How archaeology is distorted by Science magazine and the National Geographic Society

The public has a lot of interest in archaeology, and new finds and discoveries are often in the news. Sometimes the press reports outlandish, nonsense claims, and sometimes it reports rigorous and important claims. Many archaeologists ignore such press coverage (good and bad), and many of us engage with it. If there are elements of the press that distort archaeology, we may or may not want to deal with this. I often ask myself if it is worth the time and effort to try to correct some misleading claim going around social media and the internet. In a very real sense, this kind of thing can be viewed as separate and apart from the actual process of scientific research. I can do my archaeology just fine without worrying about whether the latest "news" about an ancient monkey god is a pile of baloney or not.

But there are other distortions of archaeology that are more insidious and more troubling. These come from well-established, serious institutions whose missions include furthering research and knowledge in many fields, including archaeology. I am thinking here of Science magazine and the National Geographic Society. Science publishes archaeology, and thus promotes the scholarly work of archaeologists while showcasing our work to a wider audience beyond archaeology. This is good. But the kinds of archaeology article they publish is a biased and distorted sample of current scientifically-inclined archaeological research. Thus, Science distorts archaeology.  The National Geographic Society funds archaeology, and also publicizes archaeology in its website, TV shows, and magazine. Again, this is good. But, again, the archaeology promoted by NGS is often a distorted view of the past, emphasizing spectacular and mysterious finds, often to the point of severe distortion. This is done for commercial gain.

Science Magazine

The review process for Science is a clear example of scholars and individuals who are not archaeologists making decisions about what archaeology is worthy of publication in Science, and those decisions distort our field. The single most popular post in the 11-year history of this blog -- by far -- is one from 2012 called "Rejected by Science" (over 100,000 hits, when most of the posts get well under 5,000 hits). So, let me quote from that post:

 If you pay attention to the journal, you will know that they tend to favor high-tech methods, archaeometry, fancy quantitative methods, and reports about "the earliest" this or that. While I can only recall one or two papers in Science that I thought were incompetent (a much better record than most archaeology journals, some of which are full of incompetent articles), their selection of archaeology papers is definitely biased in a certain direction. I think one way of expressing this might be that Science publishes archaeology articles that will appeal on methodological grounds to non-archaeological scientists. My guess is that papers that are more synthetic or less methods-heavy don't make it through the initial review (which is done by non-archaeological scientists).

I have been rejected by Science at least four times (and about 3 times by Nature, and a couple of times by PNAS). I've been rejected by some of the finest journals in the world! So, maybe my complaint is just sour grapes. But I have had many colleagues over the years express agreement with my sentiments as quoted above. Papers are first skimmed by a high-level reviewer, none of whom is an archaeologist. If they think it might be interesting, the manuscript is sent out for review. Most papers are dropped at this stage. I must say, Nature does the same thing, but quicker. I think one of my rejections from Nature took only a couple of hours!

The fact that papers are initially screened by someone who is NOT an expert in the subject matter of the paper is a common critique of the Science review process. Indeed, one of the ways that PLOS-One touts their rigor is their claim that all papers will be reviewed by subject-matter experts.

This review process, and its outcomes, clearly distorts the archaeological content published in the journal Science. Paper are not judged by archaeologists, and only a narrow range of types of archaeological papers get published. Check out my older on issues with Science and Nature:

"Rejected by Science!"  (2012), initial post

"Rejected by Science, Yet Again!" (2012)

"Problems with Science and Nature"  (2013)

National Geographic Society

The publicity put out by the National Geographic Society provides another case where the nature of the archaeology that is funded and reported is often distorted. But instead of a bias within science, as in the case above, this is a commercial bias that favors sensationalism, mystery, and click-baiting themes. The NGS website may make sensationalist claims, and these get taken up by the mainstream media. The Guardian often seems to swallow them, hook, line, and sinker. The latest example is the claim that archaeologist Chris Fisher has discovered an ancient city in Mexico, using LiDAR, that "had as many buildings as Manhattan," to quote the Guardian. Some Mexican and French archaeologists objected in the Mexican paper, El Pais. They claimed that a city that big could not possibly have existed, because it was not mentioned in the historical sources! Give me a break, that is just silly. The city (Angamuco) IS large, but much of the LiDAR has not been ground-truthed yet, so this is a speculative claim.

Another recent case was the announcement that a new huge city was found below the jungle in Guatemala by LiDAR! It was accompanied in the press by image of Tikal. See my prior post on this. The National Geographic Society press release is mostly hype and speculation, which then got worse as other media outlets picked up the story. My purpose here is not to question hype or expose silly claims. Rather, I want to emphasize that the nature of the archaeological finds that get promoted are in the hands of an institution outside of archaeology, one that does a lot of good through funding and publicizing. Maybe we should give NGS a break, since they do a lot of good for archaeology. But I am more inclined to question their methods and goals. They are commercializing archaeology, and using our hard work to make a buck. That might be ok, if they were more objective in their reporting. I did get some funds from NGS back around 1990, but I'm not sure I would accept their funding now. Who knows what nonsense they could create from my research.

More hype than archaeology

If you want an extended example of NGS nonsense and hype, check out the story of the "Lost city of the Monkey God." NGS-funded "explorers" tramped around the Honduran jungle and came out with outrageous claims about finding a lost city. Never mind that the site in question was well known to archaeologists and had been studied earlier. A whole story of intrepid explorers and fantastic discoveries was generated. The resulting book has become a best-seller. Please check out these sources for some objective, archaeologically-appropriate writing about this episode:

blog post by Rosemary Joyce from 2012

another post by Joyce, 2015

article in Smithsonian magazine about the episode (2015)

An open letter to NGS signed by a bunch of archaeologists that lists all the problems with the activities and their reporting.

These archaeologists are so discouraged that they feel that any additional harping will only increase sales of the book by Preston. I hope I am not contributing to the hype here.

Apart from the scientific and scholarly nonsense of the Monkey God episode, I find it discouraging for the same reason as the reviewing procedures used by Science: archaeology is being distorted by non-archaeological institutions that purportedly exist, in part, to promote and improve archaeology.

Why I am skeptical about the new Maya LiDAR results from NGS

New Tikal LiDAR map

I am skeptical about the hype surrounding the recent press release from the National Geographic Society about the new findings of LiDAR survey in the Maya region of northern Guatemala. I have no reason to question the quality of the LiDAR survey, or its potential usefulness for understanding aspects of ancient Maya society in this region. Rather, I question two aspects of the way these new findings have been portrayed, both in the NGS press release and in the journalism that has resulted from the find. (1) This is portrayed as revealing brand-new ideas, when in fact earlier LiDAR work had very similar results; and (2) The work is portrayed as a major scientific discovery, when in fact it is only the first step of a process, the end result of which will be (one hopes) some major scientific discoveries.

LiDAR is a relatively new airborne remote sensing technology that permits detailed mapping of the surface of the earth at a detailed scale. It is far superior to earlier forms of satellite or airplane mapping in that LiDAR can penetrate dense vegetation. It is ideal for the Maya lowlands, where the jungle vegetation hinders traditional mapping. Wherever it has been applied, in the Maya area, the result is the identification of many new houses and features of the built environment. (1) This is my first misgiving: the lack of acknowledgement that Mayanists have been working with LiDAR for more than seven years (Chase et al. 2012; Chase et al. 2011).

The NGS story has breathless quotes about how suddenly we know about many new features and structures on the Maya landscape. Well, that is what LiDAR does in the Maya lowlands. It finds many more features than archeologists knew about previously. If archaeologists are surprised about this, they just haven’t looked at the prior work, both in the Maya area (Brown et al. 2016; Chase et al. 2014b; Chase et al. 2014a; Chase et al. 2012; Chase et al. 2011; Chase et al. 2016; Chase 2016; Chase and Weishampel 2016; Ebert et al. 2016; Prufer et al. 2015; Von Schwerin et al. 2016; Yaeger et al. 2016), in other parts of Mesoamerica (Fisher and Leisz 2013; Rosenswig et al. 2015; Rosenswig et al. 2013), and particularly at Angkor in Cambodia (Evans et al. 2013; Hanus and Evans 2016).

 

Lidar-identified small reservoirs at Cacacol. Chase 2016.

One difficulty with LiDAR data is that while it is easy to see large structures like pyramids in the output data, small features such as houses or agricultural fields are more difficult to pick out. They often require a combination of intensive, time-consuming searching by eye, and sophisticated custom computer algorithms that can pinpoint such features automatically. For example, my student, Adrian Chase, analyzed LiDAR data to identify small residential-level reservoirs at the Maya city of Caracol (Chase 2016). In areas that had been mapped previously by traditional methods, Adrian’s algorithm identified 25 times the number of small reservoirs at the site! These did not stand out on the LiDAR landscape like dropped pins in Google-Maps. They had to be painstakingly identified.

As far as I can tell, the intensive phase of analysis has not yet been carried out (or is not reported in this press release). It is easy to use LiDAR to find a bunch of new features and make a pretty map. But the next two steps are more difficult. For the first step, the archaeologist has to analyze the data—staring at maps and applying algorithms—so that one can be confident that most of the relevant small features have been identified. The pretty color maps one sees in all the press accounts are not the only way to portray spatial data in LiDAR; often other visualization methods are more useful. Adrian was able to identify all those small reservoirs only because he did two things: he spent countless hours staring at the output, and he applied custom computer algorithms to the data to identify the features. There is no indication that archaeologists have carried out this intensive level of analysis of the new Guatemalan data.

 

3 LiDAR visualizations. Chase 2016

A second crucial step is to analyze the results quantitatively and spatially to construct population estimates and study the on-the-ground patterning in settlement data. The NGS article subtitle says there were “millions more people than previously thought.” The report has this quote:

“Most people had been comfortable with population estimates of around 5 million,” said [Francisco] Estrada-Belli, who directs a multi-disciplinary archaeological project at Holmul, Guatemala. “With this new data it’s no longer unreasonable to think that there were 10 to 15 million people there—including many living in low-lying, swampy areas that many of us had thought uninhabitable.”

It will take quite a bit of analysis to turn this quick preliminary suggestion into rigorous population estimates for settlements and regions. These additional steps—technical application of algorithms, lots of staring at screens, and then quantification and calculation—are only beginning for the Maya lowlands (Chase 2016; Chase and Weishampel 2016; Ebert et al. 2016), and there is no sign that they have been accomplished for the new Guatemalan LiDAR results.

 

LiDAR of central Caracol. Chase et al 2011.

So, what is my beef? The new results are just in, and the analysis is probably only starting. This is the normal process of science. (2) My second misgiving is the idea—promoted by NGS, by the people interviewed in the article, and by secondary articles in the media—that archaeological advances consist of discoveries in the field. Yes, the fieldwork is essential. But without an often lengthy period of analysis, one typically cannot know the meaning or importance of the finds.

There is a kind of archaeology where the main discovery is made in the field. If one is looking for the tomb of a king or noble, and one finds it, that may be the essential defining moment of discovery. But I pursue another kind of archaeology. I have spent my career on the archaeology of Aztec provincial households. When I dig up another house or trash midden, it seems pretty much the same as countless I and others have excavated. They are pretty boring, I have to admit. But once I have spent months or years studying the artifacts, quantifying them, sending off samples of technical analyses, only then do I make my discoveries. When I argue that this household was well-off and that one was poor, or when I argue that conquest by the Aztec empire had little effect on local people, these are my discoveries. They rely on extensive analyses of artifacts. I had no idea about these things at the time of excavation. I discuss this issue—what is the real moment of discovery?—in more detail in my recent book (Smith 2016).

 

Social interpretations at Yautepec were based on study of 1 million potsherds

When one focuses almost exclusively on the actual uncovering of a find during fieldwork (for an excavation), or on the initial pretty maps of a LiDAR survey—before the hard work of analysis is done—one is distorting the scientific significance of our work. Will NGS have a big feature when the archaeologists involved actually publish a revised population estimate for northern Guatemala, or when they can quantify the amount of construction in rural vs urban areas?
We'll see.

A kind of archaeology based on extensive analysis

How can one spot a finding that seems spectacular but is actually a preliminary find, not yet analyzed, from a finding based on proper analysis and interpretation? Peer-review publication is the primary way to do this. The NGS piece was based entirely on interviews, not on a paper that has been peer-reviewed and accepted by a scientific journal.

Claims that LiDAR will revolutionize the study of Maya settlement and demography may very well be correct, but it is too soon to tell. The Guatemalan LiDAR has reached the stage of preliminary findings and pretty maps, but not the stage of solid architectural, demographic, and social findings. I look forward to the scientific results. I don’t care if they are an internet sensation; I’d rather see them published in a journal.

References

Brown, M. Kathryn, Jason Yaeger, and Bernadette Cap

2016 A Tale of Two Cities; LiDAR Survey and New Discoveries at Xunantunich. Research Reports in Belizean Archaeology 13: 51-60.

Chase, Adrian S. Z.

2016 Beyond Elite Control: Residential Reservoirs at Caracol, Belize. WIREsWater 3 (6): 763-797.

Chase, Adrian S. Z. and John F. Weishampel

2016 Water Capture and Agricultural Terracing at Caracol, Belize as Revealed through Lidar and GIS. Advances in Archaeological Practice 4 (3): 357-370.

Chase, Arlen F., Diane Z. Chase, Jaime J Awe, John F. Weishampel, Gyles Iannone, Holley Moyes, Jason Yaeger, and M. Kathryn Brown

2014a        The Use of LiDAR in Understanding the Ancient Maya Landscape. Advances in Archaeological Practice 2 (3): 208-221.

Chase, Arlen F., Diane Z. Chase, Jaime J. Awe, John F. Weishampel, Gyles Iannone, Holly Moyes, Jason Yaeger, Kathryn Brown, Ramesh L. Shrestha, William E. Carter, and Juan Fernandez Diaz

2014b        Ancient Maya Regional Settlement and Inter-Site Analysis: The 2013 West-Central Belize LiDAR Survey. Remote Sensing 6: 8671-8695.

Chase, Arlen F., Diane Z. Chase, Christopher T. Fisher, Stephen J. Leisz, and John F. Weishampel

2012 Geospatial revolution and remote sensing LiDAR in Mesoamerican archaeology. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109: 12916-12921.

Chase, Arlen F., Diane Z. Chase, John F. Weishampel, Jason B. Drake, Ramesh L. Shrestha, K. Clint Slatton, Jaime J. Awe, and William E. Carter

2011 Airborne LiDAR, Archaeology, and the Ancient Maya Landscape at Caracol, Belize. Journal of Archaeological Science 37: 387-398.

Chase, Arlen F., Kathryn Reese-Taylor, Juan C. Fernandez-Diaz, and Diane Z. Chase

2016 Progression and Issues in the Mesoamerican Geospatial Revolution: An Introduction. Advances in Archaeological Practice 4 (3): 219-231.

Ebert, Claire E., Julie A. Hoggarth, and Jaime J. Awe

2016 Integrating Quantitative Lidar Analysis and Settlement Survey in the Belize River Valley. Advances in Archaeological Practice 4 (3): 284-300.

Evans, Damian H., Roland J. Fletcher, Christophe Pottier, Jean-Baptiste Chevance, Dominique Soutif, Boun Suy Tan, Sokrithy Im, Darith Ea, Tina Tin, Samnang Kim, Christopher Cromarty, Stéphane De Greef, Kasper Hanus, Pierre Bâty, Robert Kuszinger, Ichita Shimoda, and Glenn Boornazian

2013 Uncovering archaeological landscapes at Angkor using lidar. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110: 12595-12600.

Fisher, Christopher T. and Stephen J. Leisz

2013 New Perspectives on Purapécha Urbanism through the Use of LiDAR at the Stie of Angamuco, Mexico. In A Primer on Space Archaeology: In Observance of the 40th Anniversary of the World Heritage Convention, edited by D.C. Comer, pp. 191-202. SpringerB riefs in Archaeology, vol. 5. Springer, New Yokr.

Hanus, Kasper and Damian Evans

2016 Imaging the Waters of Angkor: A Method for Semi‐Automated Pond Extraction from LiDAR Data. Archaeological Prospection 23 (2): 87-94.

Prufer, Keith M., Amy E. Thompson, and Douglas J. Kennett

2015 Evaluating airborne LiDAR for detecting settlements and modified landscapes in disturbed tropical environments at Uxbenká, Belize. Journal of Archaeological Science 57: 1-13.

Rosenswig, Robert M., Ricardo López-Torrijos, and Caroline E. Antonelli

2015 Lidar data and the Izapa polity: new results and methodological issues from tropical Mesoamerica. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 7 (4): 487-504.

Rosenswig, Robert M., Ricardo López-Torrijos, Caroline E. Antonelli, and Rebecca Mendelsohn

2013 LiDAR Mapping and Surface Survey of the Izapa State in the Tropical Piedmont. Journal of Archaeological Science 40: 1493-1507.

Smith, Michael E.

2016 At Home with the Aztecs: An Archaeologist Uncovers their Domestic Life. Routledge, New York.

Von Schwerin, Jennifer, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Fabio Remondino, Maria Grazia Spera, Michael Auer, Nicolas Billen, Lukas Loos, Laura Stelson, and Markus Reindel

2016 Airborne LiDAR acquisition, post-processing and accuracy-checking for a 3D WebGIS of Copan, Honduras. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 5: 85-104.

Yaeger, Jason, M Kathryn Brown, and Bernadette Cap

2016 Locating and dating sites using Lidar survey in a mosaic landscape in Western Belize. Advances in Archaeological Practice 4 (3): 339-356.

Getting into the journal Science through the back door

Well, since I can't seem to get myself into the journal Science as an author (see my post on my second Science rejection, and one on my third rejection; my first rejection was back in my pre-blogging days), I guess I'll just have to settle for getting quoted in one of the journalism articles in Science.

Wade, Lizzie  (2014)  Beyond the Temples: Turning Their Backs on Spectacular Monuments, Archaeologists are Studying Ordinary Households to Uncover the Daily Rhythms of Long-Lost Cities. Science 344:684-686.

This is a decent discussion of non-monumental archaeology in Mesoamerica, with only a couple of silly points included (I won't mention these, to save some people embarrassment). For me, the fact that I am not misquoted or misunderstood is a pleasant surprise. I was impressed with the knowledge and enthusiasm of author Lizzie Wade in our phone conversation a month or two ago.

It is really great to see several projects from the University at Albany (SUNY) getting featured. Marilyn Masson and Rob Rosenswig are featured and quoted in the article, as is Rob's student Rebecca Mendelsohn, and my former Albany Ph.D. Tim Hare. Albany has a fantastic Mesoamerican archaeology program, a fact that some university administrators there can't seem seem to understand. But the journal Science understands.

And, it's always good to hear some interesting news about Teotihuacan from some of the top people working there (Linda Manzanilla, Ian Robertson, and Mike Spence).

The Tlamimilolpa compound at Teotihuacan

And speaking of Teotihuacan, just wait till you hear the new results on inequality at Teotihuacan, from my research group at ASU (the paper is under review).It will blow your socks off!

Keeping archaeology safre from vampires, dung, and twisted animal bladders

Vampires:  I just had a journal insist that my co-authors and I tone down some of our wording in a paper. Jason Ur, Gary Feinman and I will publish a paper in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research taking contemporary geographers and others to task for promoting the VERY incorrect opinion of Jane Jacobs that cities preceded agriculture in prehistory. I blogged about this some time ago, and I thought it was a settled issue (duh!). But then Peter Taylor published a paper in that journal touting Jacobs's ideas again. So we fired off a critique, which we are now revising for publication. But we were told to remove the vampire metaphor. Here is what we said:

We view the historical part of Jacobs’ “cities first” model as a vampire. It normally sleeps, out of public view, only to emerge periodically and wreak havoc among the unsuspecting. Then it quietly returns to obscurity, leaving people to wonder whether something so contrary to normal experience can really live on. We intend to put a stake through this vampire of a model and end its tortured life once and for all.

In fact, we had discussed this passage and decided to include it, even though the reviewers and editors would probably not like it. We even considered using a zombie metaphor, but vampires seemed more apt. Oh well, I guess the world of publishing on archaeology is now safe from vampires (and maybe zombies), at least for a while.
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Dung: The "manuring hypothesis" in Mediterranean archaeology explains the presence of sherds and other small artifacts in non-site locations as deriving from the use of animal dung as agricultural fertlizer. When farmers scooped up the dung, they would have also scooped up some sherds and such from domestic trash, which then ended up spread on fields, far from settlements. One of the major papers on this topic is Alcock et al (1994). One of the authors gave me a copy of the manuscript prior to publication, and I was very pleased to see that it began with a quote from a Monty Python skit: "Q: What's brown and sounds like a bell?  A: Dung!". (Note, this joke is from "The Visitors", NOT from the skit where John Cleese shows up with a bin full of dung.

"Dung, sir."

When the book came out, this quote had been removed from the chapter. I've always meant to ask the authors who was responsible for this, but never got around to it. One certainly wouldn't want to include scatological humor in a serious archaeological book! Standards must be maintained. Dung and vampires need not apply.
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To continue this serious scholarly discussion, I want to share two recent emails. It seems that as an Aztec specialist, all the odd-balls out there want Aztec information from me.

(1). I glanced at the subject line, and thought it said "Aztec demography." Great, we need more research on this topic. But when I opened the email, I realized that the subject line in fact read, "Aztec demonology."

Hello,

I found your email when I was researching professors who specialize in Aztec studies. I'm a screenwriter working on a horror script. If you're not too busy, I was wondering if there's anything you can tell me about Aztec demonology, or Aztec goddesses who protected women?

I don't know what "demonology" means, and I really don't want to know, so I replied in the negative.

(2) This week I got this email:

My name is XXXXXX; I am a researcher for XXXXXXXXX looking at alternative subcultures. I'm currently researching an interesting story on balloon fetishism, and I was hoping you could confirm the following tidbit of internet information regarding balloon animal origins: is it true that the Aztecs used to inflate animal bowels and then twist them into animal shapes for sacrificial offerings?

Give me a break! I don't claim to know every single primary source on the Aztecs in detail, so it is possible that I have missed this important feature of Aztec ritual behavior. But I think I would have heard something about this weird practice if it were indeed described in a reputable source. It would be an excellent example of weird ancient practices that gross-out undergraduates, always something to be noted.

Alcock, Susan E., John F. Cherry, and Jack L. Davis
    1994    Intensive Survey, Agricultural Practice, and the Classical Landscape of Greece. In Classical Greece: Ancient Histories and Modern Archaeologies, edited by Ian Morris, pp. 137-190. Cambridge University Press, New York.

PS - the IMDB has a nice list of quotes from Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Science type 1 vs. Science type 2

In a previous post, Rejected by Science!, I identified two different concepts of science in archaeology. Archaeological science type 1 is the pursuit of knowledge in a way that conforms to a scientific epistemology. In the words of John Gerring:

·         “Inquiry of a scientific mature, I stipulate, aims to be cumulative, evidence-based (empirical), falsifiable, generalizing, nonsubjective, replicable, rigorous, skeptical, systematic, transparent, and grounded in rational argument. There are differences of opinion over whether, or to what extent, science lives up to these high ideals. Even so, these are the ideals to which natural and social scientists generally aspire, and they help to define the enterprise in a general way and to demarcate it from other realms.” (Gerring 2012:11).

Archaeological science type 2, on the other hand, is the use of non-archaeological scientific techniques by archaeologists, for whatever purpose. Ideally, science type 2 is done in pursuit of the goals of science type 1, but such is not always the case. In my previous post, I identified two situations when archaeological science type 2 is done in ways that do not conform to type 1:

• Relativist, post-modern archaeologists who criticize a scientific epistemology for archaeology often use archaeometric methods (science type 2), in pursuit of goals that are not scientific.
• Methodologically sloppy archaeologists sometimes aim to use science type 2 methods to further science type 1 ends, but their sloppiness prevents progress.

There is a third condition where archaeological science type 2 can be done at odds  with type 1 science that I did not discuss:

• Non-archaeological scientific techniques are often used to make exaggerated, sensationalist claims that go beyond the "replicable, rigorous, skeptical" nature of scientific research.

For a very nice example of this phenomenon, see Rosemary Joyce's blog posting, "Good science, big hype, bad archaeology." NSF-supported LIDAR mapping in Honduras (a science type 2 method, for sure) has been interpreted, without ground-truthing, as possibly identifying a legendary "lost city" of Ciudad Blanca (see the Univ. of Houston press release here).  Never mind that scholars have identified this "city" as a figment of legend, not fact. Now in these circumstances it is often difficult to know just who thinks that Ciudad Blanca may have been found. Did the LIDAR scientists tell their press agent this story? Or did they merely mention Ciudad Blanca as an aside, but it was trumpeted by the press release (a frequent practice)? Government officials in Honduras are evidently jumping on the bandwagon too.

To my mind, this episode illustrates the problems that can occur when the two types of archaeological science are in conflict with one another. But right now it is merely a controversy in the realm of press releases and blogs and the internet. The rubber will hit the road when the research is submitted to a scholarly journal. And at that point one can only hope, as I suggested in my earlier post, that the editors will not be fooled into thinking that archaeological science type 2 that is done is opposition to science type 1 is really a scientific endeavor epistemologically.

Gerring, John
2012    Social Science Methodology: A Unified Framework. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, New York.

By the way, that earlier post "Rejected by Science!" is BY FAR the most popular post in the history of this blog, with perhaps more hits than all of the other posts combined. I am puzzled by this, not sure why it is so popular. I am not complaining, just curious. If you have any ideas, let me know.

Television shows celebrate looting

This is an excerpt from an email sent to SAA members by President Fred Limp:


"Late last week the SAA Board was informed that there are two TV series planned that promote and glorify the looting and destruction of archaeological sites. They are American Diggers and Diggers. The first is scheduled for Spike TV and the other for National Geographic TV. As past SAA President Bob Kelly wrote in a recent e-mail in response to American Diggers, "This shameless and shameful program will glorify and promote the mindless destruction of archaeological sites in the U.S." 

SAA and other groups, such as SHA, have already prepared and sent strong letters condemning both of these programs to the production companies, networks, and others. Copies of the SAA letters can be found on the SAA website (http://bit.ly/w2MHJM, and http://bit.ly/wzT7IA). The letters provide details on why we are so concerned. Up to this point Spike TV has not responded to the public outcry. Leadership of National Geographic, however, has indicated that, while they are unable to stop the showing tomorrow on such short notice, they will place a disclaimer into the show that speaks to laws protecting archaeological and historic sites. They are also willing to enter into discussions with the archaeological community to determine how to raise awareness of the impacts of the use of metal detectors for treasure hunting. We will advise you of developments in this area."


Earlier today, Peter Peregrine (President, Society for Anthropological Sciences) sent around the following update:

"It appears that National Geographic Channel has pulled their show—at least it no longer shows up on its website (though repeats of the episodes aired yesterday are still scheduled for Friday).  I heard through the grapevine that legal action might be initiated in the case of the artifact collecting done at the Old Montana State Prison (state owned and a National Register property) during the first episode that aired, as it seems the SHPO was not informed of that work and no permit was issued."

Does anyone recall what happened with the SAA and eBay several years ago? eBay was (and is) selling antiquities, and many archaeologists were boycotting the service (I still am). I don't remember what official actions, if any, were taken by the SAA, AIA, etc.