In these slow news days between Christmas and New Year, archaeology often finds itself highlighted in media. This morning, I saw yet another headline for an archaeology story that couldn’t manage to stay away from the word “mysterious”. A mysterious wooden structure, like an apparition at low tide, beckoning us to the deep, just off…
Addressing pseudoarchaeology without being a know-it-all, and other important career skills: Oak Island edition
A commenter on my recent Oak Island update notes: “Nitpicking is a sport for “know it alls” and hubris is the reason this sport exists. Your claims are frankly useless because you are not privy to the actual data.” While another commenter below the first one kindly absolves me of the charge of know-it-all-ism, it…
Review of Lars Fogelin’s Unauthorized Companion to American Archaeological Theory
Lars Fogelin’s Unauthorized Companion to American Archaeological Theory (2019) is not a textbook, nor does it claim to be. That doesn’t mean it has no place in a course on archaeological theory. It also isn’t quite as American centric as it appears from the title, and its insights are widely applicable. Fogelin gives us an…
From the Orwellian management-speak files: A rant on the origin and history of “game changer”
I’ve been in academic administration in one capacity or another for about a dozen years now. In that time, I’ve heard my share of ed consultant flim-flam, trendy admin buzzwords, and Orwellian management-speak. For some reason, in all that time, in all those well-attended meetings, and in all those broadly consulted, fully benchmarked, uniquely tailored-for-our-context…
Moralizing gods update: Seshat still searching for something that isn’t there
Last week, Turchin et al posted a reply to critiques of their Nature paper that argued that social complexity precedes moralizing gods. This goes against the big gods hypothesis that the presence of moralizing gods in human social networks allowed the growth of larger and more complex communities. Instead, Turchin et al argue that larger…
ArcheoThoughts 