This is one of those things that has been sat in the drafts box for a while and if quality was proportional to time then this review should be much much better than it is. Really I’m tempted to simply link to Martin Rundkvist’s review and say ‘me too’. I first saw Archaeological Fantasies, edited by Garrett Fagan, at the Classical Association conference this year. It was on one of the book stalls with a minimal discount so I didn’t buy it, thinking Amazon would be cheaper. That was a mistake twice over. It wasn’t cheaper at Amazon and it led to a long delay in me getting my hands on a copy. It’s a good book and it’s a much needed debate. You get the impression that people have been queuing up to talk about this from the way the book has a foreword, preface and introduction from various people. The book itself is divided into three sections.
The first is The Phenomenon. Rather than just say here’s pseudoarchaeology — it’s Bad. There is an exploration of what fringe archaeology is and what the attraction is. Probably the best chapter in this section is Katherine Reece’s Memoirs of a True Believer. I think this chapter underlines that fringe archaeology can appeal to intelligent and imaginative thinkers. What I didn’t see so much in this section was a view of fringe archaeology as a collection of phenomena. By trying to produce a single definition of pseudoarchaeology I think they may have overlooked the variety inherent in the field. A hard-line creationist would be the polar opposite of a New Age relativist, though I can see they could use similar methods to examine the past.
The second section Five Case Studies does show more of the variety in pseudoarchaeology. You could fill a whole book with analysing Egypt and people have (Giza: The Truth) so Paul Jordan does a good job with a trip round Esoteric Egypt. Highlight of this section though is David Webster’s chapter on Maya Mystique. It’s an exploration of how pseudoscience starts and the example given is of academics holding on to a discredited idea in the face of increasing evidence. The end result is pseudo-scientific, but what about the origin? My view is that the same methodology was used so could it still be pseudoscientific? It’s not cut ‘n’ dried. Methods improved over the years, but at the same time I’d argue that a view isn’t sound simply because I agree with it.
The final section Pseudoarchaeology in its Wider Context is a mixed bag. None of the chapters are written by archaeologists but in two cases that may be for the good. Norman Levitt, a mathematician, is extremely good, locating pseudoarchaeology in its wider context with pseudohistory and pseudoscience. Christopher Hale’s tale The Atlantean Box is a horror story of the decline of a BBC science show. Surprisingly the let down was Alan Sokal’s Pseudoscience and post-modernism: Antagonists or fellow-travellers? It’s not bad, but it could have been dropped into any book with a connection to postmodernism unchanged. Call me mister Dull, but in a book on pseudoarchaeology I don’t expect an extensive discussion of Nursing techniques. The observations are good, but why use therapeutic touch as an example when you could refer to the Sphinx or whatever?
There are gaps in the book. I think more could be said about the context of claims. I think there’s a strong argument for distinguishing between pseudoarchaeology which claims to be scientific and alternative approaches which openly couldn’t care less about whether or not they’re scientific or even reject science as a means for knowing. I also think that some pseudoarchaeologists believe what they say and some are more cynical. But a definitive volume wouldn’t be an affordable volume and if you want to open a serious debate then affordability is important.
I’ve been curious how crackpot ideas and sensible ideas co-exist in the same people. I look at those leftists in the US who claim that the collapse of the World Trade Center was staged by the Republican government. I suppose most of them believe in global warming, too, and in fact would sound similar in denouncing the government’s denial of either issue. For one they’re right. For the other they’re completely in fantasyland. I doubt the methods they use for cognition are that different for either idea.
Then one can look at those Republicans who sensibly stick to the accepted story on the World Trade Center, but proclaim any talk of global warming or greenhouse gases a hoax, not limited data, not uncertain, but an outright hoax. They don’t sound that different from the conspiracy inclined left or from those with religious certainty, whether traditional or New Age.
One common feature I see to all of this is that people of various persuasions will place inordinate importance on a few points. People see puffs of smoke coming out an entire floor of the collapsing WTC, and they’re convinced that it was explosives doing that, because they’ve seen that before. All my life I’ve listened to creationists latch onto a few issues related to evolution and claim that this shows evolution is wrong. The big picture doesn’t matter. They don’t know it anyway. They have just enough to use as a handle on their rejection of the mainstream, or their allegiance to the same.
Maybe if the author focused more on different types of pseudoarchaeology as you would have liked, this would be the conclusion, that it’s not so much what facts one has, though of course reliable data is important, but how one puts together a story from the facts or pseudofacts. Are the fantasies all simple prejudice? Or is prejudice not that simple? Maybe it’s how one comes to be prejudiced that matters, whether it’s conformity or individuality, whether it’s in service to some keystone belief a person has or just ego.
I take it this book doesn’t clarify that. It is of course harder to say why someone does something as opposed to how. Maybe the truly difficult “why” is why someone comes to value making a whole story that fits all the pieces together, that can change as new data become available, and can recognize every possibility, not just what the author favors. That’s how beautiful stories are made. That’s how functional stories are made. Is it just experience that teaches that? I doubt it. There are many crackpots with plenty of experience, but they’re still crackpots. In fact do crackpots ever become reliable scientists? I’ve noticed it the other way when good researchers in one field pretend they understand another field.
Maybe we really do have a soul that is relevant to what we find beautiful. Who’s willing to look at that possibility?
The chapters each have a different author and there’s some variety in what they look at the motivations in the Esoteric Egypt chapter are different to the motivations in the Greek Pyramids chapter. This is recognised in the closing chapter where the editor notes that there is no diagnostic package of features that are present in all pseudoarchaeology. What he doesn’t do is suggest that perhaps the archaeologies he’s looking at are opposites rather than part of a similar set.
There’s a chapter “Why Creationists don’t go to Psychic Fairs” by John H. Taylor, Raymond A. Eve and Francis B. Harrold in Kendrick Frazier’s Encounters with the Paranormal, which does explore how the labels “alternative” or “fringe” ignore diversity between non-scientific communities. Just like there’s no one definition for science that covers all scientific thought, it’s sometimes lazy to apply the term pseudoscience.