Aliens, Atlantis, and Aryanism
Grad student Caolán Mac An Aircinn spoke with Hayley Barnett about the UT Antiquities Action conference and tackling pseudoarchaeology in the classroom.
As a child, in love with all things fantastical, I picked up a book called ‘The Demon-Haunted World,’ expecting to be regaled with tales of dragons, dastards and derring-do. What I instead found was a thoughtful meditation by Carl Sagan, beginning with a conversation he had had with a taxi driver who professed an interest in science — only to ask about Atlantis, aliens, and many other pseudoscientific topics. Sagan then proceeded through pseudoscientific theory after theory, including magnetic healing, solipsism and whatever view of history ‘The Flintstones’ promotes, deflating each accurately and artfully. It hurt to see ghosts and aliens, in which I desperately wanted to believe, brushed aside so handily, but I put the book down a lot wiser than I’d been when I picked it up.
Unfortunately, Sagan’s book seems to have had little effect in the wider world. Things have gone from bad to worse, and the science of archaeology has been particularly hard hit. Altering the past to suit one’s needs is nothing new; early American colonists attempted to wipe away the prehistory of the native people of the American West in favor of white ‘Moundbuilders.’ But Erich von Daniken’s fact-free “Chariots of the Gods” inaugurated an era of anything-goes speculation on what exactly it was our ancestors got up to, and ‘Ancient Aliens’ and ‘Legends of the Lost with Megan Fox’ spread wild assertions with a cheerful disregard for scientific accuracy or common sense.
One might be tempted to dismiss these out of hand, were it not for the disturbingly racist implications many of these hypotheses carries. The Pyramids, Great Zimbabwe and the Native American city of Cahokia are regularly called into question, but no one ever argues that the Parthenon is alien handiwork (see also Sarah E. Bond’s article on ancient aliens and racism). The obvious implication is that only Europeans were ever capable of complex feats of engineering. The result is a spreading aporia about the construction of ancient monuments and an insidious distrust of archaeologists and historians as an élite cabal of bookworms and pedants obscuring the truth of the past from the world.
Academics have turtled away from these accusations in the past, but UT’s Antiquities Action hopes to change that. Academics and young researchers from UT Austin and beyond gathered to highlight various aspects of the pseudoarchaeological boom we are enduring at the moment, including our very own Hayley Barnett, who wrote on tackling pseudoscience in one of the most important frontiers we have: the classroom.
Hayley Barnett: As Caolán writes, I gave a talk on the experience my colleague Christy Schirmer and I had leading discussion sections on pseudoarchaeology in our Ancient Mediterranean World course this semester. Shows like ‘Ancient Aliens’ are often our students’ first experiences with archaeology and ancient history. Some students likely even enroll in our courses because of their interests in these shows. As such, bringing pseudoarchaeology into the classroom can be a productive way to examine and combat the problematic and inaccurate arguments produced by pseudo-archaeological television shows and other media. Classroom discussion of these topics is also a great pedagogical tool to get our students thinking and challenging arguments in academia and beyond. The question is, of course, how can we do this responsibly?
In attempts to figure this out, Christy and I took inspiration from this SCS blog post by Ana Maria Guay, and taught a unit on pseudoarchaeology surrounding the myth of Atlantis. Using a worksheet Christy adapted from Garrett Fagan’s Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public, as well as a worksheet I created about orichalcum as a case study for pseudoarchaeological theory, Christy and I screened clips from the show ‘Ancient Aliens’ and led discussions about how and why pseudoarchaeologists construct their theories. These discussions made clear that when we give our students a forum to explore, question, criticize, and challenge, they are more than capable of doing so. Especially in areas of pseudoarchaeology, where claims that are not easily verifiable via Google search run rampant, we have an obligation as both educators and as professionals to provide and facilitate these forums for them. By participating in analytical discussions, students prepare themselves to confront with a critical eye not only pseudoarchaeology, but also ideas in other areas of the course and in their own lives.
I was just one of many speakers at the Antiquities Action conference on March 30th 2019, all of whom gave incredibly stimulating and important talks on a variety of topics within pseudoarchaeology. If you weren’t able to make it, all talks were recorded via Facebook Live; links are available via the Antiquities Action Twitter account.
— Caolán Mac An Aircinn (Ph.D. student, Classics).
— Hayley Barnett (Ph.D. student, Classics).
