4 Addressing pseudoarchaeology There was a time when well-behaved, responsible, professional archaeologists did not engage with pseudo-archaeology and its claims. For the few who did, “it is quite common for us to receive a negative response from our colleagues; We are often asked why we waste our energy thinking, researching, and writing about nonsensical claims”…
A further chunk of the (eventual) practical guide to addressing pseudoarchaeology
Note: This project is now a few months late, but given the circumstances, things are going well. Regular readers of this blog will have seen most of this material in one form or another, but it is now re-ordered, reworked and revised to some extent. This part is the opening. 1 Teaching against pseudoarchaeology Many…
Review of Becerra-Valdivia and Higham’s (2020) “The timing and effect of the earliest human arrivals in North America”
In their recent Bayesian survey of early archaeological dates from North America in Nature, Becerra-Valdivia and Higham (2020) conclude that “The data obtained show that humans were probably present before, during and immediately after the Last Glacial Maximum (about 26.5–19 thousand years ago), but that more widespread occupation began during a period of abrupt warming,…
Evaluating the claim of Ice Age archaeological material at Chiquihuite Cave, Mexico
The latest claim of surprisingly early archaeological material in the Americas comes from Chiquihuite Cave, Mexico. The paper (Ardelean et al 2020) contains a wealth of excellent information and analysis on (non-human) ancient DNA, paleo-environment, and local geology, but unfortunately, the archaeology component is very underdeveloped. Simply put, the paper as presented does not provide…
My encounter with pseudo-archaeology
There was a used bookstore downtown, in a barely renovated nineteenth century warehouse. It was five floors of dense, rickety shelves, piled high with jumbled paperbacks in various states of decay. To say that they were sorted in any kind of order would have been a gross exaggeration, but there was a certain thematic geography…
