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Pseudoarchaeology: the concept and its limitations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Robin Derricourt
Robin Derricourt*
Affiliation:
School of History & Philosophy, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia; correspondence address: 4 Gap Road, Watsons Bay, Sydney, NSW 2030, Australia (Email: r.derricourt@unsw.edu.au)
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Abstract

The familiar term “pseudoarchaeology” allows us to categorise and comfortingly dismiss a diverse group of alternative presentations of the past, and reinforce our own professionalism as scholars and scientists. Glyn Daniel regularly denounced the ideas of a “lunatic fringe” in Antiquity editorials, and contributors to a recent unforgiving book analyse “how pseudoarchaeology misrepresents the past” (Fagan 2006). Other terms like “alternative” or “cult” archaeologies describe the same phenomena, and it is appropriate to consider elements of pseudohistory in the same argument. The conventional image is of a clear gap between the knowledge gained through our scholarly and scientific research and thinking, and the illusory pasts and falsehoods created by others. But such a binary division does present problems.

Type
Research article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 86 , Issue 332 , June 2012 , pp. 524 - 531
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2012

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