Pseudoarchaeology Thursday
- Mar 13, 2025
- 2 min read
A little self-promotion today to round out spring break. I’m having a conversation tomorrow afternoon (CDT) with Flint Dibble.
As many of you know, Flint is among the most affable of the anti-pseudoarchaeology crowd. He is bright, social-media savvy, and more than willing to laugh at himself for the good of the cause. After all, he went on Joe Rogan to debate Graham Hancock.
Flint and I plan to discuss the sometimes contested relationship between pseudoarchaeology and archaeology and the place of pseudoarchaeology in the ever growing tent of disciplinary archaeology.
He asked that I come up with some bullet points to discuss tomorrow. Here’s a rough draft of some ideas:
Archaeology and pseudoarchaeology have always been deeply intertwined. How have the two branches of the same disciplinary tree shaped one another?
How do pseudoarchaeological (and archaeological) ideas travel in contemporary society? What cultural phenomena contribute to creating the most fertile ground for more diverse archaeological approaches to understanding the past?
What can we learn from the reception of pseudoarchaeological and archaeological ideas? What does their reception tell us about the role our disciplines play in society?
What does pseudoarchaeology tell us about the limits to archaeology (and more broadly to “science”)? How does and can pseudoarchaeology represent an important critical position both within and outside of the contemporary archaeological conversations?
As contemporary society has come to recognize a series of pressing challenges (sometimes called wicked problems) — from globalization to racial inequality, large scale displacement, environmental degradation, and catastrophic climate change — communities have explored how new approaches to understanding their past can create new ways to living in the present and future. Archaeology and pseudoarchaeology can both play a part in these conversations.
My goal is, as much as possible, to avoid the debunking discourse so beloved by many of the anti-pseudoarchaeology crowd and focus on positive aspects of the pseudoarchaeology-archaeology conversation, the potential of welcoming pseudoarchaeologists into big tent archaeology, and what we can learn from the reception of pseudoarchaeology in the past.
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