It is an enduring problem for archaeologists keen to present their work to the general public that ‘alternative’ views of the past seem to be more popular than the mainstream. A book claiming that the Indus Valley civilisation was founded by Greys who were lizards from Beta Cygnis will sell more copies than one, no matter how well written, stating that it grew from indigenous farming communities whose social organisation permitted the development of literacy, urban settlement and so on. Even the less bizarre claims (such as those of Graham Hancock, who writes of an older civilisation that he carefully refrains from naming as Atlantis) are apt to make a greater impact on the public than those of professional archaeologists. The relative budgets of television programmed devoted to everyday archaeology (such as Channel 4’s Time Team) and those available to more controversial claims (such as Channel 4’s Heaven’s Mirror) result in the slick presentation of the fringe with the added cachet of expert-bashing and the rather more amateurish appearance of the professional archaeologists’ product.
However, it is not simply a matter of presentation. Given a budget twice that of Heaven’s Mirror for a series of three programmes, it is very unlikely that a conventional archaeological programme would enthuse so many people. Writers of the type of Erich von Däniken or Graham Hancock have built up devoted groups of followers. They promise to lead them on a quest into the unknown with the lure of excitement, discovery and the knowledge that they are aware of more than the experts. They have the ‘truth’, the ‘key’. They are initiates into the true mysteries of the past, something that The Establishment is hiding from us.
Archaeologists have a duty to counter this. At a time when academic discourse—especially in the social sciences—is becoming increasingly akin to medieval scholasticism and inaccessible to ‘non-initiates’, we need to be able to convey our complex ideas in simple language. We must not shrink from pointing out the egregious errors of fringe archaeology. Indeed, a part of the profession involved in education ought to be steeped in the works of the fringe, understanding the evidence used in making the claims, looking at the chains of inference, the bibliographic sources, the writing techniques and the types of illustrative material used. Only then will we be able to get into the mindsets of the fringe writers and their audiences and properly tackle them on their own ground in their own terms.
This website began as a paper addressing a specific research question—can we evaluate the claims for monuments on other bodies in the solar system—and has concluded with some more general points. I believe that this is the lesson of all fringe archaeology. By looking at the evidence used by those outside the profession who claim to be able to push it in new directions, we are forced to examine our own assumptions and prejudices. It can only make archaeology richer.