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- Is this Uber?
- Yeah, yeah.
This is Uber.
Have a seat.
You're Fred, right?
Temperature okay for you back there?
- Uh yeah.
Yeah.
- All right.
You comfortable in your seat there?
- Yeah, yeah.
Thanks.
- Alrighty.
Yeah, got my route here.
Aw, what a beautiful day it is, huh?
- Yeah, very nice.
- Blowers.
Check.
Let's see.
What kind of music do you like?
- Oh, anything is fine, I suppose.
- You like rap?
- Uh...it's okay.
- Oh, okay.
- Yeah, these are working.
You need a tissue?
- I'm good.
- You have a favorite route?
- No, I'll leave it up to you.
- Okay.
Yeah, the last folks I took were really happy with the service.
- Good, good.
- Okay, thank you very much.
Have a nice day.
- But we didn't go anywhere.
Did you know there’s a word out there that offends people?
It’s the P-word.
No, not that p-word.
Not that p-word either.
No, not that p-word.
I’m talking about pseudoarchaeology.
Yes, there are people who get upset when their claims about ancient history are called pseudoarchaeology.
Yeah, it starts with a P.
What exactly is pseudoarchaeology?
Well, the literal meaning is “fake archaeology,” that is, something that is not archaeology,
which is masquerading as archaeology.
Pseudoarchaeology is not something one believes.
It’s something one does - or fails to do.
Let me explain.
Archaeology is partly the discovery of material remains, partly the meticulous work of the
scientific analyst, and partly the exercise of creative imagination.
It is not merely a set of beliefs.
It is a practice.
It’s something that you do.
If a person engages in the creative part of archaeology but does not conduct the meticulous
work, that person is not doing archaeology.
Yes, archaeology can be considered a humanistic discipline, because it’s aim is to assist
us in understanding humans, but it is also a scientific enterprise.
The material record doesn’t just tell us directly what to think.
It needs to be interpreted.
Archaeologists need to make sense of what is found, and they can do this only by engaging
in scientific analysis.
Just as a scientist collects data (evidence), conducts experiments, formulates a hypothesis
(which is a proposition to account for the data), tests the hypothesis against more data,
and then devises a model (which is a description that seems best to summarize the pattern observed
in the data), so does an archaeologist.
Archaeology includes technical methods, such as systematic survey sampling, aerial and
satellite mapping, subsurface probing, and excavation methods, and it includes scientific
methods of analysis and inference, including mathematical analysis, radiometric dating,
dendochronology, thermoluminescence dating, archaeomagnetic dating.
There are many techniques and methods employed.
Now, what if a person formulates a hypothesis and devises a model, but fails to collect
all the necessary data, neglects to conduct experiments, and doesn’t test the hypothesis
against more data?
Is that person practicing archaeology?
If they fail to perform all the steps, no.
They can be great at the speculative phase of archaeology, the creative part of it.
They can dabble a bit in the data, even doing a small measure of analysis
on a small number of artifacts.
But if their data collection falls far short of what is needed for the subject, or if their
experimentation is sorely lacking - in other words, they don’t even come close to performing
the necessary work - they are not practicing archaeology.
They are, in fact, doing pseudoarchaeology.
- Okay, what have we got here?
I'm all scrubbed up and ready to go.
- You're not Dr. Johnson.
- No, I'm Bob.
- Bob who?
- I'm his neighbor.
- Are you a doctor?
- Are YOU a doctor?
- We're doing a corneal transplant.
- Yeah, I flipped through some pretty pictures about that this morning.
- Did you wash?
- Uh...yep.
- Doctor, is this a therapeutic penetrating keratoplasty or a lamellar keratoplasty?
- You would know.
- Are you going to do the corneal ulceration?
But the patient...
Doctor, that's not how you do surgery.
- Ohhh, I suppose you want me to do it the way you and all your golf-club-swinging, fancy-shmancy,
doctor buddies do it, huh?
- Doctor, the donated cornea...
Someone might say, “Well, it can only be called pseudoarchaeology if the person is
claiming to be doing archaeology.
What about cases when a person is drawing conclusions without ever calling themselves
an archaeologist?”
If the person is making claims about the past, using material remains as evidence, they are
performing the same function as an archaeologist, just as a person who offers medical advice
is performing the same function as a physician.
“Hey, drink this bleach.
It will heal your cancer.”
Does it matter if they don’t call themselves a doctor?
No.
They are on the same turf and therefore what they are doing, or failing to do, can be called
pseudomedicine.
In the same way, a person who reconstructs ancient history based on what is found in
the ground and doesn’t do it scientifically is doing pseudoarchaeology.
If, therefore, a person reaches radical conclusions, out of harmony with the mainstream consensus
of history, but engages in the archaeological process in a scientific manner, that person
is not doing pseudoarchaeology.
I know archaeologists who have done this, and even though their ideas are considered
controversial, no one says they aren’t doing archaeology.
Similarly, if a person reaches a conclusion that is in harmony with the mainstream consensus
of history, but doesn’t engage in the process scientifically, that person is doing pseudoarchaeology.
The word pseudoarchaeology has nothing to do with whether a theory is correct.
It’s not the what that matters.
It’s the how.
And so, measuring an object poorly or incompletely, failing to take into account all the evidence
on the subject, and drawing far-reaching conclusions from it is pseudoarchaeology.
- So have you been able to find the trouble?
- You've got an out-of-place drain clog.
- What's that?
I've never heard of it.
- You've got a jam-up where it doesn't belong.
- You're licensed, right?
- Ah, no, no, no, no.
I'm an independent, man.
Believe me, you do not want to put your trust in the plumbing establishment.
Morons.
Dolts, at best.
All they care about: power and control.
You need someone who thinks outside the box.
Okay?
- You do know what you're doing, right?
- How hard can it be?
But let me be clear.
I do believe that some people throw the word pseudoarchaeology around a little too freely.
I do not agree with someone judging something to be pseudoarchaeology
before looking into the matter.
However, there are certain claims being made out there that have been shown to be based
on pseudoarchaeology, and so when those claims get repeated, I don’t think it is necessary
for someone to reinvestigate the whole matter again just to make sure it is still pseudoarchaeology.
If it walks like a duck…
I hope that makes sense, and if you have any further questions about this, please raise
them in the comments section below.
If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up, and if you approve of what this
channel is doing and want to support it, you can do so for as little as $2 per month at
patreon.com/worldofantiquity.
You might like my little e-booklet, "Why Ancient History Matters.
It's designed to persuade people that the subject is important, even in the modern world.
You might also wish to use it to help spread the word,
so feel free to share it with someone you know.
It's free for anyone who wants it.
I've left the link in the description box below the video for you to grab a copy.
Catch you later!