ASOR Workshop on Pseudoarchaeology

As readers of this blog know, my colleague Kevin McKeough and I successfully submitted a proposal for a workshop on pseudoarchaeology at the 2024 ASOR annual meeting. The workshop’s short (10 minute) papers will center around a series of common questions that we asked all submitters to consider:

1. What are the intellectual, social, political, and material contexts for pseudoarchaeology?

2. How have pseudoarchaeologists responded to normative archaeological arguments, methods, epistemologies, and institutions?

3. How have pseudoarchaeological ideas circulated? What genres, media, and institutions create space for pseudoarchaeology?

4. Have disciplinary efforts to debunk or critique pseudoarchaeology benefited or harmed the discipline?

5. How does the growing appreciation of the plurality of archaeologies create new space within the discipline to recognize and learn from pseudoarchaeological traditions?

My proposed paper title is “The Sun Ra Papyrus: Black Pseudoarchaeology in Context” and since you can start submitting abstracts tomorrow, I thought I’d try my hand at a draft of an abstract just to try to set (the? a?) tone for the panel. My abstract is a PERFECT 250 words (which also means that I can’t proofread it or I’ll end up throwing it off!):

In October 2020, the New York Times published an anecdote told by pianist Farid Barron who recalled reading that the saxophonist John Coltrane once received a papyrus from the avant garde composer, musician, writer, and mystic Sun Ra. Barron reported that the papyrus “was said” to stop time, but had since been lost.

This wasn’t the only time in the last five years that the Old Grey Lady had reported on a papyrus. It had breathlessly covered controversies associated with Dirk Obbink and Karen King both before and since. The origins and character of the so-called “Sun Ra Papyrus” remains obscure and unexamined, but its story opens a narrow window into African American attitudes toward the power of the past to shape the present.

These attitudes derived from a rich and dynamic view of antiquity that served to articulate new understandings of Black identity over the course of the 20th century. Even as Black Americans were largely excluded from academia, they nevertheless developed complex theories, arguments, and epistemologies about their past. These ideas of the past circulated far outside of academic circles and drew upon popular accounts of the ancient world, pseudoarchaeological interpretations, esoteric literature, and often contemporary revelations. These diverse sources produced a distinct influence on changing Black identities in the mid-20th century and informed a wide range of religious, artistic, and even political expressions.

This paper locates Black pseudoarchaeology within this dynamic context and shows how it served as a generative social, cultural, spiritual, and political force.