Why Pseudoarchaeology and Why Now?

I’ve very much enjoyed the recent and ongoing conversation about pseudoarchaeology across various social media platforms. I’ve been writing some stuff here on my blog (which you can check out here, if you want). There are largely meant as notes for some kind of future project, but hopefully they continue to add to the ongoing conversation.

There are two things that I’ve recently come to recognize in the current conversations surrounding Graham Hancock’s Ancient Apocalypse. To be clear, I haven’t and won’t watch this show. I trust the critiques provided by guys like Flint Dibble and Andre Costopoulos. I guess my comments here and elsewhere are largely “meta” in that they refer not so much to Hancock’s tomfoolery as to the conversations surrounding it.

1. Empiricism and its Discontents. One of the key aspects of most responses to Hancock’s claims (and pseudoarchaeology more broadly) is that their not empirically true. In other words, Hancock’s claims require him to ignore, fabricate, or distort evidence in order to make his arguments. In other cases, Hancock’s logic appears to be circular or other wise flawed. As a result, his arguments are not falsifiable (sensu Popper) which makes them difficult to challenge using the traditional archaeological toolkit. This is deliberate of course and part of what makes pseudoarchaeology a form of intellectual resistance to what is often seen as a hegemonic scientific discourse. 

We recognize as archaeologists, of course, that there are many things in archaeology that simply can’t be explained in a falsifiable way. Alternative archaeologies, phenomenological approaches, affective archaeologies, and various forms of speculative archaeological narration also fall outside the range of falsifiability. Perhaps these forms of archaeological knowledge making are less defiant in tone that some of the more flamboyant pseudoarchaeologists, but they are often meaningful forms of resistance to the problematic legacy of scientific archaeology.  

1. Blurring Genre Lines. One thing that appears to genuinely frost archaeologists icebergs is that Hancock’s show fashions itself a documentary. For most viewers, then, this show exudes a certain amount of “truthiness” to it or at least an openness to academic debate on the merits of his claims (even if we accept that they do not conform to conventional standards of falsifiability that remain important to more scientific approaches to archaeology).

Of course, this blurring of genre is a characteristic of the contemporary media. We are constantly being challenged with new hybrid forms of media from reality TV to various forms of creative non-fiction and prose poetry, the growing popularity of cinéma vérité techniques in fictional settings (e.g. The Office, Parks & Recreation, et c.), the resurgent popularity of Werner Herzog, on the one hand, and camp on the other, and the emergence of TV news programs designed more to entertain than inform. 

As scholars, we have generally embraced and even celebrated this erasure of clear generic borders and the siloing of knowledge making techniques. For example, combinations of science and art, literature and professional degrees (such as Medical Humanities), and even such odd bedfellows as business and ethics (business ethics!). Outside of the academy, however, we proceed with a bit more unsteady footing. In a panel a few years back on writing archaeology for the public, there was a palpable unease about the very idea of creative nonfiction (scroll down here). It is clear that as a discipline we continue to struggle with how we represent ambiguity.

To be clear, this is not to suggest that deceptive practices in the media should escape comment or be encouraged. At the same time, we need to recognize that pseudoarchaeology is fundamentally a transmedia phenomenon (that is, it has influenced film, music, fiction, poetry, non-fiction, visual media, and social media) in ways that far exceed what we have been able to accomplish as disciplinary practitioners of archaeology. Resisting the more nefarious expressions of pseudoarchaeology has to involve more than just demanding that pseudoarchaeologists state their intentions clearly. It involves recognizing how these ideas spread in cultural media that fall outside archaeologists’ typical critical remit. 

2. In Search of Foreclosed Pasts. One thing that I’ve started to think about over the last week or so is how alternative views of the past tend to emerge at points where there is both perceived discontinuity in the past (i.e. the end of the ancient world, apocalypses, vanish civilizations, episodes of collapse, and so on) and in the present. I guess everyone knows this, but for whatever reason it didn’t quite register with me.

I suppose the reason for this is that when we recognize that the past does not necessarily culminate in the present. That is to say, when we come to realize that our past actions as humans have not necessarily produced a sustainable present. In other words, our current historical trajectory, despite the hopes and promises of progress, has become dead end. Climate change, environmental degradation, social fracturing, and resurgent totalitarianism has revealed the bankruptcy of modernity, scientific thinking, capitalism, and narratives of progress.

As a society, then, we’ve started to look at the past with a growing sense of urgency in an effort to identify a moment when things went wrong. In this context, a renewed openness to new ways (both good and bad) at engaging with the plurality of human experiences has made it possible to explore pasts foreclosed by the hegemonic power of modernity.

Most pseudoarchaeology doesn’t neatly into this category and, in fact, in many forms to embraces a parodic form of modernity. In this way, it adopts many of the ironic features of camp including exaggerated ironic forms of expression, confrontational forms of rhetoric, and plenty of bombastic claims. This kind of vigorous shaking and mockery of modern practices of knowledge making almost certainly expresses the growing anxiety that we feel as we confront the problems facing our world. By mocking and mimicking the modern pretensions of academic archaeology, pseudoarchaeology pushes us to recognize the limits of our own capacity to produce a compelling present.

This isn’t to excuse pseudoarchaeology when it devolves into racism or conspiracy theories, but instead to explain why this kind of anti-scientific (or pseudo-scientific) way of thinking has become increasingly prevalent. As a colleague pointed out to me the other day, our society is struggling not because we don’t have enough science, but perhaps because we have too much.