This activity will demonstrate the need to be a critical and intelligent consumer of archaeological arguments. Pseudoarchaeology impacts our understandings of the past, yet is an effective means of gaining a popular audience for book sales and other avenues to profit from research. Lectures at the beginning of this course aim to clarify what good science is in archaeology, and to describe pseudoscience (or “fringe archaeology”) in contrast. In this exercise, you will practice identifying pseudoscience in archaeology and analyze one example in a brief paper.

 

Step 1: Read through the two websites below, on Distinguishing Science and Pseudoscience:

http://pseudoarchaeology.org/whatis.html (Links to an external site.)

http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pseudo.html (Links to an external site.)

 

Step 2: Internet surf until you find a website you want to analyze as an example of possible pseudoscience with arguments relevant in archaeology. This website must show a clearly pseudoscientific approach to archaeology, archaeological sites, and the story of the human past. You are welcome to use these options if you like:

https://riseearth.org/?s=secret+of+pyramids (Links to an external site.)

http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/atlantiscuba.htm (Links to an external site.)

Step 3: According to the Crackpot Index below, rate your example of pseudoscience and describe in a short paper (3-4 pages, double spaced): 1) Orcutt’s scoring of this example, 2) the website’s hypotheses, 3) whether the hypotheses are testable, 4) assumptions of the author, 5) evidence cited in support of the hypotheses, 6) the credentials or fields of the major scholars presented in the website, and 7) the whether the website ignores Occam’s Razor. It is expected that in this discussion you will engage with (and cite in-text and in a bibliography) information from lecture, the Feder text, and the website you are analyzing.

Step 4: Turn in your paper on the due date (no late papers will be accepted after the end of class on this date). Read the the grading rubric to make sure you covered everything is required and attached the link of the website you analyzed in this exercise—the website address should be included in your paper’s bibliography, and only 3-4 pages of the website are necessary to include with your short essay.

 

 

Bibliography examples (but format your bibliography normally, such that it is alphabetical by the author’s last name and doesn’t have headings for the type of source it is—see me if questions):

Article: journal

Lightfoot, Kent G., Antionette Martinez, Ann M. Schiff. 1998. “Daily Practice and Material Culture in Pluralistic Social Settings: An Archaeological Study of Culture Change and Persistence from Fort Ross, California” American Antiquity 63 (2): 199-222.

Books

Dibble, Charles E. (editor) 1980. Codice Xolotl. Universidad Autónoma de México, México, D.F. McHugh (editor)

Hampton, David R., Charles E. Summer, and Ross A. Weber. 1978. Organizational Behavior and the Practice of Management. 3rd ed. Foresman, Glenview, Illinois.

Website:

Rock Lake pyramids. Accessed August 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=.

Orcutt’s Crackpot Index

(From http://www.catchpenny.org/crackpot.html)

1. 5 points starting credit.
2. 1 point for every statement that is in conflict with generally accepted theories.
3. 2 points for every statement that is clearly vacuous.
4. 3 points for each internal inconsistency.
5. 5 points for every supposition that is maintained despite prodigious archaeological evidence to the contrary.
6. 5 points for each instance of specious (seemingly plausible, yet wrong) data expressed as fact.
7. 5 points for each authoritative reference to Edgar Cayce, Immanuel Velikovsky, Erich von Daniken, Thor Heyerdahl, Zecharia Sitchin, John Anthony West, Graham Hancock, or Robert Bauval.
8. 7 points for each authoritative reference to Martin Bernal, Cheikh Anta Diop, Molefi Kete Asante, Chancellor Williams, or Yosef A.A. ben-jochannan.
9. 10 points for each authoritative reference to R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz.
10. 10 points for each baseless claim that widely accepted theories are fundamentally erroneous.
11. 10 points for boasting of academic degrees unrelated to the topic at hand.
12. 15 points for boasting of a lack of academic degrees, insisting that formal education is not only unnecessary but also an impediment to creative thought.
13. 20 points for lamentations of being misunderstood.
14. 20 points for every use of a myth or legend as axiom.
15. 20 points for defensive citations of real or imagined ridicule inflicted by the academia.
16. 25 points for each evidential mention of Atlantis, Mu, Lemuria, or the 1995 film Stargate.
17. 30 points for insisting that if critics cannot disprove a theory, then it must of necessity be true.
18. 30 points for claiming to be the victim of a conspiracy by the scientific establishment.
19. 40 points for professing to be privy to information that is secret or to which no one else has access.
20. 50 points for claims of psychic revelation or firsthand past-life experience.

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