Martinez Lectures (II), "What is Pseudoarchaeology"?

 In the USA, Mark Martinez (@xprofe1) a supporter of Graham Hancock, Jimmy Corsetti and their brand of making money by reinterpreting the past for a lay audience presumes to lecture us all on what (he, with his lil'old US "philosophy" degree, thinks) pseudoarcheology is (see above).  

Mark Martinez@xprofe1 May 1

Pseudo-archaeologist: the ultimate ad hominem.

In sports we have professional athletes and amateur athletes. The primary difference between both (sic) is whether they get paid to play their sport. There are also sponsorships, levels of training, and contracts, but this dichotomy is one that most all of us are familiar with and can agree on for the most part.

In a similar fashion, we have professional archaeologists and amateur archaeologists.

Professional archaeologists usually get paid for their work, have received formal training, and customarily hold some type of credentials or responsibilities within the field. Whereas amateur archaeologists usually don’t get paid, lack formal training and do not hold credentials or responsibilities within the field. Though the distinction between professional and amateur is extremely important, they’re both still archaeologists.

A key component to this dichotomy is archaeological methodology, which when practiced, does not determine whether you’re a professional or amateur, it determines whether you’re good at your craft or not. A professional or amateur archaeologist who makes mistakes, exercises poor judgement, or practices bad methodology, is not a “fake” archaeologist, they’re just bad at what they do.

@FlintDibble is not a pseudo-archaeologist because he lied and misrepresented facts during his debate with @Graham__Hancock on the @joeroganhq , he just exercised poor judgment and practiced bad methodologies. Similarly, professional archaeologists do not suddenly become pseudo-archaeologists, simply because they were proven incorrect later in their careers; they’re just found to have practiced bad methodologies.

Fake athletes [pseudo-athletes] are neither professional nor amateur. A fake athlete is someone who lies about the sport they claim to practice, which is why we would call them a fake. No one would call a high school soccer player a fake athlete; we would call them an amateur athlete.

Likewise, a fake archaeologist [pseudo-archaeologist] is someone who lies about practicing archaeology. No one would call a high school archaeology student a fake archaeologist, we would call them an amateur archaeologist, regardless of how many mistakes or bad methodologies they practice.

Consequently, why do academics and scholars repeatedly label @Graham__Hancock, @randallwcarlson, @BrightInsight6, @DeDunkingPast, @WWolfProd, @chrispdunn, and @UnchartedX1, as pseudo-archaeologists? They are certainly not fake. They don’t lie about practicing archaeology. Some are journalists, geologists, scientists, researchers, and investigators, while others do in fact practice archaeology at an amateur level. In the case of @PastPaulitics , he is a bona fide professional archaeologist and historian but still finds himself thrown in the same basket of archaeological deplorables.

So, why the pejorative insult? Because it is a personal attack meant to undermine the person and their views, rather than addressing their arguments or theories; it is an ad hominem attack.

By labeling people as fake or pseudo, the goal is to showcase the person and their views in a negative, dismissive and illegitimate light while influencing any would-be listeners or viewers from being receptive to their ideas and theories.

Labeling someone as a pseudo-archaeologist, when they are not, is one of the truest forms of an ad hominem attack. The ultimate ad hominem.

This article is long enough, I’ll add more on archaeological methodologies later this week. Please be sure to check out and follow all the good folks I linked on here, they all provide amazing content and valuable information.

Cant wait for the rest of his exposition of what a Spanish teacher with a degree in history knows about "archaeological methodologies"... but for now, let's have a look at what he wrote.

I'm fine with equating (what I see as) amateur archaeology with professional archaeoplogy. Back in England I used to work with amateur groups and they were great. But then we come across a problem with what the Spanish teacher somewhere in deepest darkest Trumpland thinks amateur archaeology is.

A key component to this dichotomy is archaeological methodology, which when practiced, does not determine whether you’re a professional or amateur, it determines whether you’re good at your craft or not.

Well no. Whether or not what somebody is doing is archaeology or not is whether it is done by application of the methodology(ies) of achaeology - defined in a plethora of books (in the UK, including whole bookshelves full of 'how to' manuals written and published FOR amateur archaeologists). An individual who digs up (trashes) an archaeological site just to see what artefacts they can find is an artefqct hunter (most often a "metal detrectorist", in the US a "relic hunter" or "pot digger") THAT IS NOT 'ARCHAEOLOGY' (pace my British colleagues, it is certainly NOT "CITIZEN ARCHAEOLOOGY"). In the same way if in a amateur football match in the UK between the Hogwarts Wanderers and the team from Greyfrioars School, if a Greyfriars boy should actually pick up the football and run with it in his arms through the goalposts, it would be neither a goal nor football. It would be a foul. The boy is not acting at that moment as an "amateur footballer" and has added nothing to the School's sports record. Archaeology is the study of the past through the analysis of its material remains by the appropriate methodology.

 Dan Richards and his    
ad hominen teeshirt 

This is incredibly nasty, and certainly involves very severe interpretational biases (see above) - quite apart from being actionable.

@FlintDibble is not a pseudo-archaeologist because he lied and misrepresented facts during his debate with @Graham__Hancock on the @joeroganhq, he just exercised poor judgment and practiced bad methodologies.

Dan Richards, some mumbling comics enthusiast who looks like the man who empties my bins fancies himself, like Mr Martinez, as an expert on all things archaeological (despite reportedly being a construction worker and electrician by trade) is trying to make a career as a YouTube "influencer" and the theme he choses to concentrate on is "debunking" (which he somehow mispronounces as "DeDunking" [sic]) archaeology. Since Flint Dibble answered Hancock's stuff online, Dan Richards, that is the guy's name, has made Dr Dibble his prime target. He accuses Dr Dibble of "lying" (the word he actually used) on some made-up pretences, involving a single unintentionally (in my opinion) misquoted statistic and Mr Richards himself not understanding how lecture slides work. The damaging ill-will false accusation of deceit is one thing, the fact that it is being repeated after Richards' video by people who uncritically accept his reasoning and terminology used another (and is an example of just the same interpretive biases of the pseudoarchaeologists and their followers). One might question why this is happening. Why is it important to intimate that Dr Dibble's whole presentation was "lies"?   

"Why do academics and scholars repeatedly label @Graham__Hancock, @randallwcarlson , @BrightInsight6, @DeDunkingPast, @WWolfProd, @chrispdunn , and @UnchartedX1 , as pseudo-archaeologists? [...] why the pejorative insult? Because it is a personal attack meant to undermine the person and their views, rather than addressing their arguments or theories; it is an ad hominem attack. By labeling people as fake or pseudo, the goal is to showcase the person and their views in a negative, dismissive and illegitimate light while influencing any would-be listeners or viewers from being receptive to their ideas and theories. Labeling someone as a pseudo-archaeologist, when they are not, is one of the truest forms of an ad hominem attack. The ultimate ad hominem. 

    

 

                      Pseudoclassical decor                  
 

It is because they employ the methods they do (conveniently set out in 2006 in Garrett G. Fagan's chapter 'diagnosing pseudoarchaeology' pp23-46 in the same author's edited collection "Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology misrepresents the past and misleads the public" - the whole volume worth reading) rather than those of real  (professional or amateur) archaeology. In the same way as a pseudomorph in geology, pseudopodia and pseudoscorpions in biology, a pseudocarp in botany, a pseudonym in literature criticism, pseudoclassical (like Donald Trump's laughably bad-taste redecoration of the 1902-1909 Oval Office), it is a term used to describe something that looks like something else without being the thing it looks like. 

I really do not see that observing that  Voltaire, Boz, Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, Mary Westmacott, George Orwell, Dr. Seuss, Mark Twain, Ayn Rand, Maya Angelou were all "pseudonymous writers" (which they were) is in any way a "pejorative insult", or "a personal attack meant to undermine the person and their views[..] by labeling [them] as fake or pseudo", depicting them somehow "in a negative, dismissive and illegitimate light while influencing any would-be listeners or viewers from being receptive to their ideas and theories". That's just nonsense. Calling a pseudonymous writer a pseudonymous writer is in no way a judgement on the motives they may have had for hiding their real names (which were various). It is a statement of fact. The same goes for somebody who see Gobekli Tepe and just sees "mysterious" T-pillars with pictures on them and disorderly piles of stones around them as opposed to someone who sees a highly-complex stratigraphical sequence. One is approaching the site in a pseudoarchaeological way, the other not. That is not a perjurpous observation, it is a statement of (verifiable) fact - in this case Jimmy Corsetti has amply demonstrated that (given every opportunity) he simply does not understand the princoples of archaeological stratigraphy. Not the foggiest.

And this is arrant nonsense too:

[this is] a personal attack meant to undermine the person and their views, rather than addressing their arguments or theories"

The whole problem for the pseudoarchaeologists is that their critics actually DO address their arguments and hypotheses (theirs are not structured theories). They show where, from the point of view of archaeological methodology, they are irreconcilably incompatible with these methods, their conclusions cannot be supported through applying the archaeological method to the same basic data from which they had selected theirs from. THAT is why what they are doing is not considered (let us say the same form of) archaeology as what we are doinfg. It therefore needs to be differentiated, and the proper term for that, like it or not, is pseudoarchaeology. (It is not an "alternative archaeology" any more than crudely cutting somebody's leg off with an axe and no anaesthetic is not "alternative surgery").

As an aside to his other considerations, Martinez refers to "@PastPaulitics [...] a bona fide professional archaeologist and historian" as someone who "still finds himself thrown in the same basket of archaeological deplorables". As a point of record, this person with extreme rightwing views first appeared on Twitter a little over a year ago claiming to be an "archaeologist and historian with an ax (sic) to grind about how the past is used and misused in contemporary politics". Yet the archaeological literature does not yield any texts written by a "Paul Hill" on anything at all, much less "how the past is used and misused in contemporary politics", which is a subject I used to write a bit about in its central European context. I tried to engage him in conversation, when it appeared he was unable to show he had any knowledge of the basic literature or concepts of the subject he claims as his specialism. The name "Paul Hill" is that of an author of several popular books on Anglo-Saxon military history, and on Twitter @PastPaulitics uses a fantasy-figure avatrar in early-medievalesque costume. It really is not at all clear from the evidence we have that this twitter account does indeed represent a person who actually is what they say they are. Privately suspicions have been expressed that at least part of their output is in fact AI generated. Nevertheless, though this account supports pseudoarchaeologists, and criticises archaeologists who criticise their output, @PastPaulitics has not themselves produced any outright pseudoarchaeological texts, and as far as I am aware, nobody has actually named "@PastPaulitics" a pseudoarchaeologist. So this is more nonsense from the biased Mr Martinez.