Combating Anti-Intellectualism and Pseudoarchaeology through Public Engagement

Session Hosting Format: 
in-person session
Organizer(s): 
  • Curt Carbonell, Independent
Contact Email: 
curtcarbonell@gmail.com
Session Description (300 word max): 

There is nothing unique about Canada’s education system that inoculates its population from anti-intellectualism. At home and abroad, funding is being gutted in the name of cost savings and the health of millions is being influenced by anti-science populism rather than data-driven expertise. Archaeology is not immune to these problems. As Humanities and social sciences programs across the world are being decimated, heritage conservation and cultural resource management are reaching a crisis point where there is more archaeology required than there are archaeologists to do it. So, what are archaeologists doing to combat the growth of anti-intellectualism?

The continuing popularity of pseudoarchaeological television and streaming programmes, along with social media apps full of pseudoscientific videos, suggests a public interest and demand for archaeology. However, uncontested by genuine archaeological research, these media merely serve to contribute to anti-intellectualism, spreading objectively and demonstrably false ideas as plausible if not probable by conflating “just asking questions” with rigorous scientific inquiry. Additionally, as generative AI art becomes more sophisticated, the effort required to produce pseudoarchaeological content is becoming increasingly trivial and risks dominating the popular narrative of human history, feeding into denialism, erasure, and anti-science rhetoric.

Archaeology requires researching, writing, citing, and quality presentation. In other words, it takes time, a luxury unavailable to many of those best positioned to share their expertise. This, and the constant need for online promotion and engagement, make it unfortunate, if not unsurprising, that many professional archaeologists choose to avoid public engagement through popular media.

However, the problems of anti-intellectualism are not going away on their own. This session invites papers that examine how archaeologists are sharing archaeology. Where are we succeeding and how can we overcome obstacles? How can we collectively, as a community and discipline, support one another to combat pseudoarchaeology, anti-intellectualism, denialism, and erasure?

Présentations
Money, Political Agenda and Ill-informed Enthusiasts: shining the light on science in a pseudo-scientific world. A Public Former Servant’s perspective.
Format de présentation : In-Person
Auteur-e(s) :
  • Gary Brewer - Kleanza Consulting Ltd

Since the creation of effective, globally connected mass media, archaeology has been dragged out of the shadows of academia along with urban and rural myths to join the pantheon of speculative science. Held up alongside the great unsolved mysteries of the world, “alternative” archaeological interpretations are considered on par with cryptids (here there be dragons!), legendary epic sagas of Classical and Norse mythology (if some legends are based in fact then aren’t they all?), and the plethora of validated and unvalidated religious texts from all of the world’s great religions. This paper explores the origins of pseudo-science as it relates to archaeology, with several case studies managed in a provincial government CRM context by the author and discusses a number of possible solutions to illuminating the facts and filtering out the fiction of archaeology for public consumption.
Pseudo-archaeology as a disinformation gateway? Observational data from Québec youth
Format de présentation : In-Person
Auteur-e(s) :
  • Julien Riel-Salvatore - Université de Montréal
  • Félicité Bouchard-Plante - Université de Montréal
  • Daniel Côté - Université de Montréal
  • Marieke D'Argent - Université de Montréal
  • Sydney Duchaine-Brunet - Université de Montréal
  • Louanne Legault-Coursol - Université de Montréal
  • Estelle Maitre - Université de Montréal
  • Florent Michelot - Concordia University
  • Normand Roy - Université de Montréal
  • Julie Talbot - Université de Montréal
  • Samuel Tanner - Université de Montréal

Pseudo-archaeology has often been characterized as a kind of ‘gateway belief system’ to draw young audiences into other, arguably more problematic contrarian belief systems (e.g., climate change denialism, gender essentialism, far-right politics). However, much data used to support these claims remain largely anecdotal and/or drawn from observations from non-Canadian contexts, making it hard to extrapolate the severity of this issue to Canadian contexts. This paper presents an overview of pseudo-archaeological beliefs in Québec to show that these beliefs are present in this province and broadly comparable to those found in the US and in France. It then presents an ongoing multidisciplinary project drawing from education science, criminology, geography and anthropology that seeks to document informational practices among several groups of Québec youth (16-19 years of age). This project uses an original ‘vignette’-based approach to evaluate how young Québécois in high school and cégep context seek out and evaluate the credibility of information in different scenarios pertaining to climate change, gender identity and pre-contact population history. We present preliminary results that provide a first series of empirical observations derived from controlled settings that allow us to address empirically whether pseudo-archaeology can be seen as a ‘gateway’ to other problematic beliefs.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Archaeology YouTube
Format de présentation : In-Person
Auteur-e(s) :
  • Curt  Carbonell
Popular video and social media platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter), Facebook, and others provide free and unprecedented access to information for anyone with an Internet connection. However, the veracity of the content created and shared on these platforms is difficult for the interested layperson to discern, especially when content exposure is governed by algorithms that primarily promote engagement (positive or otherwise), not truth. Nevertheless, there is good archaeology being shared on social media,just as there is bad and downright ugly pseudoarchaeological content vying for views, likes, and subscriptions. In an environment where financial success is determined not by the integrity of the content but by the number of views one has, content creators are often incentivized to get views by any means possible, which can lead to opaque ethical situations. This paper reviews twelve popular YouTube channels dealing directly or indirectly with archaeological theory, results, or popular discourse, and regarding them from the perspective of a professional archaeologist. Several observations are then provided to highlight strategies for effective public engagement in archaeology, i.e., what seems to work, what doesn’t work, what to avoid, as well as common trends in the archaeology-pseudoarchaeological conflict.
Understanding AI technologies in Digital Heritage
Format de présentation : In-Person
Auteur-e(s) :
  • Anna Cleveland - UBCO


 Archaeologists are beginning to use artificial intelligence tools in everyday tasks such as data analysis, translation, as well as academic research and teaching. Drawing from my experience as an upper-level undergraduate student in anthropology to examine challenges in using AI tools for archaeology, with specific focus on reclaiming heritage. The information that commercial AI tools draw from is reflective of biases in Western culture, and because AI tools rearrange pre-existing information to match user prompts, there are real implications for archaeology students and learners when they use these tools without critical lenses on power and knowledge production in the digital age. AI tools have confirmation bias that leads to misinformation and that can also reproduce problematic pseudoscientific claims that misinterpret archaeological methods, and narratives about societies. I present examples in which AI chatbots generate and reinforce patriarchal and colonial biases about heritage reclamation. The currently available AI tools regularly generate false citations, and sanitized language which give the user the impression that heritage work is neutral, all while obscuring the power of privileged groups in knowledge production. To unpack these issues, I discuss how students and scholars can critically examine the strengths and limitations of AI chatbots in heritage research.