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” (Feder 1990:391). That…
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, scholars such as Charles Davenport and Karl Pearson popularized the idea of eugenics: that through careful management of our collective genetic resources, we could improve not only ourselves, but the whole of society. Classical eugenics Eugenics “promised not only an experimental understanding of mind and behavior, but…
Hot on the heels of the claim of a 16 000 year old human presence at the Gault site (Williams et al 2018) last August, Waters et al (2018) are claiming stone tools dated at 15 500 years at the nearby Friedkin site. Both of these are part of the pre-Clovis Buttermilk Creek complex. As…
In a world of fast moving twitter feeds and ephemeral blogs, it is sometimes helpful to pause, look back, and take stock. Open Access week is a perfect time to do that. Like Toby A. Green, I wonder what is holding up efforts at a transition to more open scholarship. Sometimes, it feels like there…
Even the New York times has noticed that geneticists and anthropologists are having trouble dealing with the current genetically driven revival of classical race theory and the return of its evil offspring, scientific racism. Amy Harmon rightly takes scholars to task for failing to address “the recurring appropriation of the field’s research in the name…
