Would you like my honest opinion or would you prefer the alternative?

Athena has put up a post on Pseudo-science and Archaeology which I like. It has two particular good points. Firstly she defines what she means by pseudo-science and then she explains why it matters. The quibble I would have is one which could be applied with far more force to me. Is Pseudo-science the right word? I think it is in Athena’s case, because she defines what she means. However Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy has argued that the term pseudo-science is misleading because it gives the impression that pseudo-science is almost science. There’s nothing scientific about it. It’s antiscience and that’s the term he’s using.

He points out that the label we give to a position defines its opponents too. So if you plant a car-bomb outside an abortion clinic you’re “pro-life”, thus implying the guy or guyess you’re trying kill is anti-life. Does this have repercussions for history or archaeology? Perhaps we should question the label alternative history or alternative archaeology. It implies that an alternative archaeologist is an archaeologist no matter how mad his ideas. In the UK at least alternative is also a positive word. Alternatives are good. People like choice. We rarely question if the notion of an alternative makes sense. Call me Mr Unadventurous but I really wouldn’t like to have my house re-wired by an Alternative Electrician.

Similarly if I write something that is false then you can question it and point out my errors. The Roman Empire, for instance, was based in the Bahamas. That might not be true in the Orthodox sense of the word, but could it be an example of Alternative Truth?

Which brings me back to Alternative Archaeology and Alternative History. There are plenty of alternative choices. Did the Roman Empire decline or collapse? Was farming introduced by colonisers, or did the natives adopt it? Was the Inca Empire really an Empire as we would understand it or more a case of hegemony? For historical or archaeological problems there are alternatives. All the alternatives that are worth bothering with share some core values. There’s a reference back to the evidence. There’s an attempt to find an independent correlation for any data source, so show the idea is consistent with all evidence rather than cherry-picking data. There’s a reference back to tested techniques so that work builds on what is known rather than plucked from the aether. There’s also an acknowledgement when data doesn’t fit that there’s a problem rather than declaring the data null and void. Also while books might not be peer-reviewed, the ideas in them are usually initially put up for scrutiny either as at conferences or as papers in journals. There’s also an effort to make the source data available and independently verifiable rather than having to be taken as a matter of faith.

The best you could say about Alternative Archaeology is that it’s an alternative to archaeology. Rather than fulminate against the misleading tactics used by such authors I’ll let someone who knows the situation much better explain:

A parallel for what I do is to be found in the work of an attorney defending a client in a court of law. My ‘client’ is a lost civilisation and it is my responsibility to persuade the jury – the public – that this civilisation did exist. Since the ‘prosecution’ – orthodox academics – naturally seek to make the opposite case as effectively as they can, I must be equally effective and, where necessary, equally ruthless.

So it is certainly true, as many of my critics have pointed out, that I am selective with the evidence I present. Of course I’m selective! It isn’t my job to show my client in a bad light!

Another criticism is that I use innuendo to make my case. Of course I do – innuendo and anything else that works.

I don’t care about the ‘rules of the game’ here – because it isn’t a game and there are no rules. The 20th century witnessed the emergence of an overwhelming academic concensus, supported in the media and at all levels of the education system, that no lost civilisation lies forgotten in the human past. This concensus is so strongly reinforced that no serious research has been done on the subject for more than 50 years and not a single academic institution in the Western world presently has a faculty of ‘Lost Civilisation Studies’!

Writing about Outrageous Hypotheses and Extraordinary Possibilities: A View from The Trenches by Graham Hancock

…and true to form there’s your innuendo, archaeologists are the ‘prosecution’. There’s also data selection. I don’t seek to disprove the existence of a lost civilisation. I want to find out what happened in the past. If I found evidence of Atlantis then I’d be able to become professor of Ancient History or Archaeology at any university in the world. The reason I disagree with Hancock is because the evidence simply isn’t there. Proof-through-Innuendo is not a historical method. Disregarding the need for evidence is anti-history not an alternative reading.

I think there’s a need to acknowledge there are genuine alternative histories. Druidism can sometimes be a good example. There are druids and heathens who take the historical evidence, augment it with intuition or revelation and then run off to their own private place. This, I would argue, is alternative history. If you’re not flatly contradicting the evidence then the worst you’re being is terribly over-enthusiastic. When you misrepresent inconvenient evidence or fabricate it, that’s when you cease to be an alternative historian and become an anti-historian.

If Graham Hancock’s new book is based on sound evidence rather than hearsay or what-if?s then I’ll honestly welcome it. If it’s like his previous works then any praise will be an example of alternative honesty. —–