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

Boy was I wrong about that. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Green,

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

Andy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A couple of days ago, I watched the TV program Unexplained and Unexplored for the first time. Although I knew the show existed because of Jason Colavito's reviews, I was unprepared for how bad it would be. It was bad. Really really bad.

I tuned into the episode "Mystery of the American Maya" because I learned that J. Hutton Pulitzer would be on the program. Given my recent interactions with him, I was curious what he would say about the Maya.  I have a few things to say about that and then a few things to say about the rest of the episode, which was just ridiculous. Seriously: it made America Unearthed look like a master class in scholarship and the scientific method.

First: the Pulitzer part.

Early in the program, Pulitzer (identified on screen as "Jovan Hutton") is introduced as "one of the most respected experts on the Maya." That's an amazing statement, and one that I'm sure will surprise many experts on the Maya. We are then told that Pulitzer has "spent a lifetime decoding the Dresden Codex." 

So what insights has this lifetime of study produced? We learn nothing about the glyphs on the codex, but are instead are told that an image apparently depicting a caracara bird means that the Maya must have traveled to Florida. Pulitzer says that

Well, if you told me that I'd tell you you were wrong. And then I'd show you why.

First, if you look at the Wikipedia page for the caracara, you will quickly see that the bird's distribution is far, far wider than just the Maya region and Florida. Look, I made a map: the dark red is the distribution of the northern crested caracara (Caracara cheriway); the Maya region is superimposed. The present day distribution of the caracara is much wider than Pulitzer tells us.

And we know something about how the distribution got that way. Spoiler alert: the birds didn't get to where they are today by being boated around on Maya canoes. The current distribution of caracara populations is reduced from a much wider distribution during the Pleistocene. Here, again, Wikipedia can shed light on what, apparently, a lifetime of study missed:

"The state of Florida is home to a relict population of northern caracaras that dates to the last glacial period, which ended around 12,500 BP. At that point in time, Florida and the rest of the Gulf Coast was covered in an oak savanna. As temperatures increased, the savanna between Florida and Texas disappeared. Caracaras were able to survive in the prairies of central Florida as well as in the marshes along the St. Johns River."

In other words, the caracara were in Florida way before the Maya existed, and, in fact, probably before any humans ever set foot in Florida. There's a fossil record of the bird in the region. Here's a story, for example, about a 2,500-year-old caracara skeleton from the Bahamas.

So, in actuality, the presence of the caracara bird in Florida says exactly nothing relevant to the claim that the ancient Maya traveled to Florida.

Following the conceit that the Maya were boating around the Gulf with eagles, however, Unexplained and Unexplored goes on to pretend to find evidence of Mayan canoes, Mayan step pyramids, and Mayan stele in Florida.  They use a drone, sonar, and LiDAR to look for Mayan sites and artifacts in various areas that, I'm sure, have all been well-mapped and explored. The canoes are cool, but I see nothing to suggest that they were made by the Maya (finds of prehistoric canoes are common in Florida relatively to other places -- the oldest dates to about 5000 BC). The "stepped pyramid" they pretend to discover near the end of the program was documented extensively in a 2016 article in American Antiquity.

Someone should invent a word for simultaneously cringing, yelling, and yawing. I actually feel a bit sorry for anyone and everyone involved in this tragicomic attempt at a television program: it is so full of misrepresentation, idiotic fantasy, and pretend "discovery" that it's hard to watch. I'd like to say that you can't really produce anything much dumber than this show, but I bet someone will find a way.

And, to be clear, I don't think it's a crazy idea that pre-Columbian societies around the Gulf of Mexico may have interacted in one way or another. They were all coastal peoples, after all, and the entire region was populated. But there is a lot of daylight between accepting the idea that contact of one form or another was possible (or even probable) and accepting as evidence the kind of baloney that this program builds its case on.

Near the end, the narrator states that "our journey has confirmed the presence of the Maya throughout Florida." Cool story, bro -- tell it again. I bet they will. Probably many more times.

Fans of #Swordgate will remember December 16, 2015, as the date when the whole debacle about the "100% confirmed Roman sword" from Nova Scotia began. Those of you that continue to follow along after all these years know that it's still not over. Because it's an ongoing legal matter now, I don't want to go into too much detail about exactly what's happening. I do think it's appropriate, however, to provide some minimal information to those of you following this story, especially those of you that have chipped into my Woo War Two fund created to offset the legal costs of defending this blog and the Swordgate content that lives here.

This fall there have been multiple attempts by J. Hutton Pulitzer, the person who originated and defended the claim about the sword, to pressure me into taking down or altering much of the Swordgate content that I produced in late 2015 and early 2016. The first of those attempts included asserting claims of intellectual property infringement (specifically trademark and copyright infringement) to both me and my employer. Following that, Pulitzer contacted my employer with a list of false and defamatory claims about me.

I am now represented by a law firm specializing in intellectual property law, and my attorney has been in contact with Pulitzer's lawyer. 

That's all I'm going to say for now. There will be a full accounting when all is said and done. For further insight I recommend reading the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, how fair use relates to trademarks, a primer on defamation, and the state-by-state statutes of limitation for bringing a defamation case.

And so it goes on . . . I have student videos to finish and post from this semester's Forbidden Archaeology class, and I have several upcoming announcements related to my (real) archaeological work. The field school will be running again starting in January, and there will be extra stuff this year to go along with that. And I'll keep you posted on my art activities. I may or may not write another post to mark the official Swordgate anniversary on Monday (I still haven't sent Carl Feagans his award for winning our contest last year -- sorry Carl). If not: happy early Swordgate! 

This is a quick update on what's been going on with my art.

What's For Sale

I added a new section to my website listing everything I've got for sale. I'll be adding to it as I make new things. I don't do a large volume of business, so there's no "cart" or automated system or anything like that. If you're interested in something just send me an email at andy.white.zpm@gmail.com. As always, interesting trades considered.

The meat of Swordgate unwrapped itself from December of 2015 (when the claim was originally published) through the spring of 2016.  Since that time, many of the original blog posts, videos, and sound files used to attempt to support the claim have become unavailable. Even the link to the original story in The Boston Standard is now inactive.

I can only speculate as to why all of these original sources have apparently disappeared. I can say, however, that removing those sources has not removed the claim from the internet.  A Google search on "Roman sword Nova Scotia" still returns over 700,000 results; "Roman sword Oak Island" returns over 4 million. Although some of the highest ranked hits are skeptical blog posts by me, Carl Feagans, and Jason Colavito, the sources reporting the claim as a credible one predominate.

Clearly, the claim lives on. Someone searching for information about the purported "Roman sword" online will be shown numerous articles that breathlessly and uncritically report the central components of Hutton Pulitzer's claim: the shipwreck origins story, the nonspecific XRF results, the verification of the sword by a "Roman antiquities authority," the other evidence of a Roman occupation of Oak Island, etc. In this January 2016 Ancient Origins article we even get a part of Pulitzer's rebuttal to the growing number of swords that were being documented :

"The Roman sword found off Oak Island is believed to be part of a rare set of votive swords. Four similar swords having been recovered and verified, now in private collections and museums, including the Museum of Naples, Italy, which issued cast iron replicas of the sword. Many replicas of these rare swords can now be found on websites such as eBay and Amazon."

For the record, no-one has ever produced an image or a record of the supposed "Naples Museum" sword that is key to the argument for the sword's authenticity. The statements that such an item exists have remained simple assertions for years now, with zero evidence provided to back them up.

You will notice that the Ancient Origins article is completely unbalanced: it does not challenge the key elements in any real way, and it does not cite or quote any part of the contemporary evidence and analysis that suggested the sword claim was incorrect. Many many sources questioning the sword claim were available when the article was written, and yet none is included. This article is one of the top search results. 

The claim remains in other places as well. If you have the time, I recommend you listen to the entirely of this February 2016 interview of Hutton Pulitzer on Earth Ancients. In addition to a full-throated defense of the sword, Pulitzer describes his other evidence for the ancient Roman occupation of Oak Island, communicates his expansive, world-wide research agenda, and teases the publication of the elusive "white paper" and multiple books that will explode all of our outdated ideas about history. He concludes with these remarks:

"I'll take the heat. They can call me names. I will not back down. And we'll all do this together. . . . This is a war for truth, folks, and we need warriors for truth. You have to fight this battle and not let the system suppress it."

I suppose the subsequent disappearance of many of the videos, blog posts, and sound files arguing the case for the authenticity of the sword and an ancient Roman occupation of Nova Scotia could make one question the outcome of the "battle for truth." To the best of my knowledge, the vaunted "white paper" was never released and the books that were being produced were never distributed.

But, nevertheless, the claims about the "Roman sword from Nova Scotia" remain extant and active as long as the original articles and interview videos continue to be available. And as long as the claim is active, our engagement with that claim must also remain available.

If you're so inclined, I invite you to donate some material support to the effort to keep the counter-claim alive and accessible.