YAM December 2002 - Inside the Blue Book

Previous Columns

November 2002 A balanced look at animal rights and wrongs.

October 2002 The physics of getting ahead.

Summer 2002 Doctors, lawyers, bioethics.

May 2002 Southern California up close.

April 2002 Demystifying Islam.

March 2002 An anthropological look at our favorite things.

February 2002 The year's most popular course? It's about popularity.

December 2001 A leading electrical engineer eyes ceince fact & fiction.

November 2001 A philosophical look at death.

Summer 2001 Exploring "girl power."

May 2001 Learning the ins and outs of e-commerce.

April 2001 Delving into depression.

February 2001 A Tercentennial team explores the nature of democracy.

December 2000 Geologists study old shells to learn the art of observation.

November 2000 "Dr. Curveball" teaches the physics of the national game.

October 2000 A writer teaches the art of creating a sense of place.

Inside the Blue Book
December 2002

Unearthing the Truth
by Jennifer L. Holley

ANTH 172a: Great Hoaxes and Fantasies in Archaeology
Faculty: Marcello A. Canuto

On Marcello Canuto's first day of teaching "Great Hoaxes and Fantasies in Archaeology," he asked his students to fill out a survey about popular and academic theories of archeology. He discovered that, of his 90 students, 25 percent believe (either strongly or mildly) that there is good evidence for the existence of "lost" continents like Atlantis, and that 20 percent believe an ancient curse placed on the tomb of King Tut actually killed people.

"Archeological hoaxes and fantasies are certainly not in the past."

"Archeological hoaxes and fantasies are certainly not in the past," says Canuto, who is now in his second year of teaching at Yale. The class explores the disconnect between academic and popular conceptions of archeology. "We look at egregious examples of hoaxes and see how academic archeology deals with them," says Canuto. "I'm not only there to show how archaeology has debunked these hoaxes and fantasies, but also to show students how archeology is both logical and scientific."

Some topics include the Piltdown Man (a fabricated skull that was "found" and "proved" that the earliest humans had a very large brain); the Kensington Runestone, which was "discovered" in Minnesota in 1898 and "affirmed" that the Vikings had arrived in the Midwest; and Atlantis. That final fantasy first appears in Plato's discourse as an ancient land which fought a war with Athens and then disappeared into the sea. "Plato used Atlantis as a pedagogical tool," says Canuto. "But because the fantasy came from such an important philosophical source, it was later interpreted as if real."

Canuto wants students to think about the mechanics by which information is distributed, and why people know, for instance, more about Indiana Jones than A.V. Kidder, who revolutionized American archeology. He believes archeologists need to make their work more accessible. The payoff for the public? "Popular theory always explains things away," Canuto says. "But fact is even more interesting than fiction, because it has to make sense -- it opens your horizons to things you might not have imagined before."

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