NEWS FLASH: #Swordgate is back!

Although those heady days of swords raining from the sky are long gone, the effects of the debacle continue to reverberate. As you probably figured out from my post earlier this week, content related to Swordgate is at the heart of the threats against me and my blog. As I plan my defense strategy, I won't go into exactly what those threats are and how I'm going to counter them. I will say that I'm not going to sit on my hands.

Swordgate was a team effort: that's one of the things that made it fun and probably the main thing that ultimately made it successful. It was about way more than just me digging in -- it was about a community of people who shared a passion for the adventure of finding the real answer to the mystery.

The defense of all that we did is also not just about me. This blog is controlled by me, but the Swordgate content is the result of the work of many, many people.  While I remain friends online with some of you, there are many of you that I don't know personally.  I'm asking all of you, however, to think about the importance of Swordgate and your role in it, and consider stepping up to the plate again. It ain't over.

I made a quick video to hopefully help get the word out about the situation. If you support the truth and think it's important to continue to have open and honest discussions about these kinds of claims, please consider contributing something to the Woo War Two campaign I organized on GoFundMe: the money will go to legal fees as the situation develops.  Thank you for your support.

I have spent many hours and much effort over the last few years creating content on this blog that deals with pseudo-archaeological claims. That content -- and, really, ultimately my right to engage in an open and honest discussion about "fringe" claims -- is currently under attack. 

If you appreciate the content that I've produced and published here, I hope that you'll consider contributing to the Woo War Two GoFundMe campaign that I created to offset the costs of defending this blog (and the Argumentative Archaeologist website). I have always tried to play fair, and I believe that this blog is a valuable educational resource that is protected by law.  The content that I and my readers/contributors have produced over the years is too valuable to simply let go. And so I don't intend to simply throw my hands up and surrender.

I won't go into any details at this point, but my longtime readers are smart and will probably be able to figure out some of what's going on. I'll communicate about the details as I'm able upon the advice of my attorneys.

I hope you'll join me both for the sake of preserving what is here and for the general principle that we don't decide vigorous debates about claims related to the human past by threats of lawsuits.

Yesterday on my walk home I listened to another chunk of Graham Hancock's appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast. Most of what I listened to was about the new discoveries in the Amazon, which Hancock claims include large geometric earthworks (aka geoglyphs) produced by "squaring the circle." Hancock misuses/misunderstands the term (which refers to constructing a square the same area as a given circle, not just drawing a square around a circle), and consequently concludes that the societies who made the structures had advanced geometrical knowledge.

Rather than write about it, I made a video to demonstrate my point:

If you're interested in pseudoarchaeology, you probably know that Graham Hancock's new book America Before is now out. I haven't read it yet. I will probably take at stab at it at some point over the summer, but I have to face the reality that I'm just not excited. ​

My lack of enthusiasm stems mostly, I think, from a gut feeling that there is not a whole lot in the book that is particularly new, thought-provoking, or even interesting. The summary reviews I have read so far bear that out (you can read Jason Colavito's review here, and Carl Feagan's take here). I already knew Hancock was going to going to claim that a comet wiped out some kind of fantastical "advanced civilization" that existed during the Ice Age, and I already knew that he would try to connect his claim to the archaeology of North America in whatever ways possible. I predict anyone who has any legitimate expertise in this region of the world can see through Hancock's game in two seconds. I guess if you're blissfully ignorant maybe it all sounds very exciting . . . I wouldn't know: as someone who has been doing real archaeology in North America for 25 years now I can hear the sound of this book ringing hollow before I even crack the cover.

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

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

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

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

My review of Lost City, Found Pyramid (2016, edited by Jeb Card and David S. Anderson) has been published in the July issue of American Antiquity.  Like most of American Antiquity's content, unfortunately, the review is in a "member's only" area not accessible to the public.

(Side note: I wonder if it would be feasible for the SAA to have a cut-rate "non-professional" membership rate that could open the content of the journal to a much wider segment of the public?  What if membership rates and benefits stayed the same for those of us in academia but there was a lower tier -- say $5 or $10 per year -- that was open to anyone who wanted to access journal content but not go to meetings, etc.? I think we'd be doing ourselves a big favor by working harder to expose the general public to what it is we actually do and talk about.)

I can't print the whole review, obviously, but here is my first paragraph:

"Lost City, Found Pyramid is about understanding and engaging what Kenneth Feder (following Glyn Daniel) affectionately terms “bullshit archaeology.” (I am more polite than Feder, so I’ll use the term “pseudoarchaeology.”) It’s timely and relevant: while current events have focused the public on the importance of actively defending our system for creating an evidence-based reality, those of us who track pseudoarchaeology know that the “alternative facts” and “fake news” are not new at all. "

I liked the book, and I enjoyed reading each of the chapters.  The University of Alabama Press correctly describes the book as "A collection of twelve engaging and insightful essays" that "does far more than argue for the simple debunking of false archaeology."  The strength of the volume clearly lies with its emphasis on the “how” and “why” aspects of the creation, packaging, and consumption of pseudoarchaeological claims.  Much less attention is paid to the "so what" questions.  There surely could be, and should be, a companion volume that focuses on illuminating why the simple dismissal of pseudoarchaeology by professionals as "all in good fun" is both naive and (one could argue) unethical. 

From time to time I get contacted about potentially playing the archaeologist in this or that reality television production. It was flattering the first time it happened. Now I find it to be annoying.

To be clear, I'm not against the idea that professional archaeologists can do good by appearing on television. I'm an advocate of professionals engaging with the public and being part of the conversation about what archaeology is and what we do and do not know about the human past.  A quick look at the proliferation of pseudo-archaeology online and on TV will tell you that our de facto strategy of non-engagement hasn't worked particularly well. We need to be in the mix.

So, sure, if the right project comes along I'm open to it.

Last week I got an email "reaching out because we’re currently working on an adventure show and we’re looking to cast an archaeologist, anthropologist, or adventurer." 

The email explained that they were going to look for another "lost city," in a part of the world where I have no experience or expertise.

Thanks, but no thanks. What could I possible contribute to this project except an unmerited gloss of credibility because I have letters after my name?

Maybe the food and the scenery would be nice.

If you're a television producer and really want real archaeologists to be excited to participate in what you're doing, you'll have to actually do some work. Believe it or not, most of us don't want to be on television just for the heck of it. I hope that someday someone can figure out how to blend responsible archaeological science with a hook that can draw in viewers and sell enough advertising to create a good program. That would be a nut worth cracking.

Good luck finding that "lost city." I have other things to do.

I hate to be the "we told you so" guy, but that's what I'm going to be: 

We told you so.

Those of us who have studied the recent resurgence of pseudo-scientific ideas about the human past have been saying for years that this stuff isn't just entertainment. Conceptions about what happened in the past matter deeply to the present, as our orientation toward the world (and particularly its peoples) necessarily depends on an understanding of how the world got to be what it is. We explain the present by reference to the past. That's why getting it right matters. That's why we've developed scientific methods for understanding the past that employ mechanisms to determine if our interpretations are right or wrong.

With the Trump administration barely a week old, you're already seeing seeing the effects of disregarding evidence-based reality and crafting federal policy based on ideologies about the human past. So . . . it's "funny" when it's on the History Channel but not so "funny" when it's keeping real humans detained in airports indefinitely.

As alarming as it is to see it materialize at the highest levels of our government, the white supremacist ideology that we're now watching surface is nothing new.  It's been around since long before any of us was born -- at least since the age of European exploration and colonialism- -- and has manifest itself in different forms at different times and places. The "white people are naturally the best people" assertion has been a steady constant in pseudo-scientific claims about the human past from the early 1800's right up to the present day. Some of the current proponents of Victorian-age baloney ideas about Atlantis, Aryans, giants, and the pre-Columbian colonization of the Americas by white people are unabashed racists and neo-Nazis.  And now we've elevated them from selling factually inaccurate, heavily plagiarized books on CreateSpace to whispering in the president's ear.

If you want to know what the alt-right thinks about the origins of race and what it has to do with government and economics, listen to this podcast titled "The Origins of the White Man." In it, Richard Spencer (an alt-right figure most famous for leading Trump supporters in a Nazi salute immediately following the election, and, more recently, getting punched in the face twice in one day while celebrating Trump's inauguration) interviews Kevin MacDonald (a retired psychology professor and current editor of the Occidental Observer, a white nationalist publication).

The pair discuss the origins of white people, what makes white people special, and why they think white people need to stick together to protect white people interests. What was most astounding to me was not the factual inaccuracies (there were many) or the ridiculous facade of scholarship manufactured by having a former professor pontificate on a subject he doesn't really understand, but the cartoonish quality of the conclusions of these clowns. It's a ridiculous conversation, only one step removed from attributing the perceived greatness of white people to their special origins in an Aryan Atlantis. Try having a 45-minute conversation with a four-year-old about how electricity works -- maybe that would be a good simulation of what's it like for a professional anthropologist/archaeologist to listen to this nonsense. Unsurprisingly, the origins story that they fetishize isn't original, but resonates with white supremacist mythologies that have been around for a long time (and that constitute the barely-submerged thesis of many "alternative archaeology" programs promoted in places like The History Channel).

One thing I did learn from listening to the interview is that the white supremacist ideology of the alt-right does have a logical connection to their ideas about government, economics, and immigration. If your reaction to the anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies that we're seeing is that "it's all about hate," I will tell that it's more than that. I encourage you to listen to the interview that I linked to above and hear for yourself how the alt-right's ideas about race, society, government, and economics are inter-linked.  Speaking in the context of claims that the success of white European societies can be attributed to their tripartite structure (a merchant class, a warrior class, and "those who pray"), Spencer identifies what he thinks is wrong with the United States (about 25:00 in): ​

That quote, I think, helps explain why traditional Republican approaches to "pro-business, pro-growth" policies have been relegated to the kids' table while the white supremacists in the Oval Office try to engineer a re-making of government that restores a mythological tripartite balance to our society. They see liberal immigration policy as something deferential to the role of the merchant class and harmful to the cause of producing an ethnically-strong nation. They see in Trump someone who will use flamboyant signature to "guard the gates" and elevate those in the warrior class who are willing to confront "the other."

It's about intolerance, sure, but it's a philosophical, strategic intolerance that goes well beyond some kind of visceral reaction to all non-white people. I think we need to understand that. And I don't think it's irrelevant that the blueprint for society that we're now seeing stamped across our political and economic landscape is drawn directly from claims about the human past that are demonstrably baloney. I winced when Rachel Maddow showed Spencer's post-election speech and kept smirking at his use of the phrase "Children of the Sun."  Neither she nor any other member of the mainstream media caught the deep historical connection to the white supremacist rhetoric of hyperdiffusionism. If you don't know what it is, look it up.  Fringe history is in the White House now, and you should know where the "harmless" ideas come from -- it matters.

This morning on one of the Facebook groups I follow I saw this image, labeled simply "Russia:"

The discussion about the stone leap-frogged right over the authenticity issue, skipping straight to the part where we muse about the anti-gravity technologies that Ice Age civilizations must have had to move such an enormous rock.

The picture isn't real, of couse. It took less than 60 seconds of searching on my phone while having a cup of coffee to find that the stone shown in the image is actually a quarried block at the Inca site of Ollantaytambo, Peru. I found a nice picture of the block on this website. It's a big block of stone, sure, but nowhere near as large as the image that was manipulated to produce false "evidence" to use as clickbait. Ethnography and achaeology shows us that people in non-industrial societies all over the world were and are able to move rocks of this size using human power and ingenuity.

I wonder when and if the world's respect for reality will re-emerge.

We're coming up on the first anniversary of Swordgate, the can of worms that was opened up on December 16, 2015, by the announcement of the "100% confirmed Roman sword" from Nova Scotia. There's all kinds of celebration planning going on over at the Fake Hercules Swords group on Facebook.  It should be a good time. 

While reasonable people quickly accepted the mounting evidence that the sword was bogus, there are still a few that keep hanging on to the dream. I've been involved in an ongoing discussion in the Ancient Origins group with someone who still insists that Hutton Pulitzer's XRF data are in his "sword report" and still insists that there is an original sword in the "Naples Museum." I've seen evidence of neither of those things, but have been told for the umpteenth time that I'm wrong. 

In case any of the purported XRF data ever do materialize, I want everyone to watch this short video again. This was posted by Pulitzer right after the St. Mary's University test results were aired on The Curse of Oak Island. In this video, he proclaims that his data were very different than those obtained by St. Mary's University (his results "do not show anywhere near that zinc"). 

Eventually, Pulitzer produced that mess of a "sword report" in a long-winded attempt to show that high-zinc brass could be Roman. No version of that report that I've seen contains the XRF data he talks about in the video. As I wrote at the time, the argument in the "sword report" is a sleight of hand to deflect from the issue that he has never released his own data: is the sword bronze or brass? is the metal low zinc or high zinc? Does he defend his own data, or is he interpreting the St. Mary's University results?

I don't think we'll ever see Pulitzer's XRF data because they can't be consistent with both storylines.

And the last I heard, he was claiming that the Italian eBay sword was actually a sword from the "Naples Museum." It's not, but thanks for playing.

​Prove me wrong on either count, please.