In 1970, UCLA Professor and first-and-a-half wave Boasian Walter Goldschmitd published On becoming an anthropologist, a career pamphlet for students, for the American Anthropological Association. As some of us head back to school this week for that very purpose, I thought it would be interesting to look back and see what’s changed and what hasn’t.…
Why did the New Archaeologists adopt Hempel’s covering-law model of explanation?
Michael E Smith asks why some New Archaeologists adopted Hempel’s covering law model of explanation in the early 1970s despite its known problems. A good question, and definitely worth pondering. There haven’t been volumes written about this, but there has been some reflection, and clues are available here and there. The short answer is that…
Dear reputable publishers: there are no trustworthy journals. There are replicable results, and good, well-supported arguments
Elsevier recently published an interview with Philippe Terheggen, their Managing Director of STM journals, about the importance of trustworthy publishers and journals for the integrity of science, in a world he portrays as increasingly corrupted by disreputable predatory publishers. “Trusted research information”, claims the article “remains an important cornerstone of the scientific process and contributes…
Gault site: The 16 000 year old presence is looking better, but there are still problems
A new article last week claims that there is now definitive evidence of a 16 000 year old pre-Clovis human presence at the Gault site in Texas. The Gault site (Williams et al 2018) and the nearby Friedkin site (Waters et al 2011) have been some of the best documented claimed early sites in North…
The very simple, very messy problem of scholarly publishing, in a very few words
There is no agreement on how to fix the current problem of academic publishing, but surely there can be agreement on what the problem is. I am going to keep this post very simple, very direct, and very short, because the problem is very simple. To put it plainly, academics whose positions are largely publicly…
ArcheoThoughts 