Talk:Archaeology and racism

Sources

Wauchope Podcastarchyfantasies, archaeologists-to-ben-carson-ancient-egyptians-wrote-down-why-the-pyramids-were-built, what-archaeologists-really-think-about-ancient-aliens-lost-colonies-and-fingerprints-of-the-gods, archiefantasies, [1], /is-pseudoarchaeology-racist (blog, Pseudoarchaeology_The_concept_and_its_limitations from Antiquity, Vassar the-dangers-of-pseudoarchaeology[2]

Note most of the above are not reliable sources but at least some of them include some decent sources.

Springer:The Future is Now: Archaeology and the Eradication of Anti-Blackness ]

Science Magazine "Believe in Atlantis? These archaeologists want to win you back to science "[3]

An article about Wauchope's book (which should be a good source itself[4]

Race and Racism in Archaeology: Introduction Chris Gosden World Archaeology[5]

Current Anthropology: "Archaeology under the Blinding Light of Race Michael L. Blakey" [6]

Student archaeology magazine The Posthole "Challenging Racism in Archaeology" [7]

Anti-racist resources for Archaeology and Heritage [8]

Pseudoarchaeology and the Racism Behind Ancient Aliens [9] might have some useful sources.

Current Anthropology: "Archaeologists and Migration: A Problem of Attitude?" Heinrich Härke [10] includes sections on "Politics and Migrationism: Nazi Germany and Southern Africa" and "Politics and Immobilism: Soviet Archaeology".

This article is about a book (in German) that might be of interest. - Donald Albury 19:19, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Mormon pseudohistory?

Any connection? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:48, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

@Valjean thanks. I don't think so, but maybe. Doug Weller talk 14:03, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

I'll just drop a few links here. They may or may not be relevant.

• Archaeology and the Book of Mormon
• Hiding in Plain Sight: The Origins of the Book of Mormon. "To the LDS faithful, the Book of Mormon is the true historical account of a group of ancient Israelites who fled Jerusalem prior to the Babylonian captivity (600 B.C.E.) and later journeyed to the Americas to establish a new civilization."
• Black people and Mormonism
• When Mormons Aspired to Be a ‘White and Delightsome’ People. A historian looks at the legacy of racism in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
• Joseph Smith, Josiah Priest, and the Times and Seasons. "Joseph Smith’s signed editorials are shown to draw substantially from Josiah Priest’s work on the mound builders"
• Question: Did Joseph Smith plagiarize Josiah Priest's The Wonders of Nature and Providence Displayed?
• Josiah. AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES, AND DISCOVERIES IN THE. WEST
• Four Sources for Joseph Smith’s Plagiarisms
• Four “I, Nephi, Wrote This Record”: The Book of Mormon as Ancient History, Part 1—The Search for a Mesoamerican Troy. "In 1833, Josiah Priest published his American Antiquities and Discoveries in the West. It may well be, as John Sorenson has written, that this..."

Priest and Smith shared a belief that the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel came to the Americas. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:15, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

And there's also Jason Colavito's book The Mound Builder Myth, which describes seemingly all the forms the myth took in the nineteenth century and spends ten pages or so on the origins of the Book of Mormon. A. Parrot (talk) 18:23, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

I have an older brother who is somewhat racist and believes that the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel are the ancestors of Scandinavians, thus making them jew-ish. Groan! He also believes all of Trump's stolen election lies. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:41, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

@A. Parrot@Valjean This has the wrong title I think, should be Racism in archaeology with a section on pseudoarcheology, which should then be spun off as it grows. Or two articles. I'm also wondering when to move to article space. Comments? Doug Weller talk 09:06, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

That makes sense. The racist ideas of pseudoarchaeology often originate in ideas that had academic respectability at one time or another, and the distinction between archaeology and pseudoarchaeology didn't really emerge until late in the nineteenth century. Of course, racism in archaeology is a much more expansive topic (I should know, after researching discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun), but if you feel able to make a good start on it, go ahead. A. Parrot (talk) 02:59, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Suggestion from Facebook on recent racism

“I'd suggest making sure to include content on more recent racism in archaeology because it's out there in various forms. Might be a bit controversial compared to the deeper past but there are definitely issues with any theory that has to do with social or civilisation development and it was pretty widespread in the discipline in the second half of the 20th century.

A section on CRM would be great but I am unsure if any literature exists on racism in that subculture. I have definitely seen and heard it myself though... “Doug Weller talk 11:47, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Just thinking over the topic’s terms, Doug. Pseudo archaeology by definition would refer to spurious archaeology, i.e., anything involving archaeology which breaks with the scientific conventions of archaeology itself. Archaeology is primarily a matter of scientific practice, the careful excavation of an historic site to elicit knowledge about the culture or civilisation whose ruins are hidden there. Theoretically, the practice is purely technical, not driven by preconceptions as to what one may find. Pseudoarchaeology on the other hand would involve either technically incompetent digging or excavations carried out in order to elicit evidence demanded by a preconceived theory- whatever the material findings might be, the theory will slant or twist their interpretation in order to validate the theory which motivated an excavation of this type.

A lot of early archaeology was undoubtedly agenda-driven, to find for example confirmation in the Middle east of the Biblical account of the history of the area (Albright et al.,), or to find traces of (racially) Indo-European migrations and settlements. But the ideological thrust had to come to terms with the increasingly rigorous criteria demanded by the science of excavation, which were, in theory, preconceptionless in the sense that the overarching aim was to excavate with meticulous care in such a way that the dating of objects in strata would be less influenced by conjectures from external non-archaeological sources like assumedly contemporary ancient literature, and, therefore, dictate how the raw material was to be interpreted on purely internal criteria – the site stratigraphy and comparative data from other sites to determine the degree of similarity and difference between objects ranging over a wide area with roughly the same ancient chronological profile.

With the epithetic ‘racist’, the title suggests we are basically looking for examples of archaeological malpractice driven by an ethnic agenda that seeks confirmation about the desired ‘race’ and its expected antiquity. This narrows the scope down considerably.Nishidani (talk) 15:16, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

@Nishidani so two articles? Doug Weller talk 18:42, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Nazi archaeology

The chapter by Bettina Arnold in “Archaeological Fantasies” about Nazi archaeology/

The past as propaganda: totalitarian archaeology in Nazi Germany By: Arnold, Bettina. Antiquity , September 1990, - Wikipedia library has it but isn't playing nnice right now. Doug Weller talk 13:57, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Racism in archeology

Shouldn't we have an article on this subject....first? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:25, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

@ValjeanSee above, I think this article needs a rename and cover pseudoarchaeology as well, at least at first. But two is a possibility. Doug Weller talk 18:41, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Okay. This is a sub-topic, and the larger topics need to be mentioned so this sub-topic is placed in its proper context. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:47, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

This also needs a wikilink and short discussion of pseudoarcheology. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:29, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Google Workspace for academic documents I download from the Wikipedia library.

I think I can set up a Google workspace to put documents I download from the Wikipedia Library. I think I have to pay for it (Google workspace) but I can do that. What do people think? Doug Weller talk 19:48, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Right now I have Representations of Race and Racism in American Anthropology from Current Archaeology.

Special Issue Inequality and Race in the Histories of Archaeology [https://www.archaeologybulletin.org/articles/10.5334/bha-660/#:~:text=This%20special%20issue%20gathers%20together,consequences%20of%20that%20historical%20process.] (just a link to info)

Hitler's Willing Archaeologists Heather Pringle Archaeology [11]

'Arierdämmerung': Race and Archaeology in Nazi Germany

Race and Ethnicity in Mesopotamian Antiquity Zainab Bahrani World Archaeology

Beyond Racism: Some Opinions about Racialism and American Archaeology American Indian Quarterly

Africanist Archaeology and Ancient IQ: Racial Science and Cultural Evolution in the Twenty-First Century by Scott MacEachern

Race and Racism in South American Archaeology World Archaeology

The Challenge of Race to American Historical Archaeology ☀American Anthropologist see this[12]

Race and Racism in Archaeology: Introduction [13]

Doug Weller talk 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Sorry I'm late in getting back to you Doug. With this dinky makeshift computer I have, even small edits take tens of minutes, with the cursor jumping all over the place (half of this text ended up in the middle of your signature above!)- I don't think it fair that you go out of pocket to get others access to those articles. I think all you need do is give the precise links so that anyone can go, via the same wikilibrary venue, and download them the same way. (I can't do that for the moment, until my main computer is fixed)- Rest assured I, for one, will certainly get cracking on the topic.Best Nishidani (talk) 22:16, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

You don't actually need the links, just drop the titles into the Wikipedia Library search bar. Doug Weller talk 15:54, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

I'll do precisely that when I get my standard computer re-engineered sometime In hope in the near future. Best.Nishidani (talk) 17:04, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

How do we define the time limits?

Archaeology names Nabonidus c.550 BCE as the first archaeologist. This could be a problem. Doug Weller talk 17:45, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Hyperdiffusionism

While must of this is fringe, not all of it is. And is it all racist? Some is obviously. Doug Weller talk 17:49, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Great Zimbabwe

Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa

By Saul Dubow · 1995 [14]

p69 In keeping with the evolutionist scheme which is inscribed in the very structure of this work, Theal concludes with a conjectural chapter entitled ‘The Mystery of South Africa’. Here lie speculates, following the findings of R. N. Hall, that some unidentified eastern civilisation must have been responsible for the archaeological site known as Great Zimbabwe.7 The introduction of the ‘problem’ of Great Zimbabwe at this particular point serves a clear ideological purpose: for those contemporaries of Theal who remained convinced that Great Zimbabwe had been created by an unknown but obviously more advanced civilisation from beyond Africa, its existence served as a monumental contrast to the inherent barbarism of Rantu Africa. As the product of an earlier gold-mining civilisation, it functioned, too, as a striking historical precedent, prefiguring the arrival in Africa of a new and dynamic European civilisation.”

p69 In keeping with the evolutionist scheme which is inscribed in the very structure of this work, Theal concludes with a conjectural chapter entitled ‘The Mystery of South Africa’. Here lie speculates, following the findings of R. N. Hall, that some unidentified eastern civilisation must have been responsible for the archaeological site known as Great Zimbabwe.7 The introduction of the ‘problem’ of Great Zimbabwe at this particular point serves a clear ideological purpose: for those contemporaries of Theal who remained convinced that Great Zimbabwe had been created by an unknown but obviously more advanced civilisation from beyond Africa, its existence served as a monumental contrast to the inherent barbarism of Rantu Africa. As the product of an earlier gold-mining civilisation, it functioned, too, as a striking historical precedent, prefiguring the arrival in Africa of a new and dynamic European civilisation.”

p99 he made would be regarded as prejudiced.102 (In 1929 Dart was involved in a celebrated public dispute with Gertrude Caton-Thompson over the interpretation of the Zimbabwe ruins. Here he gave vent to his ardent diflusionist beliefs, arguing vigorously against the endogenous explanation proposed by Caton-Thompson. Great Zimbabwe, Dart maintained, was ‘but an incident in a tremendously long occupation or scries of contacts of past civilisations with South Africa’.103) In the event Dart gave full support to Doug Weller talk 16:42, 4 February 2023(UTC)

[15] The Guardian. "It was said that Great Zimbabwe was an African replica of the Queen of Sheba’s palace in Jerusalem. The idea was promoted by the German explorer Karl Mauch, who visited in 1871 and refused to believe that indigenous Africans could have built such an extensive network of monuments. “I do not think that I am far wrong if I suppose that the ruin on the hill is a copy of Solomon’s Temple on Mount Moriah,” Mauch declared, “and the building in the plain a copy of the palace where the Queen of Sheba lived during her visit to Solomon.” He further stated that only a “civilised nation must once have lived there” – his racist implication unmistakeable."

Moundbuilders

Jefferson[16] and [17] which I have. Doug Weller talk 17:49, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

"“nonexistent conspiracy. The surprise success of Ancient Aliens (2009–present) on the History Channel, a program which criticized me by name in its first broadcast in 2009, brought fringe history programming to the fore. Ancient Aliens, which employed Childress as an “expert” on space aliens, repeated the claim frequently across its decade-long run, and the History Channel devoted an entire series, Search for the Lost Giants (2014), to the supposed conspiracy to suppress the truth about giant white mound builders. The network’s spinoff channel H2 let its show America Unearthed (2012–2015) engage in attacks on the Smithsonian and let its host, geologist Scott F. Wolter, indulge for three seasons in expounding”

— The Mound Builder Myth: Fake History and the Hunt for a "Lost White Race" by Jason Colavito Doug Weller talk

[18] recent book published by a reliable publisher pushing Mound Builders. Internet archive Traditions of Dee-Coo-Cah [19]. Doug Weller talk 17:56, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Dark Emu?

[20] Doug Weller talk 13:19, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Olmecs

Doug Weller talk 13:20, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Pre-Māori settlement of New Zealand theories

But not sure this has to do with archaeology. Doug Weller talk 12:28, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Tiwanaku and Arthur Posnansky

Arthur Posnansky, the Czar of Tiwanaku Archaeology Doug Weller talk 12:49, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Henri Breuil and the The White Lady (Namibia)

Another good one for Africa. I have a number of sources. "Interpreting the 'White Lady' Rock-Painting of South West Africa: Some Considerations'", "Polyschematic prehistory at the dusk of colonialism: Internationalism, racism, and science in Henri Breuil and Jan Smuts", "A book review of The White Lady and Atlantis, Ophir and Great Zimbabwe". I don't have that book though. Doug Weller talk 14:21, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

When to go live? Writer's block

Struggling with making a decent lead and I'd like to go live once the Mound builders section is finished. Any suggestions? @Valjean, Donald Albury, A. Parrot, and Nishidani: Doug Weller talk 15:38, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Hard to say, I tend to keep new articles in user space until I don't see anything significant to change, a habit I picked up when I was submitting things to DYK years ago. That does mean my user space is cluttered with half-written articles that are up to nine years old, so I'm probably not the best judge of when an article is ready. Donald Albury 16:45, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Sorry Doug. I've been really remiss having undertaken to help out. Apart from the distraction of that Arbcom nonsense, I had in succession a broken toilet seat (guest slipped off it while having a crap), a broken water pipe in the sink. a blocked chimney and appointments for a plumber to check a flat I have for a possible leakage on the condominial toilet drainpipe, not to speak of repainting the kitchen after someone remarked on the sooty walls. Ergo almost zero wikiwork as I tinkered to replace rusted hinges, get encrusted anthreacite out of the chimney and replace rooted (sic.Australianism) metal tubes etc., other than jotting down in smoko breaks those points on my page which I like to think about as I do these manual chores.

If you ping me (i.e. wake me up from my disattentiveness) tomorrow I'll fix the lead by summarizing the article as it stands. That done, I really do think you should jag yourself out of the stasis by transferring it from a work page to an actual wiki article. It's more than a stub, and once up I think people will begin to notice it and lend a hand. Articles are never ready in draft space. What I usually do is write up as much as I have at hand, and then put it up as an article so that others have a solid organized base to work from. Best Nishidani (talk) 23:34, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

@Nishidani Fantastic! Shall I move it out and complete the Mound Builders section live? I've an issue about the rs script I'm trying to sort out. And this talk page - it's messy but I can archive it later I guess. Doug Weller talk 09:44, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Gimme a tic so that I can go through the rest of the article over the next hour (found yesterday a stairwall covered in a corner by a tall vase with long flowers, has blistering, but cleansing it and laying a layer of stucco can be done in an hour, rather than eat up my day), then bang it into mainspace, where we can continue. I'd do much more on this but my main computer seized up and requires lengthy repairs by a busy friend, and this one is slow, plagued by a habit of having the cursor jump all over the place when I write, and isn't accepted by jstor when I try to pull down articles. I'll be up in Normandy later this week for a few weeks, doing a gardening job for a friend, but April, all going well, I should be able to get back to this seriously on my main computer.Nishidani (talk) 11:25, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

@Nishidani Fantastic. But let me move it into mainspace, ok. Do I leave a redirect to here? Doug Weller talk 11:45, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Fine.Go ahead.

Just as a suggestion for other routes to explore in the meantime. Let's try and look at the theme in a broader background context. Martin Bernal's Black Athena was rightly lambasted for many good reasons, above all philological and his neo-Velikovskian attempt to rewrite Egyptian chronology. But even harsh reviews admitted that there was a good deal of truth in the incipit of his first volume, about the interface between 19th century racist and imperial conceptions and the interpretation of the deep past. Just as that period witnessed the completion of imperial conquests over the world, ideas arose that core civilisations influenced the pèriphery by diffusion, which rebuffed the idea of repeated autonomous developments. 'Primitives' by definition didn't have the intellectual abilities to build anything monumental or create polities that then vanished. All we're interested in here is how that might have affected archaeology's exploration and interpretation of discovered or uncovered antiquities. One lead is the Kulturkreis thinking that developed after Leo Frobenius because the latter wrote influential interpretations of Africa. But this is not only about false interpretation of a stratum. Archaeoplogy had two dimensions, the scientific excavation of a site for its intrinsic historical value, and retrieving for Western museums monumental artefacts. In, the latter regard, often the thirst for plundering and illicit exporting of the retrieved artifacts betrayed a eurocentric, racist indifference if not contempt for the history of the periphery concerned. Some practices were little different from tomb-robbing, depriving a peripheral country of its heritage in order to embellish European collections. Frobenius was a notable case. He managed to destroy archaeological sites like Ife in Yoruba territory. He believed that what he got his hands on was a material culture of objects whose craftwork sophistication he likened to that of early Greece, and given that it was in Africa, couldnt have been produced by them but must suggest the impact and presence of Greek or Phoenician settlers in prehistorical times. Just a few thoughts off the top of my head.Nishidani (talk) 13:08, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Having taken time to read it over, I think it is ready for main space. Obviously, there is room for other cases of racism in archaeology, but the structure is there. I am thinking just now of the business about Haplogroup X (mtDNA)#North America and the Solutrean hypothesis. I remember that the DNA recovered from the Windover Archeological Site#Human remains was claimed to support that hypothesis. Ill have to think about that some more. Donald Albury 14:53, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

The ancient carving found in Vero Beach in 2009 has also been attributed to Solutreans. (See Vero man#Later developments) Donald Albury 22:52, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

lots of material.

[21] Doug Weller talk 11:46, 24 March 2023 (UTC)