The History of Pseudoarchaeology: From Engagement to Isolation.

Archaeological Fantasies Podcast

Things changed drastically as archaeology developed and professionalized. During the pre-professional time, or the Romantic Era of archaeology as Jeb Card and David Anderson (2016) call it, archaeology was really more of a jumbled collection of competing methodologies, antiquarians out looking for epic adventures chasing down mythic locations, and making extraordinary claims to establish racial dominance and promote nationalist agendas (Card and Anderson 2016). However, as the field of archaeology matured, it began to challenge these behaviors, choosing scientific procedures over frivolity, demanding evidence to support wild claims, and in general, growing up.
For example, Alternative theorists love to point out a couple early hoaxes that archeology had to deal with. The most famous of these would be the Piltdown man hoax.
Ever so briefly, the Piltdown man was an early 1900’s hoax were the lower jaw of an ape was altered to look like it belonged with the cranial part of a human skull. It was ‘discovered’ in 1912 in Sussex England and was lauded as the missing link (Feder 2010, 1990). Though the hoax wasn’t one-hundred percent debunked until 1949, it did have its early detractors (Feder 1990). Many thought it was just a little too convenient that Piltdown man was discovered where it was, and as time went by and more actual hominids were found around the world that predated Piltdown’s supposed age, more suspicions were thrown at it. 1949 was the beginning of the end for Piltdown man as a series of tests revealed that the bones that made up the skull were not the right age or even from the same species (Feder 1990).
Piltdown man fits because of the desperate need by the British government to have, not only an early hominid discovered on their soil but to have it be *the* missing link. British archaeologists at the time were willing to overlook clues that this was probably a hoax. Yet 40 years later, after a lot of questions from inside the field, the Piltdown man was exposed.
The reason this case is so well known is because it played out in the public eye, mainly by the circumstances of the time. Newspapers carried stories and images of the Piltdown man (Feder 1990). The public loved it and talked about it. It was even presented by the researchers to the public. Because of this, other researchers were able to know of and examine the hoax, and call it into question long enough to finally get it disproven. Now when we talk about the Piltdown man, we’re talking about the hoax and not the supposed missing link.
The development of Institutional Professional Archaeology.
Honestly, this is where things start to decline as far as the interactions between archaeology and pseudoarchaeology are concerned. Leading up to the 60’ Archaeologists were all over the place publicly. During the 1800’s they were traveling around speaking and presenting findings. Granted this was a necessity of the times, but the side effect was a great deal of public engagement.
As time moved on, Archaeologists began to appear on the radio and then TV (Card and Anderson 2016) embracing the new media as ways to communicate with the public. They wrote popular books about archaeology and, again, spoke publicly about the topic.
This all seemed to work out best over in the UK. Sir Lenord Woolley was all over the radio, Sir Mortimer Wheeler and Glyn Daniel were named TV personality of the year in 1954, the UK show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral was a success where the US version What in the World was not (Card and Anderson 2016). Overall, it seemed like everything was going good.
Then the New Archeology moment began in archaeology, symbolizing a shift in archaeological theory and practice. This time was important, it was a time when archeology began to look critically at itself and evaluate itself. It started important theory groups like gender and queer theory,