAVEN GOD TAKE YOU STUPID"

Finally, my last story relates to audience feedback. I don't get a lot of comments on this blog, but sometimes my audience really comes through and lets me know that I'm doing the right thing by taking the time to write.

As my daughter and I were visiting the cemetery in Leslie, Michigan, where Frank L. "Cream of Wheat Man" White is buried, I noticed a grave with a bronze placard next to it. It was the grave of Elijah Woodworth (1792-1886), the first European settler of Leslie. Woodworth had written his own epitaph, which proclaimed him to be "The first itinerant lecturer in the field of modern spiritualism, and controlled to write ancient languages in the form of hieroglyphic characters; a modern seer and sage in natural and spiritual civilization . . ." The reference to "ancient languages" piqued my curiosity, but I haven't found much about Mr. Woodworth yet (I wonder if he is somehow related to Maria Woodworth-Etter, an important person in the early Pentecostal movement).

It did get me thinking about what I would write on my own tombstone, however. I realized the answer had already been provided to me in the form of a comment on my post about retractions of the 1885 hoax story about a city buried under Moberly, Missouri. After cutting and pasting a long story about encountering reptiles in an underground tunnel, a commenter had the following to say:

"Dear ANDY WHITE
are you fake anthropologist? NOT BELIEVING in MAGIC is SIN under ANTHROPOLOGY/FOLKLORE!
the number one rule #1 Magic is Science has Religion which is Philosophy!, ie the Occult/Metaphysics based on the teaching of houdini and buddhist and norse and egyptian all being in collaboration on telling the same story!
for SHAME ON YOU FOR failing to understand Cybernetics(cyber anthology the use of infomantics ie information technology on all the science to singletary )(? May the GREAT RAVEN GOD TAKE YOU STUPID, also i hope a lizard man eats you!"

I think that speaks for itself.

14 Comments

Research Hint: Writing “Minoan” on Photographs of Native American Remains Does Not Actually Prove They Are Minoan

6/3/2015

105 Comments

If you're a writer, you may have noticed a recent shortage in the supply of capital letters and exclamation points. All good scientists know that correlation does not equal causation, but I would like to go out on a limb and propose an explanation: J. Hutton Pulitzer (aka TreasureForce Commander) has used them all.

Okay, that's a bit of an overstatement. He didn't use them all, just more than his fair share. The occasion was his announcement that he has proved that "Minoans discovered America 4000 years BEFORE Columbus!" (emphasis in original). Pulitzer's liberal use of all caps and exclamation points, apparently to indicate the importance of his claims and communicate his significant enthusiasm for them, has left the rest of us a little short. This post will be necessarily conservative in its use of those two precious commodities.

You should look at Pulitzer's post and decide if you think the monopolization of the supply of capital letters and exclamation points was justified.

As you might guess, I'm not impressed.

My first reaction as I skimmed through Pulitzer's post about his "audit archives research" on May 24th was "wtf?" (normally that would be in caps, but there's a shortage on you know). He posts some pictures of some oxhide ingots from the Uluburun shipwreck (as his "comparative" sample) and then 16 photos of features and artifacts from archaeological sites in Tennessee and Kentucky, all now labeled "Minoan" by Pulitzer. The photos appear to have come from the WPA Archaeological Photo Archives of the McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Tennessee. Obviously, whoever decided to post all these photographs online really dropped the ball on keeping all this "forbidden history" hidden from the public. Maybe there was a memo missed somewhere.

Too late now: the cat's out of the bag. (I really feel like that statement would have popped more with some exclamation points, but somebody hogged them all. At least there's still italics.)

Copper artifact from Drake Mound, KY.

Pulitzer shows more photos of European oxhide ingots, then a bunch more photos from Tennessee: excavated wooden post structures, pit features, etc. Then some unlabeled pictures of pottery, some other pictures copied out of books, more stuff, some other stuff . . . it just goes on and on. He even reproduces the photograph that I took of a page from Betty Sodders' book for a post about the alleged oxide ingot of Lake Gogebic, Michigan. Then he shows us the same "Minoan large ox hide ingot" that he's already showed us. I guess he really likes that one. I'll go ahead and show it to you also. There (here's the source).

The artifact from Drake Mound, as well as several of the other artifacts shown by Pulitzer, do have the same basic shape as some of the European oxhide ingots: roughly rectangular with four concave sides. But are they same size? Do they weigh the same? Are they made from pounded copper or are they cast? And why do some of them have pairs of holes drilled in them? Do any European oxhides have holes drilled in them?

Those are questions that someone who was actually doing research would attempt to address. If it were me, I would start with size: how big are the copper reels that Pulitzer says are actually cast oxhide ingots, and how do those dimensions compare with those documented for European oxhide ingots? For a moment I thought about doing that comparison myself, but then I decided I've got better things to do with my time and the person making the claim should do some work. I'll help out by pointing him to this source: Copper Oxhide Ingot Marks: A Database and Comparative Analysis. It's an M.A. Thesis by Alaina M. Kaiser from 2013. There are metric data in Appendix IV. You're welcome.

What about dates from any of the features or structures that are claimed to be Minoan? Any information on those?

Feature from the Charles Lea Farm site, TN.

The features from the Charles Lea Farm site that Pulitzer labels "Minoan Ox Hide Ingot Mold" are unusual. I'll reproduce one of those photos (source) also so you can see it: it appears to be some kind of basin-shaped feature with four incurvate sides and elongated corners. Yes, it's shaped similarly to an ox hide ingot. I honestly don't know what it is (or in what context it was found at the site) and I would be curious to hear from archaeologists who might know more about these. Woodland or Mississippian? It's unfortunate that there's no scale with the photo. I don't know if there's any kind of written report that describes these features in more detail (there appear to have been at least two at the site).

Writing "Minoan" on a WPA photograph does not actually mean that one has proven that the remains are Minoan. It only means that one has photo editing software, which is all that is required to make an assertion. If I were to write "idiot" on a photograph of a person, for example, I have only asserted that the person is an idiot: I would still have to demonstrate idiocy in order to prove my claim. I think I would do that by paying more attention to the question marks (you'll notice there are still plenty of those to go around) than to the exclamation points. With all the melodrama and hullabaloo surrounding the fantastic assertions of Pulitzer about "forbidden history" and his "smoking gun archaeological evidence," you would think there would be more indications of effort.

At the end of the piece, Pulitzer is quoted as saying “If there ever was a better open and shut archaeological case this discovery is it!” I'm not sure what the case is supposed to "better" than, but I can list a lot of things it's worse than. I wish I had a spare exclamation point to put there.

Addendum (6/4/2015): This post has been up since yesterday, and I have a couple of things to add to it.

First, on the initial reaction to the piece. As soon as this was posted, I was told by some fans of "forbidden history" that I should be focusing on the substance of Pulitzer's "theory" rather than simply attacking his style. If you read the piece carefully, you'll find that my major point is that there IS NO SUBSTANCE to attack (Hey look - the drought in capital letters has eased up! And so has the shortage of exclamation points!!). You'll see I never actually said Pulitzer's "theory" is wrong: I said I wasn't impressed with what he presents. He didn't even do the simplest things he could have done to actually make a case based on evidence, basically relying almost completely on assertions (bolstered by lots of exclamation points and capital letters - those seemed to comprise the main forms of support). I pointed out a couple of things that would be easy steps to take if one wanted to present a case that the Tennessee and Kentucky materials were actually made by Minoans. The photo of the alleged "Minoan Ox Hide Ingot" from the Drake Mound in Kentucky has a scale with it, for example, and measurements of that artifact could be compared with are metric data available for ox hides from Europe. Why not do a comparison? As I said in the piece, I thought about doing it myself, but it's really not my job: it's the job of the person making the claim. You want to claim something from Kentucky is an "exact match" to something from Europe? Prove it! My point is that he doesn't even try to prove it, he just proclaims it. The piece was about the silliness of making assertions without putting even a minimum amount of effort into trying to back them up. Pushing the "!" key is easy, doing the other stuff is a bit harder.

Second, interested archaeologists and others with more knowledge than me about these kinds of copper artifacts have started pointing out publications that are available online that contain useful information. I thought I would provide links to those here so that anyone who's interested can go and see for themselves:

Powell, J. W. 1894. Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office. [pp. 426-427 illustrate a hammered copper gorget that is the shape of an "ox hide" but measures only 3.5 x 3.75 inches and is 1/8 inch thick].
Trevalyn, Amelia M. 2004. Miskwabik, Metal of Ritual: Metallurgy in Precontact Eastern North America. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

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The "Oxhide Ingot" from Lake Gogebic, Michigan

4/10/2015

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Clear your schedule for the next five minutes, because you’re not going to want to stop reading this blog post. My quest to understand the story of the alleged “oxhide ingot” from Lake Gogebic, Michigan,"heralds the arrival of a new breed of lightning-paced, intelligent thriller…surprising at every twist, absorbing at every turn, and in the end, utterly unpredictable…right up to its astonishing conclusion" where I remain frustratingly unable to track the claim back to its source. I'm guessing it's pretty much like The Da Vinci Code, to which the above quote refers. I haven't actually read The Da Vinci Code, but, as I'm learning, becoming familiar with primary sources is not a requirement when doing "research" about things like the presence of Old World copper miners in eastern North America.

Copper oxhide ingot from the Bronze Age Uluburun shipwreck found off the coast of Turkey (source in text).

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, an oxhide ingot is an ingot of copper cast into a quadrilateral shape with concave sides and four "handles" (apparently its called an “oxhide” because it resembles a stretched animal hide in shape). During the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean (ca. 3200-1000 BC), copper was smelted and cast into ingots of this shape weighing about 60-70 pounds (~30 kg) for transport. We know something about oxhide ingots because they’ve been found on shipwrecks, were depicted in art across the region, and have been analyzed to try to understand their role in Bronze Age production and exchange networks. The photo to the right (from this site) shows two people holding one of the ingots from the Uluburun shipwreck so you can get an idea of the size of these things. If you skim through the pictures available online, you'll notice quite a bit of variability in shape. If you want to get further into the nitty gritty of the Bronze Age copper trade, a recent (2007) thesis by Michael Rice Jones titled Oxhide Ingots, Copper Production, and the Mediterranean Trade in Copper and Other Metals in the Bronze Age is available here.

What does this have to do with Lake Gogebic? Proponents of the idea that the ancient copper mines of Michigan were actually worked by miners from the Old World (rather than Native Americans) have latched on to various "artifacts" over the years as proof of trans-oceanic contact. I'm not even going to attempt to get into all that - none of the various inscribed tablets, petroglyphs, etc., has held up to scrutiny. What caught my attention this week was a claim that an actual oxhide ingot had been found in the New World. I became aware of this claim when I saw a post in a Facebook group by David Towle, one of the guests on this interview. Towle stated that multiple full-size (i.e., 60-70 pound) oxhide ingots had been found near Lake Gogebic, in the western Upper Peninsula.

Towle's statement got my attention: finding an actual oxhide ingot in good archaeological context would be a game changer for proponents of a Bronze Age connection with the New World, and the claim that one actually had been found was news to me. An actual oxhide ingot that had been created in a mold would provide direct evidence of New World participation in a Bronze Age raw materials economy. That would be much clearer evidence than any kind of chemical test on Old World bronze artifacts that I can think of, because it would remove ambiguity about the changes introduced into the signature of the copper through refinement and mixture. Given how important such a find would be, I was surprised when my first attempt at an online search came up empty: no story, no photos, nothing. Where could I read about this find from Lake Gogebic? When I asked Towle about it online, I got a response which I would characterize as less than helpful:

Okay – so no help there. Towle had pointed me to yet another website that talked about copper mining in the New World but showed images of oxhide ingots from the Old World. And it looked like the number of Michigan oxhides was growing - now we were at seven. As you can see from my exchange with Towle, by then I had succeeded in finding a written source that mentioned the alleged oxhide ingot. Frank Joseph’s (1995:40) book Atlantis in Wisconsin contains the following sentence:

“Closer to the focus of our investigations, a sixty-pound copper ox hide was discovered near Lake Gogebic, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.”

So that was something: I had found a written source. There is an endnote attached to the sentence, but, frustratingly, I couldn’t read it because the limited view available in Google Books didn’t allow me to see the last portion of the book. I asked around online and couldn’t find anyone who owned a copy. So it looked like my search would be on hold until I could get a copy of Joseph's book to read that endnote.

Dammit.

After more searching, however, mostly by just Googling phrases with various combinations of key words related to the ingot and its location, I found some online chatter that had paraphrased part of a (1993) article by Better Sodders that had appeared in Ancient American magazine (Volume 1, Number 2, pp. 28-31). This seemed promising, as it would take me back two years before Joseph's book and maybe get me to the source of the story or more information. I dutifully paid my $4.95 for a pdf of the issue so I could read the story (“Who Mined American Copper 5,000 Years Ago?”). In that article, Sodders writes:

“A wall-painting in the Egyptian Tomb of Rekmira depicts red-skinned men, possibly American Indians, carrying oxhydes on their shoulders to the tax collector. The copper ingots are exact duplicates of a specimen excavated near Lake Gogebic in Michigan’s Ontonagon County.”

Frustratingly, there was no source given for the story or any other information provided. So that seemed like another dead end. I found Betty Sodders online, however, and sent her an email asking about the alleged oxhide ingot from Lake Gogebic. She sent me a very nice reply the next morning and directed me to her (1991) book Michigan Prehistory Mysteries Two (the second volume of a two-volume set). She even told me what pages to look on and said that there were . . . wait for it . . . photos of the oxhide ingot. Thank you Betty Sodders.

Okay, now I was getting somewhere. I found Michigan Prehistory Mysteries on Amazon.com, but was disappointed to learn that the second volume, unlike the first, was not available electronically.

Dammit!

I looked around for other ways to get ahold of the book, but couldn’t find a way to download it anywhere without feeling like I was putting my computer at risk of being infected by something. Then, in a stroke of genius, I remembered that I actually work at a university that has a real library with real books. Lo and behold, Grand Valley’s library owns a copy of Michigan Prehistory Mysteries Two. Even better, it turned it was actually housed in a “library use only” collection less than 200 yards from my office.

So, it was really time to take David Towle's admonition to heart and get out of my La-Z-Boy and go the Seidman House library (disclosure: my desk chair is actually made by Steelcase, as is just about everything at Grand Valley). I made plans to go and look at the book that afternoon. Brian Fagan was doing an informal question-answer session with some of our students from 3:00-4:15 that afternoon, so I planned to go to that and then stop by the Seidman House library on the way back to my office. Fagan was great, and I hung around for a few minutes afterward to introduce myself and shake his hand. I got to the Seidman House at 4:28 and the door was locked: the library there closes at 4:30.

Dammit.

Map showing the distance I had to cover to see a picture of the alleged oxhide ingot from Lake Gogebic. It was raining really hard, so I borrowed an umbrella from our Office Coordinator.

So I had to wait until the next morning to finally get a look at the elusive oxhide ingot of Lake Gogebic. I taught class from 8:30-9:45, then I had office hours from 10:00-12:00 – my students are working on their papers, so I expected I would be busy and I was. By the time noon came around it was raining like a $%*!(&$@ outside. But I made the journey anyway, because science is important.

I had to fill out a form to see the book, but I did it, because science is important. When I finally got my hands on Michigan Prehistory Mysteries Two, I was not disappointed. I skimmed the chapter that Betty Sodders had pointed me to and photographed all the pages.

And there, as promised, was a picture of the alleged oxhide ingot.

At first glance it looks “better” than I thought it would. It is about the right size, has four sides, and appears to be tabular. It is not a great match for any of the Mediterranean oxhide ingots that I've seen pictures of, however: two of the sides are concave, one is convex, and one appears to be roughly straight. The surface is rough and the edges are rough. And that's about all I can tell from looking at the photo.

It is shown being held by Dr. James Scherz, who is identified as the finder in the caption. Here is what Sodders writes about it:

“This particular oxhyde Scherz is holding was photographed by Warren Dexter at Topaz near Lake Gogebic, east of Bergland and Matchwood in the western confines of the U.P.”

That’s not much more than I already knew, but at least there is another name: James Scherz is going to be the key to wrapping this story up. So far, I have been unable to identify a publication of his (he has written many having to do with New World-Old World contacts) that tells the story of this artifact. I have also been unable to find a current email address for him so that I can ask him about it directly. Doing a little bit of searching makes it apparent that he has been involved in Burrows Cave, the story of which is beyond the scope of anything I plan to write about.

So what is the rest of the story behind this artifact? Where did it come from? In what context was it found? Where is it now? I'm pretty sure James Scherz could answer all of these questions. If anyone knows how he can be reached or can make him aware of this post, I would appreciate it. Then maybe we'll have a conclusion to the exciting story of the oxhide ingot from Lake Gogebic.

I emailed Bruce H. Johanson, President Ontonagon County Historical Society, and he informed me the alleged oxhide ingot is not in their collections.

Now you can go back to whatever else you were doing.

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Bored With The Same Old Debate About The "Copper Culture"? Maybe You Should Look Into The 500-Million-Year-Old "Super Ancient Copper Culture"

4/8/2015

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Copper arrowhead embedded in 500-million-year-old sandstone: may or may not have been used to kill a dinosaur.

The idea that ancient copper mining in Michigan's Upper Peninsula was connected to the European Bronze Age has a long history. I don't know who the first person was to suggest such a connection, but the idea has surely been around since the 1800s. It is still around today, with claims predicated on much of the same "evidence" that has been cited for the last hundred years. Susan Martin's (1995) paper in The Michigan Archaeologist (you can read it here) goes through many of these claims. None of them holds up to scrutiny.

A recent attempt to breath life into the "debate" about Old World peoples mining copper in the New World comes from J. Hutton Pulitzer, a treasure hunter and one of the self-described "foremost Inventors in modern times." Pulitzer began this quest by getting himself kicked off one of the larger online communities of people interested in ancient copper use in the Great Lakes. When I interacted with Hutton on that site, he accused me of being "out of date" on all of the new information that was available, and indicated that I should listen to his audio interviews in order to educate myself.

Fair enough.

So far, I have only listened to one interview. In the description of this episode (titled "Copper Culture- Where are the Skeletons, Camps, Boats and Signs of Civilizations?"), we are assured that all of the hard evidence that skeptics say is absent has, in fact, already been found. The two people who are going to tell us about these fantastic discoveries, Dave Towle and Scott Mitchen, are presented as experts because they've spent a combined 89 years looking for sites. We are told that they are credible because they, unlike some "white-haired, pony-tailed professor who believes he knows everything," had put "boot to dirt" and gone out to investigate firsthand.

Over the course of the hour, the guests make many assertions about artifacts and other things that they have found. Some of these -- melted copper, a furnace/casting site, etc. -- sound interesting, but as far as I know there are no photos posted online so that we can see them for ourselves (this includes the allegedly melted/cast "starfish" piece Hutton specifically says he's going to post a photo of - maybe it's around but I haven't been able to find it yet [see addendum below]). So most of the interview is just a string of assertions and speculation, not connected to anything that the audience can use to judge the evidence. Is it that difficult to post a photo or two?

In the absence of photos or any other tangible way to evaluate the guests' interpretations of the incredible things they claim to have found, I suggest you listen especially carefully to the portion of the interview from about 43:20 to 48:30. In this segment, you will hear the guests state that they have found copper tools inside blocks of sandstone that are 500 million years old. You will hear a thoughtful discussion of several explanations for this, ranging from (and I'm paraphrasing here) "were they shot into the sandstone when it was soft?" to "polar shifts" to "Man was around then." A little later (about 50:00) we get a mention of "megalithic dinosaur bones" that one of the guests has found on the bottom of Lake Superior.

Now, I think this 500-million-year-old Super Ancient Copper Culture is a game changer for this new exploration of copper mining in ancient North America. At least it's much more interesting than tired tales of Minoans and Phoenicians. In his intro to this interview, Hutton warns us that, unlike stodgy academics, he's going to "address as many sides as possible to talk about the Copper Culture," including the dramatic idea that New World copper mining actually started twelve thousand years ago or more. That's great, because the hypothesis of 500-million-year-old super ancient copper miners hunting dinosaurs to extinction (I'm adding that last part myself - why not teach the controversy?) clearly fits the bill for the "or more" category.

At the end of the interview, Hutton assures us once again that "these are real finds by real people." These, in fact, are the experts since no academic would ever touch such controversy. Given how "volatile" this idea of a 500-million-year-old Super Ancient Copper Culture is, I will expect future interviews in this series to, as promised, fully explore the idea. Hutton, I think you've found your true calling. Great job on the interviewing. Maybe post some photos next time?

Addendum (04/09/2015): In response to this blog, Hutton Pulitzer has posted a photo of the "starfish" piece of copper that is described as being melted/cast. I reproduce it here so you can see it for yourself. Although I do not have the expertise to determine conclusively if this is just a natural piece of copper, it certainly does not have the regular shape or even surfaces that I would anticipate would be produced by a casting process. The photo does not convince me that this piece of copper was made by humans - opinions?

In addition to posting this photo, Hutton also posted a screenshot showing that the interview I discuss in this blog post has been played nearly 76,000 times. It is amazing to me (and somewhat disheartening) that apparently I was the first person out of tens of thousands of listeners who actually asked to see the "artifact" they said that we should see. That's kind of a bummer.