tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-364674902024-02-06T23:43:40.510-06:00Spooky ParadigmExploring Paranormality. And at times academic discussion of what are called paranormal beliefs, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and other topics.ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.comBlogger194125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-26979603598813290932017-06-24T11:27:00.000-05:002017-07-04T17:36:58.001-05:00UFOs are Dead, Flying Saucers Will Live Long<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Amazing0647.jpg/721px-Amazing0647.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="563" height="640" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Amazing0647.jpg/721px-Amazing0647.jpg" width="450" /> </a></div>
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<i>Amazing Stories, </i>June 1947 </div>
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Saturday will be the 70th anniversary of the Kenneth Arnold "Flying Saucers Sighting". The famous 24 June 1947 sighting is the traditional "beginning" of the Flying Saucer, kicking off a two-week craze that concluded with the Roswell Incident in July 1947.</div>
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But this wasn't the beginning of the UFO. EDIT 4 July 2017: <a href="http://mufobmagazine.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/revisionist.html" target="_blank">Almost forty years ago Peter Rogerson made the same point I'm making here about UFOs vs. Flying Saucers</a>, though as you'll read, I think the time in-between has been less than kind to the UFO. Nonetheless, I want to point this out, especially in the off-chance I read Rogerson's essay some time ago and forgot I had. <a href="http://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2017/07/framing.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheMagoniaBlog+%28THE+MAGONIA+BLOG%29" target="_blank">I was reminded of this in an interesting review by Rogerson of a recent "estimate of the situation"</a>.<br />
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The UFO, the Unidentified Flying Object, <a href="http://sohp.us/history-of-the-usaf-ufo-programs/4-project-sign.php" target="_blank">emerged out of genuine official interest by US military institutions</a> in the reports of things seen moving through the sky. Within a few years, institutional interest seems to have largely receded to keeping <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos.html" target="_blank">a UFO desk or project </a>that had as much to do with public relations and institutional thoroughness as anything else. </div>
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/WAAF_radar_operator_Denise_Miley_plotting_aircraft_on_a_cathode_ray_tube_in_the_Receiver_Room_at_Bawdsey_'Chain_Home'_station%2C_May_1945._CH15332.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="640" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/WAAF_radar_operator_Denise_Miley_plotting_aircraft_on_a_cathode_ray_tube_in_the_Receiver_Room_at_Bawdsey_'Chain_Home'_station%2C_May_1945._CH15332.jpg" /></a></div>
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Watching the Skies near the end of the Second World War</div>
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The UFO, and cryptozoology, and other forms of "alternative" science, or as detractors would put it, pseudoscience, also emerged out of high social status for science and scientists in the wake of massive technological and social change from the industrial revolution, and especially the dramatic technological and scientific leaps made around the period of the Second World War.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggpcLACBMbxTewpHI2zao5XlPTHTlyG5H14TOr1bvAet5u46wR0S3N78D-4Skbe3E2OWRzN5cXCn0_i4QxmFIiuivpUqNDqCoQ0rk0s7Ru1_PKC6OV7o44gUNciJfoo2DBkOY/s1600/britain-13.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1000" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggpcLACBMbxTewpHI2zao5XlPTHTlyG5H14TOr1bvAet5u46wR0S3N78D-4Skbe3E2OWRzN5cXCn0_i4QxmFIiuivpUqNDqCoQ0rk0s7Ru1_PKC6OV7o44gUNciJfoo2DBkOY/s400/britain-13.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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The social value of science, and the previously un-imagined discoveries made by scientists especially starting in the 19th century, made it sensible that analysis of evidence, using science (or activities that resembled science) could reveal amazing things. </div>
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/10_Group_fighter_operations_room_CH13685.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="406" data-original-width="800" height="203" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/10_Group_fighter_operations_room_CH13685.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Plotting Flying Objects over Britain during the Second World War. Is this the model for the UFO sightings database?</div>
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Over time, the UFO came to be largely, though not exclusively associated with the Space Age, extraterrestrials, and searching for evidence of these strange craft and their occupants. The stereotype of the serious ufologist involves collecting reports for databases, creating sightings maps to detect geographical or temporal patterns, looking for commonalities, piecing together puzzles.</div>
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Amazing_stories_194512.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="542" data-original-width="380" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Amazing_stories_194512.jpg" /> </a></div>
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<i>Amazing Stories</i>, December 1945 </div>
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The flying saucer is another matter entirely. Kenneth Arnold and others in the crucial period of the flying saucer of the mid-to-late 1940s were in no small part in the orbit of Ray Palmer (<a href="http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/documents-detail-the-fbis-theory-that-science-fiction-editor-ray-palmer-helped-create-the-flying-saucer-myth" target="_blank">you can read FBI reports into Palmer's involvement in early flying saucers and his publishing here</a>), champion of the Shaver Mysteries. Shaver's stories, edited by Palmer, have roots in pulp fiction and earlier alternative religious influences including Theosophy and Oahspe. The foundations of the flying saucer community were laid among occult and science fiction enthusiasts of the 1940s, and it is unsurprising that the flying saucer first took root in the 1950s in science fiction films and among the Contactees and their transparent relationship to previous new and alternative religious movements.</div>
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/PurportedUFO2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="537" height="640" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/PurportedUFO2.jpg" width="428" /></a></div>
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The UFO, an acronym suitable for the Big Science of powerful government and military institutions of the 1950s, inherently begs for trace evidence, analysis of the situation, collation of reports. While one can still find this style in ufology, it is dying on the vine. <a href="http://fotocat.blogspot.co.uk/2017_06_09_archive.html" target="_blank">This is expressed well in two essays by Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos and Thomas Bullard, both musing on the 70th anniversary</a>. While Ballester Olmos, keeper of a photographic database to collate evidence, is very pessimistic, Bullard the folklorist is only mostly pessimistic, hoping that among the dross and dashed hopes there may still be a non-mundane phenomenon at the core of the UFO mystery.</div>
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However, most of what is associated with the UFO, or rather the flying saucer, is now conspiracy theory. One can argue that much of conspiracy theory can trace its massive cultural popularity to the UFO. Conspiracy and paranoia are the very bones of the flying saucer. One important ancestor of the flying saucer, and other elements of 20th century pulp fiction and occultism is Edward Bulwer-Lytton's<i> </i>1871 novel <i>The Coming Race</i>. The children and grandchildren of this tale of an ancient underground master race with psychical powers and menace towards the surface are many, including the Shaver Mysteries. Shaver's writings are of nearly all-powerful Deros causing no end of misery through their invisible stalking and influence on surface dwellers. <a href="http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/amazing-stories-june-1947-issue-anticipates-ufo-ancient-mysteries-movements" target="_blank">Their resemblance to much of conspiracy theory and mysticism surrounding the paranormal and UFOs today is profound</a>. Pulp fiction<a href="http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-emerald-tablets-of-thoth-a-lovecraftian-plagiarism" target="_blank"> also interjected the Reptilians into the Shaver and Flying Saucer community by the late 1940s</a>. And while the Contactees often preached positive messages in the style of earlier decades theosophical ascended masters, there were also dark warnings of evil forces that would silence such wisdom.</div>
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/RoswellDailyRecordJuly8%2C1947.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="768" height="281" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/RoswellDailyRecordJuly8%2C1947.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Conspiracy and coverup were constituent to ufology, including with influential early leader Donald Keyhoe. Self-proclaimed serious or scientific ufology until the 1980s was largely about moving towards analysis and away from mysticism on the one hand, and conspiracy fears on the other, though this proved impossible. In previous posts on this blog, <a href="https://www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com/archyfantasies/34" target="_blank">and in podcasts</a>, I've discussed the importance of the Roswell myth in strengthening a bond between conspiracy theory and mainstream ufology.</div>
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Today, if one looks about the UFO community and its media, one finds two basic styles have supplanted the sightings trackers and account analysts. One is disclosure and expolitics, a focus on government and institutional conspiracy, promises that all will soon be revealed or leaked, and of breakaway civilizations and hidden shadow governments. A rotating cast of characters and tropes promotes or sells the idea that long-suspected truths are being hidden by illegitimate authorities and institutions, and that the imminent revelation of these truths will end the inequities of the modern day and bring about a better future.</div>
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The other is focused on ancient evidence for alien or extradimensional origins of humanity, often with a focus on origin myth or religion in one form or another. Though most prominent through various cable television programs, this element as has eclipsed every other aspect of interest in "UFOs", which seem almost an afterthought. One can easily go from dubious remains of a Roswell crash victim (actually indigenous remains in a museum) to<a href="http://doubtfulnews.com/2017/06/nazca-alien-mummy-revealed-in-promotional-video-featuring-serial-hoaxer/" target="_blank"> dubious remains of an ancient alien hybrid without changing the roster</a>. A rotating cast of characters and tropes promotes or sells the idea that
long-suspected truths are being hidden by illegitimate authorities and
institutions, and that the imminent revelation of these truths will end
the inequities of the modern day and bring about a better future.</div>
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These are not mutually exclusive. Alleged modern conspiracies become new manifestations of ancient magical secret societies, shadow governments hide ancient inhuman bloodlines.They u<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2011/06/demons-great-old-ones-and-unified-field.html" target="_blank">nite into an all pervasive Lovecraftian paranoia of deep secrets and debased cults</a>. Last year, conspiracy theories about evil cults were fashioned out of leaked political emails, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/06/dcs-pizzagate-shooter-sentenced-to-4-years-in-jail/531381/" target="_blank">and a man was just sentenced to prison for responding violently</a>. Yet one reason these resonated so well in the conspiracy theory world is that the stolen emails came from a long-time <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/03/delonge-blink-182-aliens-Podesta/" target="_blank">UFO disclosure advocate, paralleling a huge amount of chatter and speculation that UFO disclosure would hinge on the US presidential election</a>.</div>
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The most viable alternatives in small pockets of the UFO community are hopes that the UFO can show the way to better understandings of the inner self and consciousness, that UFOs are something like poltergeists or Victorian elementals, <a href="http://monstertalk.skeptic.com/slenderman-and-tulpas" target="_blank">soon to be erroneously conglomerated with descriptions of tulpas.</a></div>
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In other words, the flying saucers are once again just one manifestation of the underground Deros. Of the Great Old Ones. Of the Coming Race. Ancient wisdom, lost history, hidden cults, subterranean horrors, psychical manifestations.</div>
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The investigation of the UFO mirrored the rise of science's social status. It's fall, and the return of ascended masters, psychical entities, and lost races makes perfect sense in an era of partisan attacks on science and neo-Victorian political and social conditions.</div>
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The UFO is dead, the flying saucers have returned.</div>
<br />ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-6281959981112304892015-06-17T09:07:00.000-05:002015-06-28T12:25:05.054-05:00The Legend of Loch Ness<br />
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Great Britain Trip: Part 7 – The Legend of Loch Ness<br />
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Two weeks ago I embarked on my first trip to Europe, specifically to Great Britain. This journey had two aspects. First, it is the closest I’ve had to a vacation in at least four years. But honestly, I don’t really do vacation. The primary reason for the trip was to assist several projects I’m working on, including a volume I’m currently writing on why archaeology has the “spooky” image it has in the public imagination.<br />
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The following images are not in precise chronological order, though the general narrative does roughly follow the order of places I visited. I spent four days in London at the beginning and another two at the end, and these materials are something of a chronological jumble for thematic purposes. These images are a fraction (specifically, about 7%) of the images I took. Many of these were for research I am not discussing in depth here, or for teaching purposes. The images and text here are instead a rough tour not so much of where I went as why I went, what I learned, and why that might be of interest.<br />
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This travelogue is broken into seven sections<br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-1-rule-britannia.html">Rule Britannia!</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-2-archaeology.html">Archaeology of Empire</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-3-mysteries-of.html">Mysteries of London</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-4-time-in-bath.html">Time in Bath</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-5-green-and.html">A Green and Magical Land</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-5-investigating.html">Investigating Inverness</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-7-legend-of.html">The Legend of Loch Ness</a><br />
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<b>The Legend of Loch Ness</b><br />
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The last destination of my trip was Loch Ness. It is the largest lake in the United Kingdom, 24 miles long, a mile wide, with steep banks that drop down over seven hundred feet in depth<br />
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But I didn’t have to go look these numbers up. I’ve been able to rattle those statistics off since I was a young child. Because Loch Ness is world famous for its legendary monster, and the popularity of that monster when I was growing up was the gateway for my interest in weird quasi-scientific or esoteric topics that I’ve since researched, taught, and written about. I mention at the time, as I think that’s important. The video below is an episode of the first major paranormal-themed documentary show in television history, <i>In Search of …</i> about Loch Ness.<br />
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This is the grand-daddy of all the programming that fills the so-called educational channels on basic cable today. Going back and watching a few episodes of the show is interesting in comparison. The show was widely mocked for being speculative nonsense (slight language on the second video below)<br />
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Yet it showed restraint and some responsibility to facts in comparison with much of the paranormal and “scientific” or “historical” material on television today.<br />
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More importantly for this particular case, the Loch Ness episode acts as a frozen moment in the history of the legend of Loch Ness. If you don’t have time to watch the <i>In Search of ...</i> video, you’ll note that there are several serious scientific teams or individuals at the lake, looking for the monster. Well, sort of. It would be far too much to get into here, but several of the individuals and projects involved aren’t quite how they are presented. <a href="http://doubtfulnews.com/2013/12/cryptozoologist-roy-p-mackal-status-unknown-presumably-lost-to-the-world/">Roy Mackal </a>was a tenured professor of biology at the University of Chicago, but his monster hunting is largely chalked up to a mid-life crisis. <a href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/photos-of-the-loch-ness-monster-revisited1/">The Rines expedition</a> has been heavily criticized for problems with its underwater photography and even most Nessie believers don’t put much stock in such today, but what is less commonly mentioned is that Rines’ background and Applied Sciences team had more to do with patent law than with biology or scientific investigation. And so on. But imagine being a documentary producer and going to a lake and finding scientists from MIT, University of Chicago, and other serious institutions researching this legend. How skeptical would you be? Then imagine being a young child seeing all of this. <br />
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Despite this priming that made me as a young boy embarrass people when I’d go about spouting all the Loch Ness “facts” I had learned from books in my public library, the same aspects of my personality also drove me to become someone who is serious about evidence. Evidence of the sort that I came to realize was against the popular conceptions of a “monster.” I knew this would make visiting this place quite charged for me on a personal level.<br />
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I left Inverness fairly early in the morning, and went to Drumnadrochit. While there have been monster sightings all around the lake, the greatest concentration have been around Drumnadrochit, and especially near the iconic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urquhart_Castle">Urquhart Castle </a>about two miles walk from the town. After arriving early in the morning, I immediately wanted to get on the water, and booked passage on the <i>M.V. Deep Scan</i>, the guided tour boat of the <a href="http://www.lochnessproject.org/">Loch Ness Project</a>. <br />
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The Loch Ness Project is headed by Adrian Shine, who was recently <a href="http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2015/04/myth-or-monster-explore-loch-ness-with.html">profiled by Google</a> as part of their project to put Street View on the lake itself.<br />
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The Project works with several other groups conducting non-monster related research on the lake (again, as the biggest freshwater lake in the UK, there is ecological and historical work to be done here, including a paleoclimate coring project that has produced a deep historical record of year-by-year conditions in the region).<br />
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But the Project is most famous for its scientific examination of the Loch Ness Monster legend, including a survey of the biomass which suggests there isn’t enough food in the lake for a viable population of large predators, and Operation Deep Scan (for which the boat is named), that swept the loch with sonar-equipped boats <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/11/newsid_3166000/3166741.stm">and didn’t find clear evidence of any large creatures.</a><br />
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You may have noticed the yellow flora on the hills around the loch.<br />
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This is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytisus_scoparius">broom</a>, and it greatly livened up the otherwise drizzly day<br />
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Captain of the <i>Deep Scan</i> John Minshull led a tour of the area around Urquhart Castle, and after I showed some interest and knowledge about the legend and the history of its investigation, began to talk a bit more in detail about some of these efforts. It was a fascinating conversation, and I am still impressed with how they were able to undertake coring in such deep water.<br />
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A ubiquitous part of any hunt for the Loch Ness Monster is sonar searching.<br />
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There are a number of other boat tours available of Loch Ness. The big two boats of Jacobite cruises cater to tourists who engage with the Loch and its legend from Inverness. They may visit Urquhart Castle during their tour, but otherwise take the tour and then buy stuffed Nessies in a gift shop back in the city. I will note that the parking lot of Castle Urquhart itself was full, and the place quite busy.<br />
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Here are both the Jacobite boats on the lake. The catamaran is quite large, and produces a significant wake, something I’ll return to in a moment.<br />
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The <i>Deep Scan </i>is attached to the Loch Ness Center and Exhibition, the biggest and best known of the tourist attractions associated with the Loch Ness Monster<br />
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As someone who has visited <a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2007/07/evolution-of-crashed-saucer-legend.html">Roswell</a>, <a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2011/09/why-skepticism-is-so-important-anti.html">Salem</a>, <a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2008/06/into-lair-of-mothman-my-visit-to-point.html">Point Pleasant</a>, and other spots with more than a shade of paranormal or esoteric aspect to their touristic attraction, I had been expecting more sensationalism, and I will return to this. But I was aware before I visited that the Center is largely skeptical in approach.<br />
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Shine’s efforts to apply science to the legend are front and center. Much of the exhibit is multimedia and not easily photographed, but a few points are worth noting<br />
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An early part of the exhibit focuses on archaeology and folklore. I felt for a moment like I was back in Glastonbury. This narrative also points out how the legend changed to become more prehistoric, more material, more evolutionary. The “materialization” of legends to create cryptozoology (a word I did not see nor hear at Loch Ness, btw) in the 20th century is a theme addressed in the volume <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Abominable-Science-Origins-Nessie-Cryptids/dp/023115321X"><i>Abominable Science</i></a>, which also suggests a particularly intriguing cultural influence on the rash of sightings that created the modern legend in 1933.<br />
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One of these sightings, the Spicer sighting, is depicted above along with ties to the Kelpie legend, press clippings, and the influential promotion of the monster by Alex Campbell.<br />
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The press interest which is so important to the legend is noted near the end of the exhibit, and like the <a href="http://doubtfulnews.com/2014/10/evidence-shows-london-museum-was-desperately-seeking-nessie/"><i>In Search of …</i></a> example I give above, it is hard to blame people for being interested with headlines like these. Especially since we now know that there was significant interest in the creature. Both the Royal Scottish Museum and the Natural History Museum were seriously interested in getting samples of the monster, as shown in recently uncovered documents.<br />
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The “spoor” that was transported in a securely locked box to the Natural History Museum in London was a cast of the monster’s footprint. It had been secured by Marmaduke Wetherell, a big game hunter hired by the <i>Daily Mail </i>to find the monster. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that the footprint was that of a hippopotamus, likely produced by an ashtray like the one above, the sort of thing that would be owned by a big game hunter. <br />
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The <i>Mail </i>and others scorned Wetherell, and the legend could have receded into obscurity.<br />
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Until April 1934, when a London surgeon provided the Daily Mail with the most famous photo of the monster, the “head and neck” that fit conceptions of a prehistoric beast such as a dinosaur or plesiosaur<br />
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We now know that the image has been carefully cropped and that in original form looks far smaller. This coincides nicely with testimony that Wetherell orchestrated a hoax as revenge on the <i>Mail.</i> And we also now know that <a href="http://www.skeptic.com/podcasts/monstertalk/09/08/24/">plesiosaurs couldn’t move their necks in such a swan-like fashion</a>. <br />
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But this didn’t matter, the legend was reborn. A nice exhibit in the Center shows video testimony of some of the most famous sightings<br />
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Nevertheless, the Center emphasizes the biological and cultural background already discussed, and shows off its other exploratory efforts that make it clear underwater data is far easier to come by today<br />
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The sonar we used on the boat is dramatically superseded by the mapping and side-scanning sonar capabilities available for research. Note the details in the side-scanning sonar imagery of the wrecked boat depicted above<br />
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Nevertheless, a mix of hope and <a href="http://doubtfulnews.com/2013/10/edwards-unrepentant-about-his-nessie-hump-photo-hoax/">hoaxing</a> continues to support the legend.<br />
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These continue into the present, <a href="http://doubtfulnews.com/2013/06/loch-ness-area-chamber-disrespects-tourist-by-throwing-researchers-under-the-bus/">with proponents and opponents arguing about the potential gain or harm to local tourism</a>, never minding concerns for damaging evidence of the monster.<br />
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I found that to be a particularly interesting point. These are images of the gift shop associated with the Exhibition Center, but they only differ in scale from others I visited. Plush Nessies are plentiful.<br />
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Many of the books sold in such shops are unsurprisingly aimed at children, but what was surprising was the lack of cryptozoology or “speculative” books and DVDs. None were to be had anywhere. The handful of volumes above are small volumes aimed at tourists.<br />
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This bookshelf in the Center’s exhibit is more representative of the Nessie “literature.” Below are two pictures of the store attached to the Roswell UFO Museum and Research Center when I visited in 2002.<br />
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A vast array of books and videos on UFOs, alien abductions, and other “mysteries” were bought and sold here. This is above and beyond the many books sold by UFO researchers and promoters who spoke at the UFOMRC and in other venues in town year round but especially during their annual UFO festival. While a lot of people go to Roswell to buy a plush green alien or a t-shirt, clearly there is a significant component of belief and pilgrimage. The same is true for Salem and other esoteric tourism spots I’ve visited. I haven’t taken part in the paranormal tourism in Gettysburg, but that has (to the disgust of quite a few people) taken on a significant un-life of its own, prompting conferences on top of the ghost tours and bookstores in town.<br />
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None of that is to be found at Loch Ness. Nessie has become a cartoon legend, a thing that people visit to say they’ve visited, a popular icon. You can consume it as plush toys, t-shirts, a boat tour, or a nice cider at lunch. Critics of Shine have suggested his scientifically-oriented Exhibition and Center have threatened the tourism industry in the area. From what I saw, I don’t suspect this is the case. For Drumnadrochit specifically, the massive boats from Inverness have probably done more harm, I imagine. But the bigger issue is that despite Google’s recent campaign of noting how Loch Ness is a symbol of wonder and discovery, much of the legend rested on the Surgeon’s photo. The highly public debunking of the photo as a hoax, was the turning point, I suspect.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w0Ot6g_lQRE" width="560"></iframe>
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But I haven’t answered the biggest question you probably have: did I see the monster? The answer is: Yes, sort of. The video I have embedded above is one of several instances during the day in which I saw the effect that boat wakes and other waves have in the steep-sided loch. While smaller,<a href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/photos-of-the-loch-ness-monster-revisited1/"> the similarity to the famous MacNab photo is suggestive</a>.<br />
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While clearly the best “sightings” are more involved and more impressive, many sightings can be attributed to this effect. All of these pictures are mine from the day I visited<br />
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Does this mean I’ve given up? No, I have instead followed the evidence, and realized there is an interesting and important cultural story to be explored here. One of science, frustration with modernity, perception, and how we make the world. <br />
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Though, this is still probably true as well<br />
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<br />ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-69963988889385801722015-06-16T19:54:00.001-05:002015-06-17T09:08:25.723-05:00Great Britain Trip: Part 6 - Investigating Inverness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Great Britain Trip: Part 6 – Investigating Inverness<br />
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Two weeks ago I embarked on my first trip to Europe, specifically to Great Britain. This journey had two aspects. First, it is the closest I’ve had to a vacation in at least four years. But honestly, I don’t really do vacation. The primary reason for the trip was to assist several projects I’m working on, including a volume I’m currently writing on why archaeology has the “spooky” image it has in the public imagination.<br />
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The following images are not in precise chronological order, though the general narrative does roughly follow the order of places I visited. I spent four days in London at the beginning and another two at the end, and these materials are something of a chronological jumble for thematic purposes. These images are a fraction (specifically, about 7%) of the images I took. Many of these were for research I am not discussing in depth here, or for teaching purposes. The images and text here are instead a rough tour not so much of where I went as why I went, what I learned, and why that might be of interest.<br />
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This travelogue is broken into seven sections<br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-1-rule-britannia.html">Rule Britannia!</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-2-archaeology.html">Archaeology of Empire</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-3-mysteries-of.html">Mysteries of London</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-4-time-in-bath.html">Time in Bath</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-5-green-and.html">A Green and Magical Land</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-5-investigating.html">Investigating Inverness</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-7-legend-of.html">The Legend of Loch Ness</a><br />
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<b>Investigating Inverness</b><br />
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So far my travels had been based in a single location for several days. Four days in London based out of King’s Cross. Three traveling around from a home base in the Royal Hotel in Bath. But to get in my final goal of visiting Loch Ness and then subsequently preparing for my return flight to the United States, I needed to be a bit more mobile. From here on out, I’d be traveling somewhere different each day. The final day and a half were in London again, one more night in the Bloomsbury area followed by visits to the Natural History Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, before going to a hotel near Heathrow for an early morning flight. You’ve seen some of the images from these places, melded with earlier imagery, in my first three posts.<br />
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To get to Scotland, I took the bus from Bath to the Bristol airport and flew up to Inverness, which lies between the sea and the Great Glen, the system of lakes and canals of which Loch Ness is the largest.<br />
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The heart of the city lies along the River Ness, and already we are into Loch Ness Monster lore. The Irish <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Columba">Saint Columba</a> is said to have invoked the Lord to protect a man being attacked by a fierce beast in the River Ness. After the Loch Ness Monster becomes a sensation in the 1930s, this story becomes relocated into Loch Ness (Nessie promoter Roland Watson has <a href="http://lochnessmystery.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-worlds-oldest-loch-ness-monster.html">posted images of the text</a>). I’d prefer to think it happened near the spot of today’s Columba Hotel.</div>
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The scenery is lovely, and a walking trail encourages visitors to travel along the river and to cross onto the Isle in the River Ness, something I ultimately did not have time to try. It would be a bit farther to the left of this image. </div>
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Some of you have commented on the weather in my images. It has been unusually cold in Great Britain this year. I wore my jacket every day with one exception, the last full day I was there the temperatures reached into the lower 70s. If you look at the mountains in the background of the photo below, you’ll notice their peaks are still snow-capped.</div>
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But I had a number of sunny parts of days as my Glastonbury images show. And while the drizzle was a little annoying when visiting the towns of Lacock and Castle Combe, it was perfectly atmospheric when visiting Loch Ness.</div>
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I post this image of the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders monument, located outside the Royal Highland Hotel, less for its quite Scottish imagery, than for the small object next to the soldier, a symbol of service in Egypt.</div>
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The Royal Highland Hotel is another one of the grand old railroad hotels. The main lobby was extremely busy when I visited, and was decked out with the classic lodge-style accoutrements of historical documents and artifacts, taxidermy, wood-paneling, and so on. </div>
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The main stairway dominates the space.</div>
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I wandered around Inverness a bit, taking in its celebrated <a href="http://www.explore-inverness.com/shops/souvenirs-and-gifts/victorian-market/">Victorian covered market</a>, strolling along the river, and being desperately tempted by a store full of incredibly beautiful and very expensive Harris Tweed (it may be a bit of a professorial cliché, but I could have dropped half the trip’s cost right then and there). But the business pictured above, sadly closed, seemed worth pointing out. The writing does not say kakaw but is the title “Holy Lady of Kaan”, one of the most powerful states of the Classic Maya Lowlands, so I imagine it was chosen more for aesthetic reasons.</div>
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I spent part of an afternoon in the Inverness museum, which had a surprisingly strong exhibit section on archaeology. In fact, there was quite a lot of archaeology being promoted in Scotland, with flyers advertising public archaeology of all sorts throughout the summer. Unlike the exhibits in London, these are extremely local, focused entirely on Scottish or even more local finds. They were also presented as part of a linear national history, and the oft-mentioned connection between nationalist movements and archaeology suddenly clicked into my mind in light of recent political developments. </div>
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Notably the signage in the museum was bilingual. I saw books and courses elsewhere in Inverness urging people to learn Scottish.</div>
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All sorts of archaeological exhibits were presented, but a set of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictish_stone">Pictish inscribed stone slabs</a> was the heart of the archaeological section. Some depict more naturalistic scenes such as the wolf above. Others are more abstract and complex compositions that have led some commentators to compare them to writing, though not all agree with this assessment. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogham_inscription">Ogham writing</a> was also used at times in pre-medieval Scotland.</div>
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Many of the artifacts on display were iconically Scottish and associated in more than a few cases with nationalism and military struggle.</div>
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A display on early pipes, including their design, was a must</div>
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However, most relevant for my work was an unexpected section on myths and legends</div>
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The woodcut at the top depicts a case I talk about in class, the witch-fixation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_VI_and_I">James I</a>. The Scottish King who would come to sit on the English throne, was obsessed with witches, and personally took part in witch-hunting. In addition to any other religious or scholarly interests (this is the same King James of Bible fame), witches were feared to have conspired against the king, including trying to disrupt the arrival of his wife from Scandinavia (as depicted in the woodcut). A recent National Trust conservation of a house that James I stayed in turned up possible <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/nov/05/witch-marks-king-james-i-knole-sevenoaks-national-trust">apotropaic marks on timbers in the floorboards</a>, possibly to protect the king from witchcraft and conspiracy in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot. This Scottish king and his concern with witches was much of the inspiration for <i>Macbeth</i>.</div>
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The folklore exhibit somewhat sidewise addresses the Loch Ness Monster by briefly mentioning both the supernatural <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelpie">kelpie</a> entity later conflated (poorly) with the monster, and the Columba legend I previously mentioned. </div>
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As in the British Museum, an ancient artifact later believed to be a supernatural “elf hede” arrow was on display.</div>
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Other magical objects included a spindle whorl worn against the Evil Eye.</div>
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While the only mention of the Loch Ness Monster in the museum proper was the Kelpie and the Columba story, not far away the Inverness tourism information center had a huge paper mache Nessie and many Nessie icons.</div>
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Likewise the gift stores in town were full of stuffed Nessies, as well as bits of tartan-inspired objects and Braveheart-esque William Wallace statues. Even in Inverness, the icon of the Loch Ness Monster was very much on offer. I wasn’t certain what to expect the following day in Drumnadrochit, the heart of the Loch Ness Monster phenomenon.</div>
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I spent the evening drinking with tourists and locals alike in <a href="http://www.hootanannyinverness.co.uk/">Hootnanny</a>, considered the best Scottish Music place in town, and certainly the busiest place I saw in downtown Inverness that evening. It was easy to see, that far north in June, the sun didn’t go down until nearly 11, and light began to creep into my hotel room around 4 in the morning. So it was easy enough to get up early, put on my <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iRTB-FTMdk">monster hunting trousers</a>, and move on to Loch Ness.</div>
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ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-87788700118542889442015-06-15T10:31:00.000-05:002015-06-17T09:13:18.240-05:00Great Britain Trip: Part 5 - A Green and Magical Land<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Great Britain Trip: Part 5 – A Green and Magical Land<br />
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Two weeks ago I embarked on my first trip to Europe, specifically to Great Britain. This journey had two aspects. First, it is the closest I’ve had to a vacation in at least four years. But honestly, I don’t really do vacation. The primary reason for the trip was to assist several projects I’m working on, including a volume I’m currently writing on why archaeology has the “spooky” image it has in the public imagination.<br />
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The following images are not in precise chronological order, though the general narrative does roughly follow the order of places I visited. I spent four days in London at the beginning and another two at the end, and these materials are something of a chronological jumble for thematic purposes. These images are a fraction (specifically, about 7%) of the images I took. Many of these were for research I am not discussing in depth here, or for teaching purposes. The images and text here are instead a rough tour not so much of where I went as why I went, what I learned, and why that might be of interest.<br />
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This travelogue is broken into seven sections<br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-1-rule-britannia.html">Rule Britannia!</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-2-archaeology.html">Archaeology of Empire</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-3-mysteries-of.html">Mysteries of London</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-4-time-in-bath.html">Time in Bath</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-5-green-and.html">A Green and Magical Land</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-5-investigating.html">Investigating Inverness</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-7-legend-of.html">The Legend of Loch Ness</a><br />
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<b>A Green and Magical Land</b><br />
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I had chosen to stay in Bath so that I could visit some of the archaeological and other sites in the English countryside of relevance to my work. I decided the most effective way of doing this, and also getting a bit of understanding of how people engage with archaeology and the landscape, was to take a day tour from Bath. I chose (and enjoyed) <a href="http://www.madmaxtours.co.uk/tours/stonehenge-full-day-tour">Mad Max tours</a>, which offers several options including the one I chose, to visit Stonehenge, Avebury, and the medieval villages of Lacock and Castle Comb on the southern edge of the Cotswolds. This was a small group rather than a massive bus, which also had certain advantages, including navigating some of the narrow country lanes.<br />
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Stonehenge was the major focus of the morning, though it seemed for many people to be their least favorite part of the day. The oft-cited complaint that one cannot approach the stones, and can only see them from a distance, was commonly voiced. The entire experience was focused on around access. When one arrives at the new visitor’s center, one must then get clearance to get on one of the shuttle buses that take visitors to a drop off point, from which one then approaches the main henge. Most visitors walk around the stones for a bit, maybe listen to the National Trust audio tour, and then get back on the bus back to the small if informative visitor’s center.<br />
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Another complaint I heard voiced several times at the site or later was that the monument is in sight of a major road. I am not sure what exactly are visitor expectations to Stonehenge, but I suspect the fame of the site as “something to see” mean that these expectations will never be met in full. For myself, I was pleased at the minimal amount of security and visual clutter between the visitor and the primary monument. The day I visited, this was somewhat marred by the filming of a commercial. At first I thought perhaps a press conference was underway as a large crew with multiple cameras was present along with flanking security. The security officers said this sort of thing was quite rare at the monument.<br />
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The importance of the larger landscape of perishable structures and tumuli is repeatedly emphasized in both the visual and audio information, but I don’t think this has much visitor impact. While it appears one can technically walk to these parts of the landscape, without clear pathways, no one did.<br />
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One aspect that was repeatedly discussed in both the National Trust’s material and in the tour material by my guide company (which has both a live guide and audio recorded guidance by the head of the company) is that Stonehenge was NOT built by druids. Who the druids was not, to my memory, 100% explained except that they were later and closer to the time of the Roman Conquest, but that the monument itself is older. The National Trust also definitely addressed (and the private tour may have as well, I cannot recall) why druids came to have a romantic appeal with the birth of antiquarianism. This clearly seems to be something of a concern.<br />
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The new visitor’s center is small, and the informational section is similar in size to the gift shop, but it is fairly full of artifacts. Many are the stone tools and animal bone remains found at the site. These are used to discuss the history of the larger Salisbury landscape and the henge itself, as well as placing them in a larger context of European prehistory. However, unlike so many other National Trust sites, there are no flashy sculpted monuments, and the most important and richest burials (such as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge_Archer">Stonehenge</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amesbury_Archer">Amesbury archers</a>) from the area of Stonehenge are not kept here. Visitors seemed interested in the artifacts, but were primarily interested in the wall display material on the construction of the stone circle itself.<br />
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Also popular was the replica stone on a sledge (where visitors could try to pull the stone) and two samples of the type of stone used in the monument. The desire to physically interact with the monument was once again on display here, and I myself have my strongest memory of the site in feeling the texture of the local stone and the Welsh blue stone.<br />
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The entire Wiltshire area is dotted with famous prehistoric monuments such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbury_Hill">Silbury Hill</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Kennet_Long_Barrow">West Kennet Barrow</a>, and our next stop at Avebury.<br />
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avebury">Avebury</a> is the largest prehistoric stone circle in Europe and is not separated from the public as Stonehenge is. This aspect dramatically increased visitor interest and appreciation, even though no significant archaeological information is provided on-site (we did not visit the National Trust facilities here). The engagement with Avebury seems to be largely as an aesthetically impressive and magickal or neopagan site, in contrast to the roped-off and scientific presentation of Stonehenge (I’m trying to minimize how hard I’m hammering my theme here).<br />
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Discussion of the stones quickly turned to the sort of folklore that surrounds all the megalithic sites of the British Isles, such as the Devil’s Chair above, or of the fertility powers of the stones.<br />
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While there is a National Trust center in Avebury, much of the focus of tourism goes to The Henge Shop. While one can buy all sorts of souvenirs here, the primary focus is neopagan and occult materials and literature<br />
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On the trip up, discussion of UFOs, haunting, and other strange phenomena was completely intertwined with the archaeological. I didn’t have to look hard to find the “spooky archaeology” theme I was researching. But even I was a bit surprised when our guide pulled out a set of dowsing rods for visitors to try at the site. Avebury is considered a major nexus of ley lines. <br />
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The notion of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_line">ley lines</a> was first developed by Alfred Watkins in his volume <i>The Old Straight Track</i>. Watkins believed the lines to be ancient sighting or road networks, important but materially mundane. Critics suggested that Watkins was reifying <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia">apophenia</a>, creating patterns out of churches, henges, and other spots with no real relation and often separated by centuries or millennia. The development of archaeology out of antiquarianism can be glimpsed in this process. Watkins’ lines are a product of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_Survey">Ordnance Survey Maps </a>that have played such a key role in <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9407762">archaeological and popular engagement with the British landscape</a> and its antiquity. Yet the mixing of disparate eras into a single “old and special” past smacks of the folkloric approach antiquarians took to the past (the same one that forces the guide information to constantly tell visitors to Stonehenge the place was not built by Druids). These lines are a geographic equivalent of Frazer’s trumpeting of survivals and folkloric understanding of religious prehistory in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough"><i>The Golden Bough</i></a>.<br />
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Even with this criticism, Watkins was still operating in a fairly mundane envelope of reality. Ley Lines did not acquire their supernatural aspect until the 1960s. While this history is a bit murky, the concept seems to derive from ideas that developed very early within the UFO world of “magnetic lines of force” along which UFOs travel. Since then, the notion of surging “dragon energies” and other geomantic concepts of a mystical network or grid have come to play a major role in public understanding of megalithic sites.<br />
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Seeing as how my day was simply getting more and more productive, after taking a twirl with the rods, I naturally bought my own set at the Henge Shop.<br />
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Our next stop was the historic village of Lacock, an entire town owned and preserved by the National Trust, inhabited by villagers that rent from the Trust. Many of these small communities were at one time owned by wealthy elites, and with the decline of such fortunes, some were acquired lock and stock for preservation purposes. An American comparison might be Williamsburg except that needed to be reconstructed, or living within a state or national park.<br />
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacock">Lacock </a>has been used as a set for various films, but the one that seems to attract the most attention is … the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacock_Abbey">use of the abbey to film Harry Potter</a> (is my theme showing?). After a nice lunch in an old pub, we took a drizzly walking tour of the village. One of the highlights of Lacock is the medieval <a href="http://www.greatbarns.org.uk/lacock_tithe_barn.html">Tithe Barn</a> and Lockup, the center for paying taxes/rent and a small gaol cell. While inside this wonderful timber-frame structure, I noticed something on one of the beams<br />
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Let me adjust the contrast<br />
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That appears to be a daisy wheel. Some of these may simply be carpenter’s marks, but in other cases they are believed to be <a href="http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/article-1355853613414/">apotropaic marks to protect against magic and witchcraft.</a> Visitors to Pennsylvania might compare them with German “hex signs” that may or may not have a magical function. <a href="http://www.winslowhouse.org/tag/superstitions/">Here are</a> some <a href="http://archaeopagans.blogspot.com/2008/08/apotropaic-marks-tithe-barn-bradford-on.html">other examples</a>. Our guide hadn’t noticed this (they’re quite faint as you can see, and the barn is dark), but pointed out stone crosses on some of the slate roofs that served a similar purpose (if anyone knows the technical term for these, please let me know).<a href="http://archaeopagans.blogspot.com/2008/10/more-apotropaic-marks.html"> Here are some other apparent daisy wheels</a> in the tithe barn that I missed.<br />
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Likewise, our final stop of the day was the picturesque village of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Combe">Castle Comb</a>, again used as a traditional backdrop for film productions that want to highlight the cherished image of the pre-industrial English countryside.<br />
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I was on my own the following day, taking the bus from Bath to Glastonbury to visit the heart of alternative perspectives on the British past. Glastonbury is steeped in myth and lore. The tor that dominates the town is strongly associated with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalon#Connection_to_Glastonbury">Isle of Avalon</a>, the place of healing where King Arthur retreats to convalesce until Britain once again needs him. Glastonbury has been visited by pilgrims in search of healing for centuries and today is strongly centered on magickal, neopagan, New Age, and other alternative residents and visitors. It has a reputation for being a den of aging hippies, and it was the already existing alternative scene that brought the musical festival to Glastonbury.<br />
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Downtown Glastonbury has numerous occult stores, New Age healing centers, alternative libraries, eclectic clothiers, vegan cafes, and so on. <a href="http://www.witchcraftshop.co.uk/">The Cat and Cauldron, a major supplier of neopagan and magickal working materials</a>, was particularly interesting in its offerings.<br />
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Religious icons from around the world rubbed shoulders with antique bottles, bits of animal bone, and other unusual ingredients.<br />
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Likewise, traditional archaeological texts sit side-by-side with the works of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Grant">Kenneth Grant</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley">Crowley</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Besant">Besant </a>as well as works of self-help, meditation, and fantasy literature<br />
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After my time in the British Museum and in the remnants of the Theosophical and Golden Dawn environment in Bloomsbury, this element in a tunnel leading to a neopagan shop, an art gallery, a café, and an alternative library, caught my eye for its use of Egyptian imagery<br />
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Back on the High Street, neo-Maya, deep ecology, and scientific imagery combine<br />
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Angels and crystal skulls<br />
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Down one Diagon-esque Alley, you can get your aura read<br />
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Or buy some <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copal">copal</a><br />
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I really don’t have much to say about this next one<br />
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At the heart of Glastonbury, and one might argue at the root of modern Glastonbury, is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Glastonbury_Abbey">Abbey</a>. It was the largest abbey in Britain until it was dissolved by Henry VIII.<br />
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One of the signature events in its history was the 1191 “discovery” of the graves of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. Cynics might suggest that the destruction of much of the abbey by fire in 1184, and the subsequent need for major tourist-friendly relics, might have played a role in the successful search for the mythic king.<br />
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But this didn’t stop King Edward “Longshanks” I from participating in the re-entombment of Arthur in the Abbey. You may notice an offering left the morning I visited.<br />
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One of my reasons for visiting Glastonbury was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Bligh_Bond">Frederick Bligh Bond</a>. The Church of England re-acquired the abbey in the early 20th century, and hired noted expert on medieval architecture Bond to conduct archaeological investigations and restore the abbey. However, Bligh Bond is only minimally mentioned in the official visitor’s center today. I wonder why?<br />
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Oh, that's why<br />
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After he reconstructed the ruins, Bond published the book The Gate of Remembrance in which he revealed his excavations were guided by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_writing">automatic writing</a>. Using a technique similar to a Ouija board, Bond contacted the spirits of the architects, monks, and neighbors of the Abbey during its years of operations centuries earlier. This isn’t entirely accurate. Bond saw himself conducting an experiment in psychical research and spiritualism, and insisted that rather than participating in a simple spiritualist medium session, he and his compatriot were instead touching a more divine greater consciousness or other entity. Regardless, the Church of England didn’t take this very well, and Bond was fired. He became a minor celebrity in spiritualist and occult circles, but in later years had to pay admission to visit the abbey he had rebuilt.<br />
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The controversy swirled in particular around two chapels Bond had “found” with these methods. I had read Bond’s book, but I was in particular luck that day to find a copy of an old guidebook in <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Labyrinth-Books/539839856036492">Labyrinth Books</a>, an esoteric book shop in town. This volume had been written shortly after the controversy, and was sympathetic to Bond.<br />
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With my somewhat forbidden guide in hand, I was able to pace out where there the chapels in question were located. One, the Loretto Chapel, got the only “probable” label I saw on site, and was not reconstructed.<br />
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The other, the Edgar Chapel, was reconstructed by Bond, but today has no label. It sits behind the tomb of “Arthur.” It is labeled as fraudulent or mythical in some of the more mainstream sources on the Abbey. Myths upon myths. Does this count as a ley line? The wind whipping up and the sky darkening as I entered the spot certainly was atmospheric.<br />
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This left the Tor.<br />
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Archaeological excavation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glastonbury_Tor">the Tor</a> shows occupation going back into the Pleistocene, and remnants of a post-Roman religious settlement can be shoved by the attuned into the medieval myths of<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_of_Arimathea"> Joseph of Arimathea</a> bringing the Holy Grail to Glastonbury.<br />
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The spot is spectacular, and provides a spectacular view of the countryside (though the fact that sheep can easily climb the Tor does diminish one’s sense of accomplishment).<br />
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I apologize for the length of this particular post, but the Stonehenge, Avebury, Cotswolds, and Glastonbury material is joined not just chronologically in my journey, but thematically in their importance in mythic roots of identity, and engagement with archaeology.<br />
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In an upcoming publication, I have written about how so many of the alternatives to science derive from disconnection from control over knowledge. The stale feeling described by so many visitors to Stonehenge is an example of this. The inability to walk amongst the stones makes them just one more glass-cased museum exhibit, like the broken bones and pottery shards that tell a thoroughly scientific tale within (one that repeatedly declares loudly, “And above all, no Druids!”). <br />
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By contrast, visitors to Avebury have full control over their engagement with the stones. They may not be aware the stones have mostly been re-placed after centuries of removal. They likely don’t know much about the age of the stones, or what evidence we actually do have to their original use and origin. Instead, all sorts of detritus of the professionalization of science fills the site. Ley Lines. Folklore about fertility and the Devil. Leftover theosophy and spiritualism in the form of UFOs and faerie sightings.<br />
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At Glastonbury, the Victorian friction between science and Romantic legend and myth has clearly tilted to the spiritual side of angel energies, workings, and the Holy Grail. Yet despite the meditation chapels and the “exotic” imported faiths brought by the hippies, this is also a place of British myth, of Arthur and healing waters like those in Bath and of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_did_those_feet_in_ancient_time">Green and Pleasant Land as Blake put it</a>. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Margaret_Murray">Margaret Murray</a> conceived of her witch-cult idea, which is instrumental in the rise of wicca and neopaganism in the 20th century, while on health-related leave in Glastonbury during the Great War. She was inspired by similarities she saw between her professional expertise in Egyptian religion, and the Joseph of Arimathea legend. The Enlightenment-era urban obsession with Egypt as the source of civilization and magical power collided with the English countryside and its folklore, producing a major strain of modern esoteric thought. Bligh Bond’s theosophical-like quasi-spiritualism likewise is a fossil of the late Victorian attempts to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disenchantment">re-enchant</a> their industrial world while simultaneously grappling with the deep time of geology, paleontology, and evolution as well as the de-centering cultural diversity recorded by colonial travelers and anthropologists.<br />
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But don’t take my word for it. Just go watch Harry Potter and its filming in Lacock, or compare the imagery I’ve been presenting with medievalist Tolkien’s Shire, and see that desire for an alternative green and magical land, one apart from the mundane disenchanted world of industry and change, one thoroughly embedded in an alternative world that never enters yet survives, thrives, and shapes the 21st century.ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-48845296813741799772015-06-14T15:26:00.000-05:002015-06-17T09:13:36.317-05:00Great Britain Trip: Part 4 - Time in Bath<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Great Britain Trip: Part 4 – Time in Bath<br />
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Two weeks ago I embarked on my first trip to Europe, specifically to Great Britain. This journey had two aspects. First, it is the closest I’ve had to a vacation in at least four years. But honestly, I don’t really do vacation. The primary reason for the trip was to assist several projects I’m working on, including a volume I’m currently writing on why archaeology has the “spooky” image it has in the public imagination.<br />
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The following images are not in precise chronological order, though the general narrative does roughly follow the order of places I visited. I spent four days in London at the beginning and another two at the end, and these materials are something of a chronological jumble for thematic purposes. These images are a fraction (specifically, about 7%) of the images I took. Many of these were for research I am not discussing in depth here, or for teaching purposes. The images and text here are instead a rough tour not so much of where I went as why I went, what I learned, and why that might be of interest.<br />
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This travelogue is broken into seven sections<br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-1-rule-britannia.html">Rule Britannia!</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-2-archaeology.html">Archaeology of Empire</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-3-mysteries-of.html">Mysteries of London</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-4-time-in-bath.html">Time in Bath</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-5-green-and.html">A Green and Magical Land</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-5-investigating.html">Investigating Inverness</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-7-legend-of.html">The Legend of Loch Ness</a><br />
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<b>Time in Bath</b><br />
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I had initially intended to write about some of the archival work I conducted in London, but I’ve ultimately realized I’ll leave this to my publications. I will briefly discuss some of this below before moving on to Bath.<br />
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Both the British Library and the National Archives were extremely efficient and helpful in both registering me as a reader, and getting me the resources I needed. The British Library has a lovely atmosphere, full of extremely nerdy people all over the grounds. It is a bit over-shadowed as it lies to the west of St. Pancras station and the hotel-structure I presented in the first post.<br />
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The National Archives is out in Kew, a bit under an hour on the tube from King’s Cross. The surrounding neighborhood is a mix of Kew Gardens and lovely urban/suburban residences, while the Archives themselves vaguely resemble Starfleet Academy.</div>
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Also somewhat in the vein of archival research, I got a glimpse of some of the Italian Renaissance <i>majolica</i> ceramic vessels that came to dominate my doctoral and post-doctoral research. I would love to go back and examine these vessels first hand to expand and refine my comparative work in Latin America.</div>
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If you know my research, you’ll understand the following image</div>
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After four days in London, it was time to move on to Bath, about an hour and a half by train to the west of London, a bit southeast of Bristol. The city is a <a href="http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/428">World Heritage site</a> for its archaeological and architectural legacy. For my purposes, it was also fairly well situated for the next two days of travels to the megaliths around Salisbury and to Glastonbury and then flying on to Scotland out of the Bristol airport.</div>
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I left King’s Cross for the outbound trains of Paddington Station. Even after four days of heavily using the Underground and related London trains, the romantic overtones of a major train station were present for me as I waited and ate a bit of sausage on a roll that made up brunch.</div>
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Once out of London, the English countryside was closer to the stereotypes and storybook images than I had imagined. Canal boats, beautifully maintained cottages and houses, country lanes, all were present. The rolling hills and rural flora weren’t too different from my years living and working in the Northeastern US, but the cultural pattern was far closer to traditional idealized imagery than I had expected. The equivalent might be if one visited Massachusetts and every small town looked like Marblehead, or if all of Arizona looked like movie versions of Old West Tombstone.</div>
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I roused out of pleasantly watching the landscape slide by when I spotted something on a hillside in the distance. The unexpected appearance struck me like a thunderbolt.</div>
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It was one of the White Horses, specifically the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherhill_White_Horse">Cherhill White Horse</a>. The oldest of the White Horses of England is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uffington_White_Horse">Uffington Horse, which may date back to the Bronze Age</a> in design but is regularly cleaned and repaired by digging into the chalk subsoil. The Cherhill White Horse was soon joined by another, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westbury_White_Horse">Westbury White Horse</a>. </div>
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These geoglyphs may have some antiquity to them, but in their current forms they are better thought of as follies, purposely romantic and archaic attempts to re-enchant the landscape in the Early Modern and industrial eras. Though these horses are “only” a few centuries old, their reference of the Uffington Horse and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerne_Abbas_Giant">Cerne Abbas Giant</a> meant I had begun to enter the gateway into the purposely ancient landscape of antiquarianism, folklore, and tradition. This theme, which we have already encountered, is important to the larger journey.</div>
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Bath is beautiful, and I understand its designation as a World Heritage site. The city has been a mecca for visitors since Roman times when the city was Aquae Sulis. More recently, it benefited from first the canal system and then the railroads. There are a number of residents living in canal boats in Bath, not far from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulteney_Bridge">Pulteney Bridge</a> above, which holds a number of cafes and shops. For reference, the bridge is contemporary with the beginning of the American Revolution, or the destruction by earthquake of Antigua, Guatemala.</div>
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I stayed in the lovely Royal Hotel, right across the street from the rail station. This made sense of course, for as I pleasantly discovered, the hotel had been designed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel">Brunel</a> himself, Britain's great engineering genius (and also one of my favorite characters in the steampunkish comic <i><a href="http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/">The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage</a></i>). </div>
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Bath is still a tourist town, where visitors come to relax and refresh themselves in the ancient spa waters as well as bathe themselves in the ancient and recent history. The connection with <a href="http://www.janeausten.co.uk/">Jane Austen’s life and writings is strong and a major focus of the tourism industry</a>. The city is also a cultural center with <a href="http://www.theatreroyal.org.uk/">theaters</a>, galleries, and a <a href="http://www.bath.ac.uk/">university</a>, adding an eclectic student and artist vibe to the ancient center. </div>
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Most striking is the gorgeous Georgian architecture, of which there can be no finer example than the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Crescent">Royal Crescent </a>on the northeastern edge of town</div>
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The scope of the place, almost all private housing today, cannot be done justice, by my pictures at least.</div>
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The center of the city is still the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Baths_(Bath)">Roman baths</a>, today a major archaeological tourism attraction. I was struck once again by how commonplace the notion of archaeology is in the United Kingdom, a theme I will return to when I discuss Inverness. </div>
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The heart of the Roman Baths is a mélange of original architecture and Victorian embellishment</div>
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The striking Roman statues are a pure Victorian invention, with governors and emperors depicted who were considered to have had important ties to Britain, as well as a depiction of Roma, the spirit of Rome. The baths are in essence lined with a Victorian equivalent of Disneyland’s Hall of Presidents except the recent images have taken on a faux antiquity of their own. The statue depicted below is a Victorian archaized image of governor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publius_Ostorius_Scapula">Publius Ostorius Scapula</a>.</div>
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The hot springs were the heart of the Roman settlement, and one can get a drink of the waters at the end of the museum (complete with a detailed statement of the mineral contents and how safe the water is to drink in which quantities)</div>
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But the history of archaeology at the site allows for a detailed examination of ancient Romano-British life within the complex facilities of the baths and the nearby temple, as well as in the larger community of Aquae Sulis.</div>
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One of the archaeological discoveries in Bath that contributes to the site’s World Heritage status is the collection of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_tablet">curse tablets</a>. These objects are simultaneously exotic and mundane. They could easily be mentioned in my previous post on the esoteric in archaeological museums as they are indeed<a href="http://curses.csad.ox.ac.uk/"> magical curses</a>. </div>
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On the other hand, the everyday grievances that deserved supernatural punishment are quite recognizable, most being the theft of personal items.</div>
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Watching over all of this from the temple would have been the symbol of the Roman Baths today, <a href="http://www.romanbaths.co.uk/key-objects-collection">the Gorgon head.</a></div>
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Discussion of this image is complex, but it may be syncretic, blending a local British water god or spirit with Classical ideology and iconography such as of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanus">Oceanus</a>. A <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon">Gorgon’s</a> head is likewise worn by an image of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerva">Minerva</a>, also found in Bath.</div>
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The baths are predominantly presented as a Roman settlement, but the enduring aspect is difficult to ignore. In the main hall, architectural remnants of the 12th century transformation into the King’s Baths are visible, as are seats and statues added in the 17th century in keeping with the legend of the necromancy-favoring <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bladud">King Bladud</a>.</div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Pump_Room,_Bath">The Pump Room</a>, a center of high social life (made famous by Jane Austen), was added above the baths in the 18th century, delivering us into the Georgian period still dominating the surface. And above it all looms <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_Abbey">the abbey</a>.</div>
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The layers of the past, and the re-creation of an idealized past to serve the present, will continue in the next post on the imagined British countryside of myth and magic.</div>
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One last note: the ever-presence of cider made me very happy. </div>
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Not everything I ate was fish and chips and cider, though that was a significant part of my diet. I sadly did not get pictures (<a href="http://www.yakyetiyak.co.uk/images/gallery/31.jpg">though this one is pretty close to my experience</a>) when I ate my final dinner in Bath at <a href="http://www.yakyetiyak.co.uk/index">Yak Yeti Yak</a>, a Nepalese restaurant decked out with many symbols of Nepal including religious objects, woodwork, a kukri knife and yes, Yeti footprints.</div>
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ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-29750212100312602052015-06-13T23:24:00.000-05:002015-06-17T09:13:56.785-05:00Great Britain Trip: Part 3 - Mysteries of London<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Two weeks ago I embarked on my first trip to Europe, specifically to Great Britain. This journey had two aspects. First, it is the closest I’ve had to a vacation in at least four years. But honestly, I don’t really do vacation. The primary reason for the trip was to assist several projects I’m working on, including a volume I’m currently writing on why archaeology has the “spooky” image it has in the public imagination.<br />
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The following images are not in precise chronological order, though the general narrative does roughly follow the order of places I visited. I spent four days in London at the beginning and another two at the end, and these materials are something of a chronological jumble for thematic purposes. These images are a fraction (specifically, about 7%) of the images I took. Many of these were for research I am not discussing in depth here, or for teaching purposes. The images and text here are instead a rough tour not so much of where I went as why I went, what I learned, and why that might be of interest.<br />
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This travelogue is broken into seven sections<br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-1-rule-britannia.html">Rule Britannia!</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-2-archaeology.html">Archaeology of Empire</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-3-mysteries-of.html">Mysteries of London</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-4-time-in-bath.html">Time in Bath</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-5-green-and.html">A Green and Magical Land</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-5-investigating.html">Investigating Inverness</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-7-legend-of.html">The Legend of Loch Ness</a><br />
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<b>Mysteries of London</b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHxFC4KDgTgbO2Hu0GNiSvprKXht0W3pE3gWGlblE32p_rnahHoe0Wkj84h8ff1HtLPhEFa4JdTtS8m9qmy4ccBx-7qoqf5SFjkKCIL4RMwThfeCkh-9exwNGSUfI_6D3G71Q/s1600/mystery-1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHxFC4KDgTgbO2Hu0GNiSvprKXht0W3pE3gWGlblE32p_rnahHoe0Wkj84h8ff1HtLPhEFa4JdTtS8m9qmy4ccBx-7qoqf5SFjkKCIL4RMwThfeCkh-9exwNGSUfI_6D3G71Q/s640/mystery-1.JPG" width="488" /></a></div>
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The objects in London’s museums are not simply seen as evidence of the past, or aesthetically pleasing objects to be admired. Quite a few make up the visual vocabulary of the esoteric or spooky. One of the themes I am addressing in my writing is how the nature of antiquities the practices of museums lend themselves to the mysterious and supernatural, a theme <a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2011/10/ghosts-in-museum-archaeologys.html">I've addressed previously.</a><br />
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The object above, known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burney_Relief">Burney Relief</a>, has transgressed any historical or original cultural context to become our modern image of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith">Lilith</a>. As the first woman before Eve in Jewish lore, the woman who would not submit to Adam, Lilith has been (sometimes quite irresponsibly) cast as <a href="http://esoterx.com/2012/11/13/lilith-resurgent-sumerian-demon-to-feminist-icon-to-satan-herself/">a demon, a succubus, a vampire</a>, and alternatively as <a href="http://feminism.eserver.org/theory/papers/lilith/intro.html">a symbol of female power and independence</a>. Most scholars do not believe the relief is in fact a representation of a Babylonian <i>lilitu</i> demon or Lilith, but possibly a goddess, either <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inanna">Inanna</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ereshkigal">Ereshkigal</a>. Yet the prior identification as Lilith, combined with the clawed feet and the owls, powerful symbols of night and mystery, makes this a Western occult icon.<br />
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Likewise, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_Horus">Egyptian Eye of Horus or wadjet</a> amulets at the top of this post, as seen in the British museum, have long been associated with magical protection. Yet with the Victorian and Edwardian fascination with Egypt as a place of ancient and Hermetic magic, this symbol too has taken on a meaning of the exotic and mysterious. <br />
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The first night I was in London, I attended a lecture at <a href="http://www.treadwells-london.com/">Treadwell’s book shop</a>, near the British Museum, on this topic. Eleanor Dobson, a doctoral student at the University of Birmingham, presented some of her work on “<a href="http://www.treadwells-london.com/event/egyptomanias-magical-jewels/">Egyptomania’s Magical Jewels</a>,” focusing on how archaeology, art, literature, and occultism all combined to create the notion of the magical Egyptian artifact in the works of authors such as Bram Stoker, H. Rider Haggard, Oscar Wilde, H. P. Lovecraft, and others (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7NW3sz9qcc">a talk on somewhat similar topics can be found here</a>). I look forward to reading her dissertation in the future.<br />
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Treadwell’s was the first of a number of occult and esoteric booksellers, shops, and other establishments I visited during my journey (I warned my readers that things were going to go this way after the first couple of posts, see the rest of this blog if this surprises you). A relative newcomer on the block, it joins a long tradition of occult locations around the British Museum. The original Isis-Urania Temple of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetic_Order_of_the_Golden_Dawn">Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn</a> isn’t far from Treadwell’s, and there are some connections between the two (I won’t reveal what this is, you’ll have to visit to find out). </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicVoXeEtnxww8VcJZtMVHlniO5A_L83L0mI03sfwihl3aEITT6B2e_5c5rQStczDdOjbM88I22eTtK_NwyfJG_jrLw0pH8V5GGvWPCa-Bac446drAX2ZciGEk_NCqKfOHA7is/s1600/mystery-8.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="371" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicVoXeEtnxww8VcJZtMVHlniO5A_L83L0mI03sfwihl3aEITT6B2e_5c5rQStczDdOjbM88I22eTtK_NwyfJG_jrLw0pH8V5GGvWPCa-Bac446drAX2ZciGEk_NCqKfOHA7is/s400/mystery-8.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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I also visited the nearby <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis_Bookshop">Atlantis Bookshop</a>, another London icon of the magickal world that has been in the same location since 1922, and was integral in the history of modern occultism and Neopaganism. That such practices and places would center around archaeological institutions like the British Museum and UCL are not surprising, a topic I’ll be addressing more in my upcoming book. Though I will admit I was surprised to stumble onto the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Swedenborg">Swedenborg </a>Hall and Library.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_IM0i9eu_I0ZFxOfKkF_BRiU4ppJvN4gDtMQO-nXqwKqsPqcmrMXhI83JwQd3iHddwBYCSoRKLliQJyYp6BdFj1ChtsQlpiK1r-Uy7sYfJ4KBsC2TgebwoL3ZuG6oIrgljVA/s1600/mystery-9.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_IM0i9eu_I0ZFxOfKkF_BRiU4ppJvN4gDtMQO-nXqwKqsPqcmrMXhI83JwQd3iHddwBYCSoRKLliQJyYp6BdFj1ChtsQlpiK1r-Uy7sYfJ4KBsC2TgebwoL3ZuG6oIrgljVA/s400/mystery-9.JPG" width="322" /></a></div>
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Visiting London’s art and archaeological museums, objects evocative of mystery and the esoteric kept catching my eye.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilHYbSjKEaSSCMeqtpYkGxz6zu3TGIcerKR7clrEOjclIKebBuvqDfI2lQI3UilEEaIFYzSB8clSdkhHEiKjaLS00EJ5N3CbLkeUiqC6k6o8DGPsZK6oduhZWt72L4B9fJUDw/s1600/mystery-2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="322" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilHYbSjKEaSSCMeqtpYkGxz6zu3TGIcerKR7clrEOjclIKebBuvqDfI2lQI3UilEEaIFYzSB8clSdkhHEiKjaLS00EJ5N3CbLkeUiqC6k6o8DGPsZK6oduhZWt72L4B9fJUDw/s400/mystery-2.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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Some are products of modern mystical concerns. The most famous of the “crystal skulls,” the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_skull#Mitchell-Hedges_skull">Mitchell-Hedges skull</a>, was procured in London. I will be able to discuss this more in the future, but one of my research activities during this trip was related to it. <br />
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The second most famous of these spurious Mesoamerican objects is the British Museum skull, depicted above. Despite the self-made lore of the Mitchell-Hedges family that their skull was discovered somewhere in Mesoamerica, most commonly asserted as being from Lubantuun, both of these sculptures were profiled in the British Museum’s journal <i>Man</i> in 1936. In 1933 London art dealer Sydney Burney said he had obtained it from another collector. Yes, this is the same Burney that acquired the Lilith/Inanna/Ereshkigal plaque above. Mysteries upon mysteries. The <i>Man</i> article compared Burney’s crystal skull (now known as the Mitchell-Hedges skull) with the example on display in the British Museum. Mitchell-Hedges purchased the Burney skull after it went up for auction in 1943. <a href="http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/mitchell_hedges/microscope.html">More recent analysis of the British Museum skull has found evidence of industrial-era rotary tools used to shape the object,</a> and historical research suggests these objects passed through the hands of archaeological entrepreneur and enthusiast <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Boban">Eugène Boban</a>. These historical and scientific analyses are highlighted in the British Museum exhibit of the skull, located in a corner of the exhibit on Life and Death. Nonetheless they are still icons of esoteric mystery, pseudoarchaeology, and magic.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHAKBH0HDPbobbMLM2ckHE4O-TJ5C24OZOD3g_tWRDxlvzNwS2nNU_gldNZM0MHVg-msSFhcDriWkqRLxDTL8nellaCNxDfwU3v1uDjAzm45DvAYym3BhhBCNmFzY1XNdf-Zk/s1600/mystery-3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHAKBH0HDPbobbMLM2ckHE4O-TJ5C24OZOD3g_tWRDxlvzNwS2nNU_gldNZM0MHVg-msSFhcDriWkqRLxDTL8nellaCNxDfwU3v1uDjAzm45DvAYym3BhhBCNmFzY1XNdf-Zk/s400/mystery-3.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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The crystal ball aspect of these skulls likely accounts for some of their enduring appeal, and indeed they supposedly provide mystical experiences to those who gaze into them. The British Museum has even more influential scrying stones in its public exhibits. The image above is a collection of the magical working tools of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee">John Dee</a>, court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I, important bibliophile, rumored spy for England, and seeker of the Philosopher’s Stone. Dee partnered with seer Edward Kelley, who would stare for hours into the mirrors and crystal balls owned by Dee in order to contact spirits. These alchemical and occult experiments led Dee to believe he was contacting angels in their language of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enochian">Enochian</a>. Eventually Dee and Kelley followed their pursuits to the Continent, leaving a mob to destroy Dee’s wonderfully named estate at Mortlake, which held one of the world’s largest libraries at the time.</div>
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One object stands out, however. The large black mirror, described in its older label above as a “black stone,” is in fact a Mesoamerican obsidian mirror. Mirrors were important magical objects in Mesoamerica as in Europe. Mirroring (so to speak) Dee’s dual role as court advisor and magician, one of the most important gods in Mesoamerica was a god of sorcery and royalty who went by names such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tezcatlipoca">Tezcatlipoca</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_K">K’awiil</a> and was the Smoking Mirror. His <a href="http://research.famsi.org/schele_list.php?_allSearch=3541">forehead or foot was depicted as a mirror issuing smoke</a> (his foot was also sometimes a snake, also a symbol equally spooky and royal around the world). Maya nobility who had passed into the otherworld at death were likewise depicted with a smoking mirror in their forehead. Kelley and Dee’s use of a Mesoamerican mirror to contact otherworldly spirits in what some would likely call necromancy, isn’t all that far off the original intended use of such objects. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS71kX_mzz2x0BOI0Z03V15gF24kadMoIF71Y69n4azd-091v5hdHk6GCRjk0MB0AuRtnQfaGOgeXZCeJrdVVyuzj05xN1mGRQEyvlgGFVkpGE8cfRKJ0TNMs5I_AiPxPMVfU/s1600/mystery-4a.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS71kX_mzz2x0BOI0Z03V15gF24kadMoIF71Y69n4azd-091v5hdHk6GCRjk0MB0AuRtnQfaGOgeXZCeJrdVVyuzj05xN1mGRQEyvlgGFVkpGE8cfRKJ0TNMs5I_AiPxPMVfU/s400/mystery-4a.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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Alongside Dee’s ritual tools, the British Museum displays a number of other magical charms and amulets. My favorite is a prehistoric stone projectile point mounted as “elf shot.” The elves and other spirits of medieval and modern Europe are not the aristocratic and attractive creatures of Victorian literature or modern fantasy as much as they were tricky and dangerous entities at times sharing more in common with demons than Santa’s helpers or noble warriors of Rivendell. Elves were tied up in fears of witchcraft, and those who had become inexplicably ill were sometimes believed to have been “elf-shot” or “blasted,” pierced by arrows fired from the wood by elves. Fans of Middle-Earth will recognize Tolkien’s adaptation of this concept in <a href="http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Morgul-blade">“Morgul” weapons</a> that poison those struck by them, unless they are cured with elf magic. Curers would incorporate elf-shot into remedies for this condition, objects we today recognize as ancient stone tools or fossils, a practice documented in early modern witch trial testimony. <a href="http://echinoblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/archaeological-echinoderm-fairy-loaves.html">Echinoderm star stones have long been attractive as magical objects</a>, though the display in the Museum shows a <a href="http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_04">“tongue-stone,”</a> a fossil shark tooth, and this was one of several such exhibits I saw in London’s museums. <br />
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Belief in magically dangerous or cursed objects is not relegated to past eras. As noted in its caption<br />
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this amethyst from the “Vault” in the geological collection of the Natural History Museum was bound (a very sorcerous word) in the ring of an astrologer because its owner, a scientist, was concerned about it being cursed.<br />
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Even holy objects can take on a sinister cast in the appropriate light. The above is a silver reliquary from 13th century Belgium designed to house the hand of a saint. It is indeed beautiful but yes, those are glass windows allowing one to peer inside to see the decaying hand. Not creepy in the slightest.<br />
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With all of this in mind, I decided in the latter part of one day to take a more touristy excursion into another famous aspect of London’s image: the fog-shrouded home of Victorian mystery. At the same time, these places also challenge the differences between fiction, legend, and historical fact and reconstruction in interesting ways of relevance to my work.<br />
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The window above is, as you should have guessed, on Baker Street. The problem of course is that there was no apartment of 221B Baker Street, and certainly not one rented by either Mr. Sherlock Holmes or Dr. John Watson, as they did not exist. But they are some of London’s most famous residents, their legacy only continuing to grow in the 21st century. If you don’t believe me, ask some of the people who were in line in front and behind me when I visited Baker Street<br />
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Sherlock Holmes is not only the most influential literary character in how we think about concepts of mystery, detection, and logic, he is also the first character to truly challenge the boundaries of fiction and fact in the modern era. As discussed in the video below by Michael Saler, author of the book <i>As If,</i> many readers of Holmes’ adventures didn’t realize, or didn’t want to believe, that Holmes wasn’t real, suspecting that Arthur Conan Doyle was simply the pen name or agent for John Watson.<br />
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And indeed, Doyle took great pains to ground Holmes in reality. He modeled the character after one of his <a href="http://www.sherlockian-sherlock.com/dr-joseph-bell-the-real-sherlock-holmes.php">medical school instructors</a>, and spent considerable detail in describing Holmes’ mannerisms and his abode on Baker Street.<br />
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This is what has allowed for a detailed “reconstruction” of 221B, filled with a combination of objects described as being in the residence, and iconic objects from the more famous Holmes cases.<br />
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(all the stories are in public domain, so you don’t need me to <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Musgrave_Ritual">explain the “V.R.” or the slipper</a>)<br />
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In creating Holmes, Conan Doyle wanted to create a detective that showed how he worked out his solutions.<br />
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While most remembered for his brutal use of logic, Holmes was also a pioneer in forensic science, and much of 221B housed scientific equipment and reference works more fitting to the scientist than the beat cop or the later noir private investigator.<br />
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In Holmes we see the 20th century dream of science applied to everyday problems through the symbol of crime solving (I teach about this using Corinna Kruse’s article <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01198.x/abstract;jsessionid=89AC8862625938828DB30DA6BE2A5BCA.f02t02?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false">“Producing Absolute Truth: CSI Science as Wishful Thinking”</a>).<br />
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Perhaps then it is no real surprise that the most famous of all of Holmes’ stories is not only supernatural in overtone, but also involves <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hound_Tor">archaeology</a>, as seen above in Watson’s journal entry during his time investigating the <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Hound_of_the_Baskervilles">Baskerville affair</a>.<br />
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Having whet my appetite on symbolism of mystery and the interplay of legend, fiction, and belief, I decided to round things out and take <a href="http://www.jack-the-ripper-tour.com/">one of the several Jack the Ripper </a>tours offered each night in the Whitechapel district of London. Note: the tour advertised above was not <a href="http://www.jack-the-ripper-tour.com/">the one I took.</a><br />
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As I had experienced when I organized my own haunted and hidden history tour of the French Quarter for Tulane’s Anthropology Department, paranormal and dark tourism sites can be quite competitive. There were at least three different tours on offer that evening. Ours was distinguished by our guide not wearing any attempt at period costuming. As can be seen above, the guide of another tour wore a bowler, while yet another was led by a man in a full top hat and wool(?) great coat get up, matching the legendary image of the Ripper.<br />
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In the image above, located in front of <a href="http://wiki.casebook.org/index.php/Christ_Church">Christ Church Spitalfields</a> our guide tells us about the both the scene of one of the Ripper murders, and the history of the <a href="http://wiki.casebook.org/index.php/Ten_Bells">Ten Bells tavern</a> both as part of the 1888 murders and as Ripper tourism site in subsequent decades. T<a href="http://www.tenbells.com/">he Ten Bells is now a fashionable bar with a restaurant above</a> it in a gentrified neighborhood. <br />
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<a href="http://madameguillotine.org.uk/2009/10/25/christ-church-spitalfields/">Christ Church Spitalfields</a> has become an icon of Ripperology in no small part due to the occult angle the case has taken since the 1970s. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/sep/25/architecture">In these conspiracy theories, the churches of Nicholas Hawksmoor become geomantic sites</a> for Hermetic, Masonic, or other ritual practices that eventually involve the royal family and other well-to-dos (amazing I’ve never heard an explicit mention of the Reptilians in discussion of Jack the Ripper).<br />
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These theories were clearly on the minds of my fellow tourists. The guide had a prepared section of his lesson plan on the topic, but was pre-empted by audience questions on the subject.<br />
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I’m not going to lie: while I don’t believe these theories, it was Alan Moore’s masterful use of them in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Hell">graphic novel <i>From Hell</i> </a>that ultimately pushed me to go on a Ripper tour. I strongly recommend the book, and am re-reading for the first time in almost fifteen years, now that I’ve visited Whitechapel. The epilogue alone is worth the price of admission.<br />
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You may have noticed that the pictures are fairly well-lit. This was partly due to the hour (the tour began at 7 PM, as did the others more or less), but the season didn’t help. As I would find out in Scotland, the northern latitude dramatically impacts the time of sunset in the summer.<br />
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More to the point, the legend overshadows the grisly reality. Our tour guide was quite good and on point with both the reality and the legend. He kept pointing out how our image of the legend, the mysterious gentleman doctor, the fog (there was no significant fog on the nights of the murders, btw) cannot match either the reality of 1888 or the reality of today. Some of the buildings are gone, the streets are of course cleaned up (the Ripper murders brought dramatic attention to the social conditions in the worst slums of Victorian London), and the skyscrapers of 21st century capital loom taller than any top hat. As a friend of mine put it, I had been served up a bit of my own skeptical and historically contextual medicine.</div>
ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-87151015252485471912015-06-13T13:50:00.001-05:002015-06-17T09:14:17.078-05:00Great Britain Trip: Part 2 - Archaeology of Empire<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="text-align: left;">Sculptures on exterior of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_and_Commonwealth_Office">Foreign and Commonwealth Office</a>, Westminster, London</span></div>
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<b>Great Britain Trip, Part 2: Archaeology of Empire</b><br />
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Two weeks ago I embarked on my first trip to Europe, specifically to Great Britain. This journey had two aspects. First, it is the closest I’ve had to a vacation in at least four years. But honestly, I don’t really do vacation. The primary reason for the trip was to assist several projects I’m working on, including a volume I’m currently writing on why archaeology has the “spooky” image it has in the public imagination.<br />
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The following images are not in precise chronological order, though the general narrative does roughly follow the order of places I visited. I spent four days in London at the beginning and another two at the end, and these materials are something of a chronological jumble for thematic purposes. These images are a fraction (specifically, about 7%) of the images I took. Many of these were for research I am not discussing in depth here, or for teaching purposes. The images and text here are instead a rough tour not so much of where I went as why I went, what I learned, and why that might be of interest.<br />
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This travelogue is broken into seven sections<br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-1-rule-britannia.html">Rule Britannia!</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-2-archaeology.html">Archaeology of Empire</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-3-mysteries-of.html">Mysteries of London</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-4-time-in-bath.html">Time in Bath</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-5-green-and.html">A Green and Magical Land</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-5-investigating.html">Investigating Inverness</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-7-legend-of.html">The Legend of Loch Ness</a><br />
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<b>The Archaeology of Empire</b><br />
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Before I begin, a word on the title of this post. Not only did I thoroughly enjoy visiting the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum, and others during my stay in the United Kingdom, I was also graciously assisted by the British Museum. I was able to consult some of their artifacts not on display, in support of ongoing research projects (note: these objects are not discussed or represented below). I am quite thankful for this assistance.<br />
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Furthermore, as a United States citizen and resident who conducts archaeology primarily in Latin America, I don’t have all that many stones to throw in regards to the relationship between larger geopolitics and the conduct of scientific and scholarly inquiry. While I believe my work aids in public and scholarly understanding of the past in Latin America, I am aware that my work cannot be entirely divorced from the larger role of the U.S. in the Western Hemisphere.<br />
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That said the British imperial past and its importance in the formation of archaeology should not be ignored when viewing many of the objects in the collections above, and this connection is not hidden in these exhibits. The brilliant Enlightenment Room at the British Museum very much contends with the role of imperialism in the collecting of curiosity cabinets, and then museums, that were so foundational to the origins of modern science generally, and archaeology specifically.<br />
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The artifacts to be found in these collections are truly astounding, and I feel privileged to have been able to see them first-hand, even though they can invoke specters of the role of colonialism in earlier archaeological endeavors.<br />
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The British Museum is open to the public and free (though donations are suggested, and there are plenty of ways to spend money within its walls if you so desire). It was quite busy every day I was there, no exhibit was busier than the Egyptian exhibits, and no spot in the Egyptian exhibits got more public attention than the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone">Rosetta Stone</a>, placed right at the front entrance to the exhibit. I couldn’t tell if the stone is famous because it is famous, if it is famous because its significance is so clear, or if it is famous because of its contentious history as war booty of France and then Britain, before more recent <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8402640.stm">Egyptian requests for either a loan or a repatriation</a>. Judging by the materials sold in the various gift shops of the museum, putting the Rosetta stone on almost every imaginable medium, its popularity is well-understood. </div>
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The Egyptian sculpture hall is a wonderland of massive and delicate ancient works, many iconic.</div>
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The scale can be overwhelming</div>
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Many objects are statues of rulers (many of those in the collection are from the New Kingdom, and like the two above, are specifically of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amenhotep_III">Amenhotep III</a>, father of the heretic king Akhenaten), but some are also more religiously oriented, such as this collection of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sekhmet">Sekhmet</a> statues</div>
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Time and again in the British Museum, I was stunned by seeing the original objects I reference in my <a href="http://www.units.miamioh.edu/reg/bulletins/CurrentGeneralBulletin/ath-145-lost-cities-amp-ancient-civilizations-3-mpf.htm">Lost Cities and Ancient Civilizations</a> class, such as the important <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_Palette">Battlefield Palette</a> from late Predynastic Egypt, depicting some of the political conflict in the immediate years before the first unification of Upper and Lower Egypt and the beginning of the classical Egyptian state. Though notably even this object is not unified in its museum state, as the upper fragment is a replica of a section in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.</div>
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Unsurprisingly, many visitors were particularly excited by the mummy and sarcophagus rooms</div>
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Though quite a few gawked around this famous cat statuette. Modern social media netizens can clearly identify with the ancient Egyptian love of cats. Like many museum pieces around the world, it is known better by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gayer-Anderson_cat">name of its donor</a> than by its context or history.</div>
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Cats were also on offer at the Petrie Museum. The middle necklace is composed entirely of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_faience">faience</a> (a form of colored ceramic-glass) cat amulets smaller than the nail on your pinky finger. Above the cats is a necklace composed of wards against magic.</div>
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The University College London has one of the world’s great archaeology departments (I met with several members and alumni of the UCL archaeology program while I was in London, who graciously took me out to dinner and drinks), and much of that legacy goes back to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flinders_Petrie">Sir William Flinders-Petrie</a>, who was a pioneer in both archaeological method and heritage management. </div>
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Petrie initially went to Egypt to test a pseudoscientific notion of the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_inch">pyramid inch</a>” held by the Royal Astronomer of Scotland, a friend of Petrie’s father. But once he concluded his surveying measurements of the Pyramids at Giza, Petrie quickly discarded this idea, and soon took up the cause of protecting Egyptian heritage from widespread looting for the commercial market. This didn’t stop Petrie from participating in the “partition” culture of archaeology of his time, agreements brokered with governments that resulted in archaeological materials going to the home countries of foreign excavators, but it would be decades before these organized standards began to change.</div>
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The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrie_Museum_of_Egyptian_Archaeology">Petrie Museum</a> is far smaller than the British Museum, but is jam-packed full of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Carter">wonderful things, to quote one of Petrie’s contemporaries</a>. It is a must visit and feels like everything the stereotype of the modern museum isn’t. There are treasures everywhere, more than can be imagined. There are not large blank wall panels supporting printed information (though there is a fair amount of information presented in addition to artifacts), nor repeating banks of electronic displays (though there is material from the <a href="http://www.ucl.ac.uk/3dpetriemuseum">3DPetrie project</a>). Those who know me know that <a href="http://miamistudent.net/?p=113528">I very much embrace new technologies including for museology</a>, such as 3D data capture and replication/printing, but the sheer density of the material here was comforting. This was clearly a showcase for wonderful things and a key reference for students of archaeology. Indeed, there were a couple of people specifically studying collections in amongst the exhibits when I visited.</div>
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Petrie invented one of archaeology’s core methods, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seriation_(archaeology)">sequence dating or seriation</a>, the method used for chronologically ordering archaeological contexts based on the style of artifacts they contain. It is a formal version of your ability to recognize the age of a piece of clothing, or a car, or a building, by minor stylistic changes. I teach this method to my students using some of <a href="http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/naqada/tombindex.html">Petrie’s work in the cemetery lots of Naqada</a>, so imagine my wonder at seeing so many of the ceramic vessels Petrie used not only on display, but in stylistic order.</div>
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For those who largely prefer to get their archaeology from the <i>History</i> channel and its never ending parade of ancient aliens, hyperdiffusion, giants, and other pseudoscientific topics, take a look at these two stones. One is a stone used in moving large stones in construction, the other an inventory of supplies delivered during pyramid construction. It doesn’t mention anything about the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watcher_(angel)">Watchers</a> or sonic tractor beams.</div>
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One of the joys of the extensive collections at London’s museums such as the British Museum or the Victoria and Albert is the ability to trace a theme through time. On my final day in London proper, I spent a goodly amount of time in the East Asia rooms of the Victoria and Albert and British Museums, sections I had not had a chance to visit earlier. In addition to taking a quite a few images of Neolithic pottery and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shang_dynasty">Shang</a> bronzes for my lectures, I decided to continue with the theme of dragons I had been following in European artwork the previous week. The above jade ornament from Neolithic China is a sort of thing labeled a<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_dragon"> “pig-dragon”</a> an early form of mystical beast that eventually gives rise to the<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_dragon"> <i>long</i> dragon</a> better known around the world. The form involves from slit-ring ear-pendants like the above, similar in some senses to ear flares for those of a Mesoamerican background who may be reading this.</div>
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These two objects from the Shang period, a ritual bronze spear point and a chariot fitting, have much more recognizable dragons.</div>
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Monsters like the<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taotie"><i> taotie</i> </a>abound on Shang bronzes, some of the most valuable elite goods of second millennium BCE China.</div>
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The beast on the bronze handle of this knife complements the blade made of jade, a material that came to symbolize antiquity in a way that jade did in Mesoamerica, or marble did in Europe.</div>
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Appreciation and study of antiquities arguably has deeper formal roots in China than in Europe, as demonstrated by this <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_dynasty">Qing dynasty</a> ceramic adaptation of a three-millennia older Shang bronze wine cup. Several examples of antiquarian artistry were on display in the China sections of the BM and V&A.</div>
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Objects from all over the world can be found in London’s museums, though I noticed that perhaps the least represented part of the world was South America (shades of the competition between Spain and Britain in the Early Modern era). The Easter Island moai named <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoa_Hakananai%27a">Hoa Hakananai’a</a></i> was stationed in one of the main entrances to the Great Hall of the British Museum, though it did not attract anywhere near as much attention as the Rosetta Stone. Perhaps its kinship to modern minimalism does it no favors in the postmodern early 21st century.</div>
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Another treasure of the Natural History Museum is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_rhodesiensis">Broken Hill skull</a>, the earliest hominin skull recognized from Africa, and an important example of <i>Homo heidelbergensis</i>.</div>
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Of all the objects I was most desirous to see in the British Museum, the list was topped by the lintels of Yaxchilan. Pioneering Maya archaeologist Alfred Maudslay brought these back from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaxchilan">Yaxchilan</a>, a moderately-sized but beautiful Classic Maya city in the Usumacinta valley that separates modern Mexico and Guatemala. These masterpieces of Maya sculpture and iconography appear in every textbook on Mesoamerica, and I use them every semester in trying to teach my students a little something about Maya hieroglyphs. Indeed, I’ve been using them in that capacity since I was an undergraduate teaching fellow over twenty years ago. Despite all that, the detail, the mixing of high and low relief to give even greater depth, were still stunning. </div>
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The Americas rooms of the British Museum were small, but I recognized almost every object in the Mesoamerica room. Time and again I was floored by realizing a key object I know and use for teaching and research was here, in front of me.</div>
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This jade plaque, which led to a cloud over <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gann">Dr. Thomas Gann</a> during the struggle to professionalize archaeology in Mexico, is another masterpiece, and possibly another example of purposeful archaizing and exoticizing using an antique-themed material, jade. It’s also a heck of a lot bigger than I had imagined. I understand Gann’s obsession with the piece a little better now.</div>
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Though Egypt is clearly a great archaeological obsession of the Victorians that built the British Museum out to its fullest, the engagement with the Near East in the 19th and 20th centuries was even more astonishing to me.</div>
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Another iconic piece I use every semester is this stela
to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabonidus">Narbonidus</a>, the last of the Neo-Babylonian kings. Narbonidus collected
together many ancient icons and monuments to gods from distant lands,
consolidating his spiritual power in one place. For this reason, he’s been
called the first archaeologist, and his collection the first museum. He
certainly would have approved of London’s museums.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another wow moment for me was one of the modeled skulls from Jericho (yes, that Jericho, due to its natural spring the oldest continuously occupied human settlement in the world). Near the beginning of agricultural life 12,000 years ago, people at Jericho and other communities in the area created lifelike representations of the dead,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastered_human_skulls"> rebuilding their faces in clay and replacing their eyes with shell or other materials</a>. While we can’t be certain, the most likely explanation is that these were the beloved dead, ancestors who had traveled into another realm and should be honored.</div>
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The treasures of Queen <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puabi">Puabi</a>, and her husband the king, of Ur are here (the Standard of Ur is currently on tour, the object in the background is a replica). </div>
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As with other exhibits, a key motivation for Near Eastern
archaeology a century ago was to place the present in the past and to control
key points of human history, especially Biblical history. This late Babylonian
tablet is a<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_Map_of_the_World"> map of the world</a>, showing it surrounded by bitter water, and
recording the location where the Ark landed after the Deluge. The Victorian
public was stunned when archaeologists began uncovering the<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh_flood_myth"> Babylonian versionof the flood story</a>, caused not by the later Abrahamic God but by the Babylonian
gods, and survived not by Noah but by a figure at times called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utnapishtim">Utnapishtim</a>.
Bounties were offered to find additional sections of the story on ancient
tablets.<o:p></o:p></div>
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These strange figures are some of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apkallu"><i>apkallu</i>, the Seven Sages</a>. They are knowledgeable entities cloaked in fish garb (note the fish heads above their own heads) or with wing depending on if they emerged from the sky or the sweet water <i>abzu</i> abyss from within the earth, who bring the knowledge of civilization to Sumer and Babylon. Though the story is too convoluted to entertain here, they are in some sense the forbearers of the Watchers of Judeo-Christian tradition that in turn inspire so much myth and mysticism about the past. This process culminates in the creation of the Ancient Alien myth, and stories of the Seven Sages were for a time considered as possible evidence for alien contact by none other than<a href="http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/oannes-the-best-evidence-for-ancient-aliens"> Carl Sagan. He later rejected the notion, but Sagan</a> somewhat unfortunately added some legitimacy for a brief time to the ancient aliens concept.</div>
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Another stunning surprise was a huge collection of the reliefs from the palace at<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrud"> Nimrud</a>. Once again, these are the textbook images used for discussing statecraft and religion in the ancient Near East, and I was unprepared when I passed by the winged bull <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamassu">lamassu</a></i> I posted above, to find an entire hallway lined with these reliefs. Narbonidus would have been truly proud.</div>
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The Victoria and Albert Museum’s collection of later Islamic artwork is impressive, and one of my favorite sections was an exhibit on compasses such as this one, designed to point the way to various important places in the Islamic world, Mecca above all others.</div>
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Another object from the medieval Middle East has a very different backstory. This Syrian glass cup is considered one of the most famous pieces of glass in the world, and is a prime treasure of the V&A. But much of its fame comes from how it was not seen as a trophy brought back by a Crusader. Instead, this came to be known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luck_of_Edenhall">Luck of Eden Hall</a>, the heirloom of the Musgrave family. The cup was said to have been stolen from faeries (it was needed to cure the Lady of Eden Hall), and became linked with the fortunes of Eden Hall and the Musgraves, with the famous couplet “If the glass either break or fall, farewell to the luck of Eden Hall. “ Eden Hall was broken up after the Great War, the cup temporarily loaned to the V&A in 1926, the Hall demolished in 1934, and the Luck permanently acquired by the V&A in 1958. We might imagine today an ancient artifact from another part of the world becoming known as a piece of the Roswell UFO debris, and being considered a valuable supernatural object to be carefully guarded as well as celebrated in song. This leads us to the next section of my journey, into the mysteries of London.</div>
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ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-79394913689611918252015-06-12T14:37:00.000-05:002015-06-17T09:14:40.503-05:00Great Britain Trip: Part 1 - Rule Britannia!<br />
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Two weeks ago I embarked on my first trip to Europe, specifically to Great Britain. This journey had two aspects. First, it is the closest I’ve had to a vacation in at least four years. But honestly, I don’t really do vacation. The primary reason for the trip was to assist several projects I’m working on, including a volume I’m currently writing on why archaeology has the “spooky” image it has in the public imagination.<br />
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The following images are not in precise chronological order, though the general narrative does roughly follow the order of places I visited. I spent four days in London at the beginning and another two at the end, and these materials are something of a chronological jumble for thematic purposes. These images are a fraction (specifically, about 7%) of the images I took. Many of these were for research I am not discussing in depth here, or for teaching purposes. The images and text here are instead a rough tour not so much of where I went as why I went, what I learned, and why that might be of interest.<br />
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This travelogue is broken into seven sections, the first <a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-1-rule-britannia.html"><i>Rule Britannia!</i></a> beginning below. The other sections are<br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-2-archaeology.html">Archaeology of Empire</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-3-mysteries-of.html">Mysteries of London</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-4-time-in-bath.html">Time in Bath</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-5-green-and.html">A Green and Magical Land</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-5-investigating.html">Investigating Inverness</a><br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-britain-trip-part-7-legend-of.html">The Legend of Loch Ness</a><br />
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<b>Rule Britannia!</b><br />
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Most of my time in London was in the Bloomsbury area around the British Museum, the British Library, and the University College London. The gateway to this area is the St. Pancras rail and underground station at King’s Cross, a striking building due to the refurbished hotel and center above it.<br />
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Walking around this area, I was constantly confronted with surprises from history, including the house Dickens lived in for a significant part of his life, or the home of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Raphaelite_Brotherhood">Pre-Raphaelite</a> artistic movement. As we’ll see, some more esoteric landmarks surround the British Museum as well.</div>
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That said, I did see some of the traditional sights. I certainly had to go to Westminster to see Big Ben and Parliament<br />
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The Westminster area is studded with memorials to heroes of the British Empire such as Churchill and Nelson. </div>
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But I was also greeted by a more lively history. In my short walk between Parliament and Trafalgar Square, I encountered three different protests. The largest was <a href="http://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/26052015-national-gallery-workers-enter-10-day-strike">a strike by workers at the National Gallery, struggling with increasing privatization of the institution.</a><br />
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The narrative presented by the National Trust at Westminster Abbey is that this is the heart of the nation, and in visiting, I understand their reasoning. I was emotionally struck not just by the beauty of the structure, but by its enshrinement of British history. I had not significantly researched the place before visiting, so I was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burials_and_memorials_in_Westminster_Abbey">surprised to find it as the shrine to Newton, Darwin, Tennyson, Chaucer, and other cultural and intellectual greats as well as the resting place of royalty, generals, and politicians.</a> Photography is not permitted when visiting the abbey (which is a working church, of course), but I did want to note a couple of images on the outside of the building.<br />
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This is the shrine of the martyrs of the 20th century. I particularly noticed<br />
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monuments to Martin Luther King, Jr., and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Romero">Archbishop Oscar Romero</a>, the icon of El Salvador. I would also note that in the square below Westminster, alongside the statues to British heroes such as Churchill, there are monuments to Gandhi and Lincoln.</div>
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The importance of the past, including the deep past, to more recent British identity is pervasive, as the monument to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudica">Boudicca</a>, which honored both an ancient Iceni queen who resisted the Romans and the powerful Queens Elizabeth I and especially Victoria, demonstrates.</div>
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A British primacy in the planet’s prehistory is also on display at the Natural History Museum.</div>
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There are several monuments to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Owen">Richard Owen</a>, though his at-times tyrannical and spiteful nature is also significantly discussed.</div>
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Other heroes of the museum such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace">Alfred Wallace</a> are honored, but …</div>
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Darwin is the king of the museum, his statue getting pride of place in the center of the main stairwell. Between the honors to Darwin at Westminster and his importance here, I could not help but think of my visit in December to the Creation Museum just over the border in Kentucky, and how very different this place is.</div>
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One of the exhibits in the Museum’s Treasure Chamber are some of Darwin’s pigeons, with his handwritten notations, from his research.</div>
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It also seems no accident that a number of gargoyles in the main hall are actually monkeys, that icon of public attitudes about evolution.</div>
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The geological hall is astounding in its scale and completeness</div>
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Another Treasure of the museum is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wold_Cottage_(meteorite)">first meteorite sample</a> collected from an actually sighted meteor fall, leading to the realization that meteors were not supernatural or mundane earth-bound objects, but extraterrestrial visitors.</div>
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But perhaps the greatest legacy on display at the museum is the first recognized evidence for dinosaurs and other great reptiles of the Mesozoic. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iguanodon">These fragments </a>were the first fossils analyzed with an understanding that they may be extinct giant reptiles, in essence the beginning of human understanding of dinosaurs and of truly deep time.</div>
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There are a number of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning">Mary Anning</a>’s discoveries here.</div>
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Another Treasure is the original <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeopteryx">Archaeopteryx</a></i> fossil, one of the greatest of all paleontological discoveries. </div>
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In the main dinosaur hall, some imagery aimed at children invokes aliens and the Loch Ness Monster in suggesting more imaginative explanations for the extinction of dinosaurs.</div>
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Of course, one reason for the popularity of dinosaurs is that they meet the expectations for dragons, creatures so important in the<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dragon"> iconography </a>and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Dragon">imagination of Britain</a>. This relief in the Victoria and Albert Museum is only one of many images of dragons and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_George_and_the_Dragon">dragon slayers</a> I encountered during my travels.</div>
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Thinking of England, dragons, and the past dredges up <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf">Beowulf</a> (is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dragon_(Beowulf)">it fitting I watched the Hobbit films</a> on the plane ride back?), which is often linked to the Sutton Hoo discoveries. Little did I realize the<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Hoo"> Sutton Hoo </a>artifacts would not be at the site, but in the British Museum.</div>
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So many other icons of British prehistory were likewise on display in the Museum, including the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mold_cape">Bronze Age gold cape</a>, and the late Iron Age <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battersea_Shield">Battersea Shield</a></div>
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Though perhaps one of my favorite pieces from British archaeology is the berserker from the<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_chessmen"> Lewis Chessmen</a></div>
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ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-62248850648393914662012-06-30T09:51:00.001-05:002012-07-03T17:24:32.015-05:00Chasing UFOs - The Review<br />
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<center><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/fPSBgY8YlHM" width="560"></iframe></center><br />
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UPDATE: Dr. Ben McGee has shown up in the comments below, directing you to a series of blog posts he has begun, explaining more about each episode and musing on some of the topics touched on the episode. They are worth reading, and I'd advise you to check them out. At the same time, my criticisms of the final product still stand.<br />
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<a href="http://tvblogs.nationalgeographic.com/2012/06/30/the-science-of-chasing-ufos-texas-is-for-sightings/">Dr. McGee's followup 1</a><br />
<a href="http://tvblogs.nationalgeographic.com/2012/06/30/the-science-of-chasing-ufos-dirty-secrets/">Dr. McGee's followup 2 </a><br />
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The new National Geographic show (oh, how the mighty have fallen) <i>Chasing UFOs</i> can be boiled down to one word: Childish. <br />
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It isn't even unintentionally amusing (a justification I've heard for watching <i>Finding Bigfoot</i>), it is embarrassing and awkward. The core of the show is three adults play-acting out spooky adventures in a manner similar to how children might play cops and robbers, or at best like teenagers legend-tripping (with the payoff being getting paid to work on television and building a promotional base, rather than stumbling around in the dark with your freshman high school crush).<br />
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You see the trailer at the top of this post? Where our heroes chase a UFO on foot? It makes more sense than the actual show does. Our team goes searching for soil samples and bits of residue or debris or radiation - at night.<br />
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Again, I want you think about it. Searching for small geological or metal fragments. In the dark. When you don't have to. That's the plan. Here, let me illustrate.<br />
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There really isn't much more to say about it (in the first two episodes, the team stumbled around Texas searching for the Stephenville UFO that was there four years ago, and then go to California to look for triangular UFOs and underground bases).Our heroes alternate between boring conversations with witnesses and UFO enthusiasts they don't really listen to or critically assess, and boring "scared" dialogue as they sneak around various properties in the dark. And they use lots of gear (<a href="http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/chasing-ufos/ufo-gear/">so much so that National Geographic has a list for you</a>, I'm amazed the link didn't take me to an online store).<br />
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The two male investigators are supposed to be the opposite ends of the belief spectrum, the documentary-making ufologist James Fox, and radiation expert and xenoarchaeologist Ben McGee (while this concept can exist in a hypothetical sense, its presence here seems to have more to do with the <a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2011/10/ghosts-in-museum-archaeologys.html">continuing issue of how easy it is for anyone to claim to be an archaeologist</a> EDIT: I'll leave this link up as it is related, but this particular blog post does not really cover that topic, I'm confusing it with a recent presentation I co-wrote). But from what I can vaguely remember (honestly, if you gave this show your undivided attention, especially both episodes, please for the sake of humanity find ways to motivate yourself to become a better person), in practice they were virtually indistinguishable in behavior. McGee is the skeptic, and <a href="http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2012/jun/27/meet-las-vegan-ben-mcgee-skeptic-new-show-chasing-/">in an interview talks about this as a form of education outreach</a>. I can't really see how running around in the dark poorly imitating the idea of geological or archaeological research is public educational outreach. This leaves Erin Ryder, the tech expert, who from what I can gather is the star of the show not just by being female for what I'm guessing is an expected majority male audience, but also as a veteran of another "run around in the dark and make a mockery of the idea of investigation" show, <i>Destination Truth</i>.<br />
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That said, if you are a fancier of tactical vests (apparently an integral part of scientific investigation), this show may be relevant to your interests.ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-8499491394135680982012-04-26T14:18:00.000-05:002012-04-26T14:19:18.539-05:002012 Maya Apocalypse Interview, Now AvailableWanna hear me talk about the 2012 Maya Apocalypse?<a href="http://nipr.fm/page.php?page_id=106"> Check out my interview</a> with Melissa Rineheart, third in the Cultural Conversations podcast series, now available!ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-41730445936501717932012-02-10T11:56:00.003-06:002012-02-10T11:57:50.950-06:00Maya 2012 Apocalypse - Upcoming Lecture I'm presenting<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6PdGTTzuHTVefE7cajsWIwzc6CdwkOl5QXEarZoHnCwtL7DYxnQHOgod7FOW2mc_yCRfk3uVhugjJxPzY031EGn6DOVZRqzKS3LKJP5lAPaU9V1gxZfIkfDzk72vOVvr_HvM/s1600/2012poster.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6PdGTTzuHTVefE7cajsWIwzc6CdwkOl5QXEarZoHnCwtL7DYxnQHOgod7FOW2mc_yCRfk3uVhugjJxPzY031EGn6DOVZRqzKS3LKJP5lAPaU9V1gxZfIkfDzk72vOVvr_HvM/s400/2012poster.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5707567647855023602" border="0" /></a><br />Most of this talk will be on the Maya calendar, Classic Maya society, etc. But I will also be discussing briefly how the whole 2012 thing has come to pass, and has been hyped up, etc..ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-3310482116592725962012-01-31T13:13:00.003-06:002012-01-31T13:29:34.072-06:00Why does Indiana Hate Cthulhu?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgdH872LEzNhJqV9Bi1Lg0gBCBP8p1QZ-_OjzvN7pAnM0Qfn_JUpc8pq905aotiqKp6KnA9i82yYjXMc8XM31b_IsgzSChDjOF3QwWQS32LJgcdlAtfFj_ZTwMUO5owRCcGFI/s1600/cfish1.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 278px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgdH872LEzNhJqV9Bi1Lg0gBCBP8p1QZ-_OjzvN7pAnM0Qfn_JUpc8pq905aotiqKp6KnA9i82yYjXMc8XM31b_IsgzSChDjOF3QwWQS32LJgcdlAtfFj_ZTwMUO5owRCcGFI/s400/cfish1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5703880402327200322" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />The Indiana Senate is working on a bill that would allow Creationism in public schools (I thought it originally mandated it, including at the college level, don't know if that has been changed).<br /><br />In order to get around the clear precedent of Supreme Court decisions, and the subsequent drubbing of Intelligent Design in the Dover case, <a href="http://www.greenfieldreporter.com/view/story/482625c1a69848e1b65e9957e44493b5/IN-XGR--Creationism-Bill/">a new strategy has been suggested</a><br /><blockquote><br style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">"The change proposed by Democratic Sen. Vi Simpson of Bloomington says any course offered by public schools teaching creationism must include origin theories from multiple religions, among them Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Scientology. </span><p style="font-style: italic;">Simpson said she didn't think the change would resolve constitutional problems, but she believed broadening the subject matter might cause local school boards to hesitate before deciding to insert religion into science classes.</p> <p style="font-style: italic;">"It does make it clear that a school board can't just say we're only going to teach Christian creation theory but we also have to cover other multiple religions," Simpson said."</p></blockquote><p style="font-style: italic;"></p><br />So let me get this straight. Indiana is ok with teaching a few large religions. I can understand that from a specific point of view (that I don't share). But it does seem odd to pick and choose. I have an unusual first name, and this is like the disappointment I felt as a child whenever I'd go in a gift shop on vacation, only to see there was never a "Jeb" keychain or mug. One can have such things made easily now, which ruins the point.<br /><br />But Scientology? Never mind anything else about it, it's pedigree is awfully similar to that of <a href="http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/mm.asp">the true history of this planet</a>, but its ancient knowledge was re-introduced to the world even more recently than Lovecraft's work on the myth cycle of the Old Ones.<br /><br />Why does Indiana Hate Cthulhu?ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-61206251721453414252012-01-28T13:36:00.007-06:002012-01-28T13:56:03.639-06:00Skeptics: This is Why it is Pointless to Argue<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWz_IMj-4xxPJBaI9fYtDqSpo5WpEru5tf8vzE8V4GxPP88IxM89hyDmBXDIWMi7uvfz1C2xUNbTa58uYPC3USRWI2cDOgmWAcI75HSGX6kSA0K19h9zam5p77B5NtuKmp4Qo/s1600/NikkoNoEvil4902.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 193px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWz_IMj-4xxPJBaI9fYtDqSpo5WpEru5tf8vzE8V4GxPP88IxM89hyDmBXDIWMi7uvfz1C2xUNbTa58uYPC3USRWI2cDOgmWAcI75HSGX6kSA0K19h9zam5p77B5NtuKmp4Qo/s400/NikkoNoEvil4902.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5702769923165058850" border="0" /></a><br />The purpose of this blog is to examine some of the cultural issues surrounding paranormal, conspiracy theory, and related belief systems. But it has also increasingly had a skeptical bent, I will admit.<br /><br />So I give this advice: Trying to argue with people who strongly disagree with scientific findings, facts about reality, and so on, really will do nothing other than wear you down. Address their claims, try to educate others who might be interested, and move on. Arguing with them is pointless.<br /><br /><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/contradictions-dont-deter-conspiracy-theorists-231804539.html">And here is some experimental evidence to back up this hypothesis, from psychology researchers at the University of Kent</a>. Conspiracy theory believers are more likely to believe other, <span style="font-weight: bold;">completely contradictory</span> conspiracy theories, than mainstream narratives.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">"They also asked 102 students about the death of Osama bin Laden last year. The students rated how much they agreed with statements purporting that: bin Laden had died in the American raid; he is still alive; he was already dead when the raid took place; the Obama administration appears to be hiding information about the raid. </span><p style="font-style: italic;" id="yui_3_3_0_33_1327777042383496"> Once again, people who believed bin Laden was already dead before the raid were more likely to believe he is still alive. Using statistical analysis, the researchers determined that the link between the two was explained by a belief that the Obama administration was hiding something.</p> <p style="font-style: italic;" id="yui_3_3_0_33_1327777042383499"> The central idea — that authorities are engaged in massive deceptions intended to further their malevolent goals — supports any individual theory, to the point that theorists can endorse contradictory ones, according to the team."</p></blockquote><p style="font-style: italic;" id="yui_3_3_0_33_1327777042383499"></p>In other words, these theories are not driven by facts, or "questions" (as many conspiracy theorists will put it when they want to suggest an idea that is unpopular). They're driven by already existing emotions or opinions about the subject, generally animosity about some individual, group, institution, or possibly even society itself. And then any theories that come along which serve this emotion or opinion, are more likely to be accepted and touted.<br /><br />I'm not saying it is impossible for someone to ultimately break out of this cycle. We can find ourselves in such a situation, believing things more out of emotion than anything else, but ultimately coming to our senses. I've been there. But if we are heavily emotionally invested in such a belief, it is going to be much harder, and rarely are we divested of this belief by being lectured from the outside. Finding those answers ourselves is more effective.<br /><br />Openly fighting with believers in such ideas, with the goal of convincing them, I think is pointless if they really are committed to them, and is a waste of time, energy, and sanity. The true motivations for their beliefs likely have little to do with the arcana of the particular conspiracy theory in question.<br /><br />Instead, focus on those willing to listen, and educate them before their curiosity takes them to places less interested in sticking to reality. I would once again laud the podcast <a href="http://www.skeptic.com/podcasts/monstertalk/">Monster Talk</a> for doing this very, very well, in my opinion.ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-30683861139705345512012-01-10T16:37:00.003-06:002012-07-01T17:28:07.551-05:00Weird Archaeology 101: Dowsing for GravesThis is a cross-post from my largely moribund archaeology blog "<a href="http://ahtzib.blogspot.com/">In Strange Things Found</a>." I have never really mastered the art of blogging about "normal" archaeology because it was always either just recounting some news story, or if it was professionally related to my work, I'd not feel comfortable writing about it at the level of a blog (not so much prestige, but more the need for care, which if I'm doing that, would be more usefully spent elsewhere).<br />
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Anyway.<br />
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I've heard in the past of dowsers or other "psychic archaeologists" being used by institutions that didn't want to pay for the more expensive scientific archaeology required to protect cultural patrimony and heritage. But I've never heard of dowsers being brought in because archaeologists <span style="font-style: italic;">weren't considered sufficient enough</span>.<br />
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Until now. Check out these links. (h/t <a href="http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/state-dept-of-transportation.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter">Boing Boing</a>)<br />
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<a href="http://www.enterprise-journal.com/news/article_bf8ae2a6-2740-11e1-a786-001871e3ce6c.html">Buried Secrets</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.enterprise-journal.com/news/article_5c9785d0-37dc-11e1-b64e-001871e3ce6c.html">A Grave Matter</a><br />
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I could try to summarize the story, but really I think one needs to read it to really get all the forces at play. Note: While one of the archaeologists involved is from Tulane University, his entry into their program postdates my graduation, I don't know him.ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-84041911087455851052012-01-03T19:29:00.003-06:002012-01-03T19:32:50.869-06:00"Finding Bigfoot" ... in 2 1/2 minutesSo, I can now say I've seen "Finding Bigfoot," <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQuSqmSVkbY&feature=player_embedded">thankfully edited down by</a> VoodooSix (or however they spell their name) The section from 1:16-1:32 is completely awesome<br /><br /><center><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/qQuSqmSVkbY" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe></center>ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-77179016732124081892012-01-03T15:14:00.002-06:002012-01-03T15:17:53.806-06:00Barack Obama of Mars<a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/01/obama-mars/">Did you know that Barack Obama is actually a secret time and space explorer for DARPA?</a> Apparently the Coast-to-Coast audience has known this since November. How am I only finding out now? I pay more attention to the ridiculousness over in Bigfootery for a couple of months, and this happens.<br /><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">As a young man in the early 1980s, Obama was part of a secret CIA project to explore Mars. The future president teleported there, along with the future head of Darpa. </span><p style="font-style: italic;">That’s the assertion, at least, of a pair of self-proclaimed time-traveling, universe-exploring government agents. Andrew D. Basiago and William Stillings insist that they once served as “chrononauts” at Darpa’s behest, traversing the boundaries of time and space. They swear: A youthful Barack Obama was one of them.</p></blockquote><p style="font-style: italic;"></p><br />So this is where exopolitics has taken us. Bravo. Just bravo.ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-36443551690077681332011-12-01T16:18:00.004-06:002011-12-01T17:22:35.087-06:00Places Where Bigfoot Might be Hiding: The InternetBecause apparently it is a poorly explored place.<br /><br /><a href="http://bigfootevidence.blogspot.com/2011/11/account-of-chinese-government-teaching.html#moretop">Bigfoot blog finds amazing article on translation of ancient texts discussing 10th century communication between Chinese Imperial scholars and Yeti.</a><br /><br />Blog post actually links <a href="http://specgram.com/PsQ.XVI.2/05.pulju.teaching.html">to the original source</a><br /><br />But apparently, this, and the name of the author (Tim Pulju) was not sufficient to show that the source is in fact, a satirical publication, a <span style="font-style: italic;">The Onion</span> for linguistics.<br /><br />I mean, that would require looking to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_Grammarian">fourth-down return</a> if you google "Tim Pulju"<br /><br />To be fair, many of the comments on that blog post guess that it is likely satire but others suggested it could be a real journal article,or some sort of misunderstanding. While I approve that some were able to recognize the satire, that no one even bothered to take 15 seconds and actually find out, is the real problem. You don't even need to type if that is too much effort, just copy and paste and click.<br /><br />I have heard professors say they don't like their students to use internet sources for their work. I think this is an excellent example of <span style="font-weight: bold;">why they should be</span> using the internet, under the guidance and training of a professional researcher (as any professor is).<br /><br />In my classes, especially my introductory classes, I have decided to do two things in addition to the standard curriculum of whatever the class is.<br /><br />1.) If at all applicable, address pseudoscience and mysticism that routinely gets associated with anthropology and archaeology (the subjects I teach). They are so intertwined in the popular imagination, it seems like we have a professional obligation to hit this stuff head-on, not ignore it and hope it goes away. That didn't work for evolutionary biology, it won't work for us.<br /><br />2.) Have my students use the internet to look things up, especially early on in the class, and to critique how they found information, identify warning signs a site is not reliable, and suggest productive alternative strategies and practices.ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-51408956216577130162011-11-27T12:16:00.004-06:002012-07-01T14:37:25.632-05:00Werewolves, "Weird Women," and the Web: How the "Satanic Panic" has never really gone away<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP8Wk5J6mTiTXKRAm0Tg5KkO6EYwSPEE1k1NOAgMqm4zecO7xnNwYtMofvKVLInR-26QJJKpJbCMCP_XcKneY_VNglulgHmhJzqltpUdsLlkiEkVB1zrc6dMBy8G28th1hcPI/s1600/Pentagram_with_one_point_down_%2528de_Guaita%2529.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5679750229726190850" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP8Wk5J6mTiTXKRAm0Tg5KkO6EYwSPEE1k1NOAgMqm4zecO7xnNwYtMofvKVLInR-26QJJKpJbCMCP_XcKneY_VNglulgHmhJzqltpUdsLlkiEkVB1zrc6dMBy8G28th1hcPI/s400/Pentagram_with_one_point_down_%2528de_Guaita%2529.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 224px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 231px;" /></a><br />
The term Satanic Panic is typically used to refer to a period from perhaps the late 1970s into the early 1990s, when fears (largely derived from a surging literalist evangelical wing of American Christianity) of Satanism exploded into lurid accusations of secret underground Satanic cults, ritual abuse and murder of children (tied into a media obsession with missing children, this is where the "face on a milk carton" trope comes from), and claims of secret Satanic codes in heavy metal music and role playing games (specifically the most popular of them, Dungeons & Dragons).<br />
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But you know, it never really ended. It continues to raise its ugly head, often in very similar circumstances. It showed up in the Amanda Knox trial in Italy. The West Memphis Three have only recently been released from prison what have been seen by some as the last major prosecution in the Satanic Panic, but this release of course has its detractors. <a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2011/09/why-skepticism-is-so-important-anti.html">I mention both of these cases in this post in relation to the counter-terrorism problems at the FBI</a>, also caused by religious or cultural ideologues. <a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2007/05/witchcraft-fears-part-2-shunning-jail.html">There are plenty of others, especially now on an international scale</a>.<br />
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And it shows up in full effect here, <a href="http://www.salon.com/2011/11/27/how_my_book_became_part_of_the_satanic_sex_stabbing/">in the case of the "satanic sex crime gone wrong.</a>" At the link (Salon.com) Ritch Duncan discusses how his comedy book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Werewolf's Guide to Life</span>, was found at the scene of, well, maybe a crime (simple summary: guy met up with two girls for sex, some sort of ritual element and knifeplay ensued that apparently got to be too much for the guy, police got involved, guy went home and didn't press charges). Duncan discusses his horror, and then disgust, at how the media exploded and mislead the public about both the case, and arguably about his book (which is an obvious comedy book, I've browsed it in a bookstore, when I was thinking about a similar project involving Lovecraft's creations).<br />
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He goes further, and makes an important observation: these media reports didn't do it because they were incompetent or lazy, or least not just for that reason. They did it because they knew it sold to a specific audience. Duncan describes what Glenn Beck did with the story, tying it into vast conspiracy theories of Baal worship and Occupy Wall Street and the Nazis.<br />
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Well, yeah. That's the thing with the Satanic Panic, folks. It was always part of a larger ideology, a bigger worldview that was inherently conspiratorial. <a href="http://miskatonicmuseum.blogspot.com/2010/10/witch-and-cthulhu-cults.html">I've written how a conspiracy theory disguised as scholarship helped inspire both Wicca and H. P. Lovecraft's cosmic horror stories known as the Cthulhu Mythos</a>. Well, it didn't just end there. Margaret Murray argued, incorrectly, that the Satanic witch hunts of the Reformation era were actually a secret pre-Christian religion branded as Satanism. But with the growth and bold assertion of a literalist apocalyptic American Christianity from the 1970s on, this was turned around, and all of it instead seen as Satanism masquerading under politically correct masks. And was tied into other conspiracy theories that are particularly prosperous in the populist right wing, exemplified by Beck's ranting about communist/nazi conspiracies, secret meetings and religions, and global plots against Western civilization (much of which feels lifted from Alex Jones anyway, <a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2011/06/demons-great-old-ones-and-unified-field.html">who has himself flipped around and marched right into the arms of something like Lovecraft's mythos</a>).<br />
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It never went away. It just didn't sell broadcast tabloid TV anymore after some of the flashier cases ate up all the oxygen in the room (especially when they fell apart, ala the McMartin case), it was easier to sell stories of aliens in the 1990s (and how that's not that different is a whole other story), and conspiracy theories moved back into the political with the Clinton administration (I'm not saying every witch hunter then went in search of stains on blue dresses or drug planes at Mena airport, as correlation isn't causation, but yeah ;) ). But an audience was always out there, and in internet age of personalized news and entire subcultural media spheres, it can be catered to.<br />
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<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2007/05/fears-of-occult-ritual-scenes-folk.html">So, when the right "spooky" symbols or associations pop up</a> (creepy books [always available at major book retailers of course. Not, you know, worm-eaten copies of <span style="font-style: italic;">De Vermis Mysteriis</span>], <a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2010/09/christine-odonnell-and-satanic-altar.html">sex rituals</a>, dark outcast teenagers, million-sided dice [or in this case, fantasy monsters]), watch out, here comes the Satanism!ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-21774279986836531132011-10-21T16:59:00.008-05:002011-10-31T00:26:08.409-05:00Ghosts In the Museum? Archaeology's Continuing Image Entanglement with the Paranormal<center><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VyiLzu65WNg" allowfullscreen="" width="560" frameborder="0" height="315"></iframe></center><br /><br />This weekend, the Penn Museum will be hosting "a once-in-a-lifetime paranormal investigation of the galleries and their ghostly inhabitants" in the event "<a href="http://www.penn.museum/events-calendar/details/469-young-friends-program-we-see-dead-people.html">We See Dead People</a>." (UPDATE: <a href="http://thedp.com/index.php/article/2011/10/dp_reporter_explores_the_secrets_of_penn_museum">more discussion of the event after the fact</a>, including psychics and ghost hunting equipment, as well as some of the general museum artifacts=paranormal points I make below). It is not surprising that We should not be surprised that a museum or other educational institution would find value in a Halloween-season tie-in, especially as neoliberal ideologies continue to cash-strap such institutions. However, I personally will note some surprise that this goes beyond the typical "let's theme a standard educational presentation with some 'fun' stuff" to being, well, an "actual" paranormal investigation, conducted by <a href="http://www.freespiritpi.com/Site/Welcome.html">Free Spirit Paranormal Investigators</a>. But while surprised, I'm not sure I'm terribly bothered, certainly not to the "<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/871240.stm">Harry Potter shouldn't be filmed in a cathedral level</a>."<br /><br />There are two issues I want to address here: skeptics vs. pop use of the paranormal, and the image of archaeology and the paranormal.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Skeptical use of the Paranormal</span><br /><br />The first issue may put me at odds with some other skeptics, but I'm ok with using the paranormal and fiction to talk about and promote science, scholarship, and learning. And arguably so are most skeptics, even if they don't admit it. <span style="font-weight: bold;">If your magazine or website or blog persistently has headlines about Bigfoot, UFOs, ghosts, miracles, and so on, you're utilizing the paranormal to get your point across</span>. And I think a lot of skeptics know this, and know that it is an easy way to get an audience, because for many people this stuff is fun. Critical inquiry of homeopathic medicine, medical claims from manufacturers, or pseudoscience and religion trying to push its foot in the door of public school science teaching is real-world and important stuff. But it can also be cantankerous, and it can have a taste of wonkish policy to it (most important discussions about how we should live or lives probably will).<br /><br />Let's take a look at <a href="http://www.csicop.org/si/archive/category/volume_35.3">a recent issue of <span style="font-style: italic;">Skeptical Inquirer</span></a>, the table of contents (and some items) available on CSI's website. The cover story is on amnesia, and other articles discuss scientific freedom, the science around causes for cancer, homeopathy, and paleoanthropology. But it also covers religious miracles, psychic powers, alien abduction, numerology, and the dread chupacabra. This is a typical mix for one of the flagships of skepticism, though without going through and counting, I do have a feeling from reading it over the years that paranormal topics have been slightly downgraded in representation, and especially as cover stories. Likewise, one of the most critically-acclaimed skeptical podcasts is <a href="http://www.skeptic.com/podcasts/monstertalk/">Monstertalk</a>, which uses the hook of monsters to talk about real science and history in long-form interviews with real experts on these topics. For example, the Loch Ness Monster becomes an excuse to learn amazing facts about real, and extinct, plesiosaurs (including that the structure of their necks means they could not have resembled reports of Nessie).<br /><br />Simply put, skeptics have learned that there is real interest in these topics, and that they provide a solid opportunity to talk real science and scholarship (btw, while skeptics almost universally praise Science, I think they might benefit themselves to not forget that there can also be rigorous humanities and social science research, at least rigorous in the same critical evaluation sense. <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/gov-rick-scott-daughter-anthropology-major-150042994.html">Don't do this, ok?</a>). I'm not saying that's what is going on with Penn's weekend program, I suspect it might not be. But I can imagine a "ghosthunting in a museum" program that could indeed work in that fashion, that would be more of a storytelling experience to present information on some of the exhibits in a more charged and perhaps more intriguing atmosphere. But why in a museum? That leads us to ...<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Archaeology's Image and the Paranormal</span><br /><br /><blockquote>"Professor of Archeology, expert on the occult, and how does one say it... obtainer of rare antiquities." - initial description of Indiana Jones, <span style="font-style: italic;">Raiders of the Lost Ark</span></blockquote>The archaeologist, more than any other real-world scientific character in Western and especially American pop culture, is entangled in the paranormal. At some point, every archaeologist I know has read and laughed at the <span style="font-style: italic;">Onion News</span> article "<a href="http://www.theonion.com/articles/archaeologist-tired-of-unearthing-unspeakable-anci,1448/">Archaeologist Tired of Unearthing Unspeakable Ancient Evils</a>." We are routinely the instigators, victims, heroes, or villains of books, films, comic books, television shows, and video games about paranormal activities and phenomena, typically involving ancient curses, resurrected mummies, and sacred objects with mystical powers, but also ranging out to UFOs and mystery animals. In particular, traditional horror stories, in no small part due to the works of M. R. James and <a href="http://miskatonicmuseum.blogspot.com/">H. P. Lovecraft</a>, have the archaeologist or "antiquarian" as a stock character. All of this is just talking about admitted fiction, and doesn't take into consideration the reams of pseudoscience that play on the image of the archaeologist or utilize archaeological imagery (and as a Mesoamericanist, I am particularly cognizant of this due to 2012). A treatment of this topic would need to be at least book-length to do it any justice (and I am indeed working on such a book, dealing with one subset). But we can look at some very basic reasons as to why this is the case, and what archaeologists should do about it.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfTQ0ENxsA4xYIdWQr5uuMedkvqbKAS17_opieGU3J_ENHrNE-CARL2fFkVzMR0ohuZagIxXA3bR7ySyX0o92wMOmUajZvzt9ZWO_hZO3X8mVXd8HDiWJ1uuQ9spIuDRHcMPQ/s1600/12.jpg"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0SZ-FomRo4TQ6wSIHxR6je8O4sHLPyXxQDujM5eWTxrid88FpMd-2mDsR8QeDJ7GewfK_zyaC5pMprdzsdkgTmjRe-YYjdANybKA0fKy_gGRVSrB8neF4DOEzZqSZ22m2XAg/s1600/Skull+with+Dental+inlays.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0SZ-FomRo4TQ6wSIHxR6je8O4sHLPyXxQDujM5eWTxrid88FpMd-2mDsR8QeDJ7GewfK_zyaC5pMprdzsdkgTmjRe-YYjdANybKA0fKy_gGRVSrB8neF4DOEzZqSZ22m2XAg/s400/Skull+with+Dental+inlays.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5666146081949223058" border="0" /></a><br /><br />- <span style="font-weight: bold;">Archaeology inherently involves dead people, and westerners (amongst others, but by no means a human universal) find imagery of death spooky and thrilling</span>. An archaeologist will tell you that they study societies that were alive, composed of once living people with agency, no different than ourselves. This is true. At the same time, we dig up graves and tombs, we sift through ruined cities, we examine both discarded trash and ancient heirlooms, and we peer through the years into the past, be it 100 years ago or 100,000 years ago. Our excavations, our training, our museums, our books and articles and presentations, can routinely involve human remains (or imagery thereof), and ancient human remains to boot, with the added distance between death and the present one might find in a ghost story. An archaeologist may be trying to bring the past to life, but they can easily be viewed as examining a world filled with half-open graves (either literally, or metaphorically).<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4wCkE_i0zWAwy5AeLKB9UiEsBFStu01cdUDUvG2KeXs-ZFb1Nbc0CT4pMdG7CPGMvaRdyEY10PYHKUgTmr3HqY6onEQv3vyCZ2sMtTQqXsuosSOEy5UzXA4Dgw7V2Iu0-Ncs/s1600/Atlantean+Figures.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 277px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4wCkE_i0zWAwy5AeLKB9UiEsBFStu01cdUDUvG2KeXs-ZFb1Nbc0CT4pMdG7CPGMvaRdyEY10PYHKUgTmr3HqY6onEQv3vyCZ2sMtTQqXsuosSOEy5UzXA4Dgw7V2Iu0-Ncs/s400/Atlantean+Figures.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5666145393329338498" border="0" /></a><br /><br />- <span style="font-weight: bold;">Archaeological ruins and artifacts, from before the existence of archaeology as a discipline, have long been taken as evidence of the supernatural, and still are</span>. Megalithic sites in Britain almost universally are associated with faerie stories or similar magical legends, and have been for centuries. Europeans interpreted lithic projectile points as "elf shot," faerie arrows shot at people to make them ill. Mayas believed in some cases that archaeological ruins were home to the aluxob, the Central American version of faeries or little people, while in Central Mexico, the ancient metropolis of Teotihuacan was named by later people as "The City of the Gods." Muslim Egyptians referred to the Sphinx as Abu al Hul, "The Terrifying One" or sometimes cited as "The Father of Terror." We might argue that this derives from the fascination with the dead mentioned above, but in a number of cases, that conceptual link doesn't exist. Also, some natural phenomena, such as fossils, were interpreted in a similar fashion. Star-stones, the fossils of sea urchins and similar creatures, are the subject of much folklore as magical items, and have been found in archaeological deposits suggesting that they had this value to some prehistoric people. The basalt <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant%27s_Causeway">Giant's Causeway</a> of Ireland would be another example. I would argue that star stones or basalt formations, like archaeological artifacts, show signs of order not usually found in geological processes, and stood out to pre-scientific observers as potentially of intelligent design, presumably by the supernaturals of creation legends or beings otherwise older than humans.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3bifXIQzQ4yv2V9S1Yh7gYXYwfzgj8E3Mnbx29mAqbBcLooPI12pHqY2tpDfc0YltxyRRTqATP8GDQUvR6yF-5vzTFu6ho_a-quOfvV2o5Fh9YWO8YkfNKdwvstpIGhq3odo/s1600/Castillo.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 262px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3bifXIQzQ4yv2V9S1Yh7gYXYwfzgj8E3Mnbx29mAqbBcLooPI12pHqY2tpDfc0YltxyRRTqATP8GDQUvR6yF-5vzTFu6ho_a-quOfvV2o5Fh9YWO8YkfNKdwvstpIGhq3odo/s400/Castillo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5666145580909021922" border="0" /></a><br /><br />- Archaeology's nineteenth-century roots lay in three basic traditions: the exploration of the antiquity of humanity; the antiquarian material study of art and architecture of historically-recorded people like the Classical Greeks and Romans; and the exploration of the most highly visible elements of early state-level societies - their monumental works. The first of these traditions seems the one least likely to lead to paranormal entanglements, but even here, the deep time aspect does have mystical overtones for some. The second tradition, of Classical, Biblical, or medieval archaeology, had its doses of myth and legend chasing, most famously that of Heinrich Schliemann's pursuit of the Homeric heroes and their homes. And Classical studies, particularly in the formative years of archaeology, was quite concerned with gods, heroes, and myths. But it is the third strand that is perhaps most to blame. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Pyramids, statues, temples, palaces, and tombs were enticing, highly visible, and relatively easy to recognize and understand without knowledge of taphonomy or site-formation processes (or so early archaeologists thought), aspects of the material culture of these early states. And in such early state societies, religion and kingship were routinely blended.</span> Rulers were glorified with myth and legend, and their monuments captioned with magical hieroglyphic writing intended in some respects to be a mystery esoteric but to the few literate, but still on public display to impress the rest. While usually more mundane than depicted in fiction, nonetheless early archaeologists focused on the 1% of society that were considered supernatural, who claimed divine ancestry and the ability to touch the otherworlds. And depicted this legacy in evocative art and iconography. Probably the most influential event in archaeology's public image, the popular and media infatuation with the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, and media-driven rumors of a curse, is a perfect example of this focus.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfTQ0ENxsA4xYIdWQr5uuMedkvqbKAS17_opieGU3J_ENHrNE-CARL2fFkVzMR0ohuZagIxXA3bR7ySyX0o92wMOmUajZvzt9ZWO_hZO3X8mVXd8HDiWJ1uuQ9spIuDRHcMPQ/s1600/12.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 264px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfTQ0ENxsA4xYIdWQr5uuMedkvqbKAS17_opieGU3J_ENHrNE-CARL2fFkVzMR0ohuZagIxXA3bR7ySyX0o92wMOmUajZvzt9ZWO_hZO3X8mVXd8HDiWJ1uuQ9spIuDRHcMPQ/s400/12.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5666145011358331874" border="0" /></a><br />- This is compounded by archaeology's and anthropology's colonial legacy, and of <span style="font-weight: bold;">particular prurient interest in the "exotic," usually manifesting in archaeology with valued or sacred objects from colonized peoples</span> (or from the ancestors of colonized peoples). In reality, most actual work by archaeologists involves mundane objects, and can in practice be just as likely relatively recent trash from the ancestors of the archaeologist's own society as materials from some far-away "exotic" place. But as with our previous point, the "exotic" was of more interest earlier in the discipline's history, and this informs much of the popular image of archaeology. <span style="font-weight: bold;">In fiction, "exotic" cultures and objects, though rarely presented in any sort of accurate or respectful manner, routinely are treated as part of the paranormal or supernatural.</span> The quote earlier in this post, referring to the most famous fictional archaeologist of them all, actually is the exception that proves the rule. In two of the Indiana Jones films, the magical items of interest (the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail) are sacred (though not "real" in that they do not currently exist if they ever did) objects in the religions and cultures of the filmmakers and their likely audience. Much more commonly in fiction, if magical items or rituals "really" work in a supernatural way, they are often "exotic." There are any number of cliches from the "Indian" burial ground that haunts a modern family, as in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Shining</span><br /><br /><center><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mK8ssRrHgCI" allowfullscreen="" width="420" frameborder="0" height="315"></iframe></center><br /><br />the "African" mask that raises the dead, like the subject of this clip from <span style="font-style: italic;">Buffy the Vampire Slayer</span>, where an occultist mocks a "mundane" American for not automatically assuming a piece of art might be a dangerous supernatural object<br /><br /><center><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/RBOo8pOkwwM" allowfullscreen="" width="420" frameborder="0" height="315"></iframe></center><br />to the Sankara stones, the non-Judeo-Christian entry in the Indiana Jones films, the one that turns a skeptical materialist Jones into someone open to supernatural abilities and rituals. Even when a film or book calls for a Christian ritual or holy object, it will likely turn to a Catholic image, as the more "exotic" faith (in societies such as the United States, where Protestants have traditionally been the dominant and unmarked branch of Christianity), and hence more likely to be able to work magic. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Exorcist</span> immediately comes to mind, with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX3wNfw3iYY">its famous scene of Catholic priests confronting a possessed child</a>, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention <a href="http://youtu.be/Su4s7C1bEfY">the almost baffling inclusion of an archaeological excavation</a> as the root of the evil, just as an archaeological site plays into the climax of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Omen</span>.<br /><br />From this perspective, museums (especially those stocked in the bad old days) are warehouses full of supernatural power. This has become a fictional trope all its own, with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_at_the_Museum">entire film</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warehouse_13">television series</a> dedicated to the concept. Having ghosts wandering around the Etruscan wing, as in the Penn video at the top of this post, is right from this trope. The scale of earlier archaeology conducted in colonial contexts, and of museums from this age, also increases the impact of early stereotypes.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6ufesQPdfK8pl58qF2ZnMq_k9uEj_9yGpjT7pMDDEyOeJxCQzBqt8jjvQQnHdpISHWwSk9ip4i_PVXqYTMWfArNp2m3ja8e8SFWynd1Yxo-zXXuyuKQDCISdxEmlsJvW1voo/s1600/Yax+Pas+Profile.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6ufesQPdfK8pl58qF2ZnMq_k9uEj_9yGpjT7pMDDEyOeJxCQzBqt8jjvQQnHdpISHWwSk9ip4i_PVXqYTMWfArNp2m3ja8e8SFWynd1Yxo-zXXuyuKQDCISdxEmlsJvW1voo/s400/Yax+Pas+Profile.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5666146403243755026" border="0" /></a><br /><br />- <span style="font-weight: bold;">Prehistoric societies, and the archaeology of them, have long been conflated with contacting other and alien realms.</span> With the establishment of deep time, it has become clear that most of human existence was not documented by contemporary written records, but is pre-history. Both fictional and pseudoscientific mythmakers have been in competition with archaeologists for a long time in trying to fill the maps of time. Archaeologists have tried to carefully chart out the outlines of the past, while fictional authors and pseudoscientists and mystics have more often than not written "here be monsters" on the blank spots of the past. Sometimes literal monsters in the form of strange Lemurians (as per the Theosophists), monstrous aliens like Cthulhu and its ilk (despite being monstrously old and inhuman, they still have the trappings of ancient archaeological sites not too different from human settlements, a symbol of their antiquity or way of making them intelligible to the audience), or somewhat less monstrous beings like ancient aliens correlating with modern tales of Grays or Reptilians. Alternatively, and more commonly, wondrous ancient peoples, though often visually taking cues from real societies, have been created to populate the past. Any number of mythical civilizations and Golden Ages have been constructed to satisfy modern ideologies or emotional desires. When archaeologists feel frustrated by paranormal and pseudoscientific believers, this is the angle that bothers them the most.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT1gCb067IaLhV15Qru1dVs9kaSrx-gCoJ7CiiqCArdrmmBeIBh_JOLcssTJc5bTxx4gOxCtmNshd7Yl-8bncPzuB4N5y8yRUh8iiTp2msGlJss3nfs0u2_lCQ6dhlQZZcKEI/s1600/micro1.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 379px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT1gCb067IaLhV15Qru1dVs9kaSrx-gCoJ7CiiqCArdrmmBeIBh_JOLcssTJc5bTxx4gOxCtmNshd7Yl-8bncPzuB4N5y8yRUh8iiTp2msGlJss3nfs0u2_lCQ6dhlQZZcKEI/s400/micro1.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5666146684414654066" border="0" /></a><br /><br />- <span style="font-weight: bold;">Archaeologists are conflated with detectives, and detectives are an integral part of supernatural fiction.</span> In his book <a href="http://www.lcoastpress.com/book.php?id=78"><span style="font-style: italic;">Archaeology is a Brand</span></a>, Cornelius Holtorf explores the images of archaeologists in popular culture, and argues (as I will to some degree below) that archaeologists should curb some of the excesses of their image, but that their "brand" has power and value that should not be simply denied or discarded (if this were even possible). One of the four major images of the archaeologist that Holtorf identifies is the Detective, piecing together clues from the past. When archaeologists popularize their work (<a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/Death_by_theory.html?id=d2rCz73OhUYC"><span style="font-style: italic;">Death by Theory</span></a>, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=14fw_acvrCcC&dq=time+detectives&source=gbs_navlinks_s"><span style="font-style: italic;">Time Detectives</span></a>), the Detective is one of the most common images chosen (it can avoid the colonial baggage of being an adventurer or in presenting "exotic" wisdom, but is more popular and "fun" than being presented as a heritage manager in a worksite vest). And the Detective is also one of the most common characters in supernatural horror fiction. Most traditional horror stories (as noted by Kathleen Spencer in her article "Victorian Urban Gothic: The First Modern Fantastic Literature" in <a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/Intersections.html?id=Zao2IFNhvQkC"><span style="font-style: italic;">Intersections</span></a>) conform to a "discovery plot," where monstrous horror (often arisen from the past) threatens decent people and civilization. Our protagonist or protagonists slowly learn of the horror and its nature, but must piece it all together from clues, and will have difficulty convincing society of what they have discovered. Only through solving these mysteries, often through embracing "exotic" knowledge, can the evil be destroyed or contained. While literal detectives (see <span style="font-style: italic;">The X-Files</span>) are common in such stories, all that is needed is a character that acts in the fashion of a detective, piecing together clues with an inquiring intellect and perhaps expert knowledge of scholarship or science. <span style="font-style: italic;">Dracula</span> is a classic example of this, where van Helsing (a scholar) leads a band of materialist Victorians (including a psychiatrist) in piecing together clues that demand they adopt supernatural knowledge (holy rituals to destroy vampires, and knowledge of how a vampire operates) in order to defeat an ancient evil.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What to do about it?</span><br /><br />Archaeologists can shape their practices and products to be engaged with postcolonial concerns, relevant social and ecological inquiry, and participate in discussions and policy regarding cultural and historical heritage. And yet for all that, they still end up being seen by the public as cavorting with mummies, curses, aliens, and spirits. Given the above reasons for this entanglement, what can archaeologists do?<br /><br />- <span style="font-weight: bold;">Is there any benefit to utilizing the paranormal as a "hook,"</span> as I've argued skeptics have with varying degrees of success? This is a very difficult question to answer. On the one hand, it seems like this path is fraught with peril, given the colonialist aspect to some of this entanglement. Yet two facts remain. First, there have been successful applications of skeptical invocation of pseudoarchaeology to teach the real deal. Kenneth Feder's <span style="font-style: italic;">Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries</span> is a very successful text on this topic, and other authors have likewise been able to teach by applying principles of science, critical thinking, and archaeology to such "mysteries." Second, as noted above, this entanglement is going to exist to some degree whether archaeologists like it or not. As biologists have learned from the rise of Intelligent Design Creationism, ignoring pseudoscience won't make it go away and may help it to spread in influence. While there is an inherent tie between death/the past and archaeology, archaeologists should emphasize they are more interested in trying to understand once living people through their material culture. Death is not the point, it is simply the necessary context to try to study the once-living. Most archaeologists would indeed say as much, but this point should continue to be emphasized, including in dealings with the press.<br /><br />- <span style="font-weight: bold;">Should archaeologists avoid the exotic?</span> Yes, but they have to understand it won't just go away. "The exotic" has huge problems, and no real place in the practice of modern anthropology. And yet, because it is such a powerful "brand," there is the temptation to utilize it. I find myself wanting to resort to it at times in informal discussion, and have to re-evaluate and rewind. While none of this is news to anyone educated in anthropology in the recent past, the exotic or sensational will be the expectation of the press and public. Archaeologists that ignore this expectation completely run the risk of making their voice irrelevant to the larger audience, leaving space for pseudoscientists and mythmakers more than willing to trade on pop cultural expectations. Again, a difficult balancing bridge between reifying colonialist images and practices, and removing oneself from the public conversation by being too ethically informed for the room.<br /><br />- <span style="font-weight: bold;">But what about that inherent view of ruins as "spooky?"</span> Explain it. Archaeologists are accustomed to dealing with multi-component sites, with several time periods of occupation, even if they are only interested in one. Rather than ignore that the site or culture or artifacts you work with have gained supernatural baggage, archaeologists should investigate the history of how that baggage came into existence, and why it has persisted. In his book <span style="font-style: italic;">Objects</span> (<a href="http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/mar/article/view/900/1023">my review</a>), on material culture studies, Chris Caple emphasizes studying all of the transformations an object has had, including after it was deposited in the archaeological record, recovered, and brought into a laboratory or museum. I think we should have the same attitude towards the "historiography" or memory of an artifact, a site, or an archaeological culture. It isn't just being able to demonstrate that a tomb doesn't have a curse, or that a henge was built by neolithic farmers and not faeries, but also understanding the historical evidence for where these beliefs come from, how they've changed, and why they're held. If we're interested in how humans construct identity and practice with material culture, surely this should be of interest to archaeologists. And it makes answering the usual questions from the public much easier.ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-5125622109691656032011-09-15T10:42:00.003-05:002012-05-10T21:22:29.985-05:00Why Skepticism is So Important: The anti-Muslim FBI CounterTerrorist Expert and the Satanic Panic<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLadf0JM1wF0jYatxnIoh1uZ4zJyVX3t-4UjUJjwh1JP9VpFKWY4KCBzXdpF0Fn5ONoWxsS-FLrc52cGMWfZ6AcZyXCgZ4wpN-dupOxikMiI0FczwnfldDhukKPEbhH3EGHlY/s1600/c3_dsc0131.JPG"><br /></a><br />
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<center><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Matteson-jacobs.jpg" title="By Thomkins H. Matteson, painter (Collection of the Peabody Essex Museum) [CC-BY-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="Matteson-jacobs" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Matteson-jacobs.jpg" width="500" /></a></center><br />
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<a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/total-war-islam/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_campaign=twitterclickthru">UPDATE 5-10-12: It's even worse than you thought </a><br />
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A recent revelation of anti-Muslim FBI counterterrorism training suggests disturbing parallels to previous panics, including the Satanic Panic of the 1980s.<br />
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Wired Magazine is running an expose on counter-intelligence training within the FBI that trains agents that, I'll quote the Wired piece<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">"“main stream” [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a “funding mechanism for combat.”</span> <br />
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At the Bureau’s training ground in Quantico, Virginia, agents are shown a chart contending that the more “devout” a Muslim, the more likely he is to be “violent.” Those destructive tendencies cannot be reversed, an FBI instructional presentation adds: “Any war against non-believers is justified” under Muslim law; a “moderating process cannot happen if the Koran continues to be regarded as the unalterable word of Allah.”</div>
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These are excerpts from dozens of pages of recent FBI training material on Islam that Danger Room has acquired. In them, the Constitutionally protected religious faith of millions of Americans is portrayed as an indicator of terrorist activity."</div>
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The author of the training briefings is <a href="http://www.amu.apus.edu/academic/faculty-members/bio/1226/william--gawthrop">William Gawthrop</a>, a faculty member at American Military University, a for-profit university focused on military and law enforcement issues, aiming its recruitment especially at veterans. Gawthrop, prior to the Wired piece, was <a href="http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=38575">an expert on Islamic law and war for WorldNetDaily</a>, a far-right website known for calls and dreams for secession and "civilian uprising" by <a href="http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=91103">actor Chuck Norris</a> and singer <a href="http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=91655">Pat Boone</a>, but more recently for being the center of "birther" conspiracy theories that claimed U.S. President Barack Obama was not born in the United States or otherwise is not a natural citizen.<br />
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This pattern should be very familiar to anyone who paid attention to the havoc wreaked by the Satanic Panic a generation ago. In the 1960s, foreign and new religions were recognized and gained ground in the United States, including the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Satan">Church of Satan</a>, driven by charismatic showman and entertainer Anton LaVey. But starting in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, a few of these new religions, or cults as their detractors called them, met disastrous ends. The Manson family and its infamous murders was not a religious movement, but was lumped in due to its cultish structure and nature. The nadir of all of this was the Jonestown murders and massacre in which 918 people were either killed or committed suicide in the self-destruction of the People's Temple after the murder of a fact-finding mission led by a U.S. Congressman.<br />
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Jonestown became the bedrock of the anti-cult movement. While the movement was already underway, the Jonestown horror gave it much more credibility. As a result, throughout the 1980s especially, the myth of a grand Satanic Conspiracy thrived in American culture. It was a popular theme in movies and television, and it wasn't hard to find media with scenes of ritual human sacrifices by robed cultists. Satanic-themed entertainment had already been popular with movies like <span style="font-style: italic;">The Exorcist</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Rosemary's Baby</span>, or <span style="font-style: italic;">The Omen</span>, but the trope became commonplace. Satanists became the first explanation for rumor panics of "cattle mutilations" in the American Plains and West, until UFOs became a more popular explanation. The most public and most ridiculed component of this was the campaign against Dungeons and Dragons (<a href="http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp">let us all remember to mourn Black Leaf</a>) and against heavy metal music, both products of 1970s pop culture that incorporated elements of fantasy and demonic imagery, just as did the previously mentioned films and television shows. However, because these were media aimed primarily at teenagers, they were seen as particular threats.<br />
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But the Satanic Panic also intersected at times with law enforcement. You can explore the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse">extensive wiki page</a> as a start on the topic, but people were investigated, accused, and tried for crimes based on what turned out to be faulty or misleading coaching of witnesses, in some cases alleging vast mass murders and other crimes that were simply physically impossible, and would leave overwhelming physical evidence where none existed. These investigations were at times prompted either directly or as part of a general atmosphere encouraged by "anti-cult experts" that would give instructional briefings to law enforcement, educators, and other authority figures. While not in all cases, in quite a few these experts were heavily invested as activists of a fundamentalist Christianity that was on the rise starting in the 1970s. And some of their "expert advice" reflected this, while other advice was simply silly (<a href="http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=cabc&c=whs&id=6211">infamously telling parents or educators that graph paper [for Dungeons & Dragons maps] and mirrors were signs of Satanic ritual magic on the part of their children or students</a>). I've <a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2007/05/fears-of-occult-ritual-scenes-folk.html">blogged about this before as a form of "folk archaeology."</a><br />
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The Satanic Panic isn't old news either, at least not entirely. It made headlines again in a different way, with <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/19/nation/la-na-west-memphis-3-20110820">the release</a> of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Memphis_Three">West Memphis Three</a>. Likewise, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20003238-504083.html">such allegations have become involved in the prosecutions </a>in the Meredith Kercher murder case, better known by the name of the woman convicted for the crime, Amanda Knox, who like the West Memphis Three has attracted considerable international support by people who doubt the case against her.<br />
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The revelation of the FBI briefing authored by Gawthrop reminds me strongly of some of the "anti-cult expertise" offered to law enforcement during the Satanic Panic. I don't know Gawthrop's religious background, but it is hard to miss the zealotry against Islam, while praising Judaism and Christianity (Gawthrop even provides a graph!).<br />
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But a bigger pattern is present. In both cases, horrific criminal acts including mass murder provide credibility to "experts" who instead push religious or political issues. The horror of these mass casualty events, as well as smaller but more gruesome events associated with the larger threat, is a powerful influence on people who might otherwise rationally dismiss some of the more absurdist ideology coming from these "experts." Further, by pointing at the wrong targets, these "experts" get to attack those people and communities they don't like, but actually cloud and damage real efforts to deal realistically with threats. Was training like Gawthrop's responsible for <a href="http://boingboing.net/2011/09/12/half-arab-half-jewish-housewife-terrorized-on-911-for-flying-while-dark-skinned.html?dlvrit=36761">the detention, interrogation, and strip searching of Shoshana Hebshi</a> this last weekend, along with other unnamed people, all of whom were either from southern or southwest Asia, or had genetic heritage as such, and committed no crimes nor ultimately were found to be at all suspicious?<br />
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The pattern of rumor panics is a familiar one. It's no accident that Arthur Miller was able to find such easily parallels between McCarthyite anti-communism and the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. In the case of McCarthyism, in addition to the general Cold War fears, that war had recently turned hot in Korea. It <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Y2ZeU1RMYK0C&dq=Sarah+Dustin&ie=ISO-8859-1&source=gbs_gdata">has been suggested</a> that the Salem trials may have been nursed by anxiety stemming from recent bloody wars with Native Americans, wars that had not gone well and were considered incompetent or failed by the populace. The witch trials may have been an expression of powerlessness, fear, and anger over failure.<br />
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I visited Salem this summer, a weird tourism experience to say the least. But in the more serious moments, the tragedy does come through, and reminds us that just because something horrible is happened, we shouldn't just listen to whoever gives us the most lurid and enticing take on the matter, one that we can deploy against the innocent when we can't lash out against real threats.<br />
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So I'll leave this with part of the memorial to the victims of the Salem trials<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLadf0JM1wF0jYatxnIoh1uZ4zJyVX3t-4UjUJjwh1JP9VpFKWY4KCBzXdpF0Fn5ONoWxsS-FLrc52cGMWfZ6AcZyXCgZ4wpN-dupOxikMiI0FczwnfldDhukKPEbhH3EGHlY/s1600/c3_dsc0131.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652633575721504098" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLadf0JM1wF0jYatxnIoh1uZ4zJyVX3t-4UjUJjwh1JP9VpFKWY4KCBzXdpF0Fn5ONoWxsS-FLrc52cGMWfZ6AcZyXCgZ4wpN-dupOxikMiI0FczwnfldDhukKPEbhH3EGHlY/s400/c3_dsc0131.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 266px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a>ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-20292978690687026442011-07-21T12:45:00.003-05:002011-07-21T13:13:40.263-05:00Cryptids: A glaring dichotomyThe sci-fi/fantasy arm of Gawker, io9, is having a "cryptid summer," about which I was initially, well, skeptical.<br /><br />But I think they've handled it fairly well. And today brings us probably the best example of this:<br /><br />Compare and contrast<br /><a href="http://io9.com/5823180/the-weirdest-mystery-animals-in-the-world"><br />The Weirdest Mystery Animals in the World</a><br /><br />with<br /><br /><a href="http://io9.com/5822783/10-extinct-animals-that-have-been-rediscovered">Ten extinct animals that have been rediscovered</a><br /><br />Look, I think monster stories and legends are fun and awesome. But it is notable that, with one "exception,", discovered land animals of the 20th century and early 21st century are more or less mundane. They aren't the monsters of folklore and cryptozoology.<br /><br />The "maybe" exception is the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bili_Ape">Bili Ape</a>. The exact nature of the Bili Ape is still a matter of controversy, but it is physiologically fairly similar to other chimpanzees (it is behavior which is more strikingly different). While extremely interesting and important for primate studies, it is not very surprising that one group of chimpanzees with different behavior might not be recognized without careful observation, and certainly isn't the stuff of cryptozoology (the typical cryptid quarry is usually something monstrous that looks nothing like any other species around it).<br /><br />In the oceans, more "monstrous" creatures do continue to be discovered, which is not surprising given the largely unexplored nature of the seas (whereas exploration of the land was largely a matter of Europeans and their documentation entering the rest of the globe, a process mostly concluded by the twentieth century). However, these creatures are typically not the stuff of legends, but instead complete surprises (see the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megamouth_shark">megamouth shark</a> for example, or the coelacanth for that matter, and arguably the colossal squid). The last great discovery of a truly monstrous creature of legend from the seas would be the giant squid, and while video of a living squid has only been captured in the early 21st century, bodies of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Architeuthis dux</span> have been collected by scientists for a century and a half.<br /><br />A century of specimens of one of the "name brand" cryptids would easily move such creatures (as it did with the giant squid) out of the shadows of myth, and into the realm of biology. But body parts or complete specimens of "name brand" cryptids, on the other hand, often only surface in the context of conflicting stories, before the whole thing falls apart (any number of examples can suffice, but the Georgia Bigfoot is a good recent example).<br /><br />A project for an enterprising researcher might be to count up the number of documented sightings of the giant squid during the time period specimens have been recovered (since the 1850s). I'd be curious to know which has been seen more often and with more regularity: the giant squid which produced numerous carcasses, or a sea serpent/lake monster/hairy humanoid/pteradon/bloodsucking freak that has produced no corpses.ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-13693037318150479442011-06-25T15:14:00.006-05:002021-07-04T12:04:00.479-05:00Demons, the Great Old Ones, and the Unified Field Theory of the Paranormal<center>
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Is there a unified theory of paranormal thinking replacing the alternative belief structures of the 20th century? A recent address by conspiracy theory master Alex Jones veered into territory he normally doesn't cover, non-human entities and their role in what he believes to be a global elite bent on depopulating the earth.<br />
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The statements in the video above may not make a great deal of sense to you, but they are in fact quite in keeping with some of the more esoteric theories held by some of the more esoteric thinkers or intellectuals of the UFO community and other alternative belief sets. John Keel, author of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Mothman Prophecies</span> (<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2006/12/mothman-prophecies-paranormal-hybrid.html">my review can be read here</a>), was one of the first to suggest that rather than spaceships, UFOs and their occupants were signs of interdimensional entities that had been here for far longer than the modern era of flying saucers. Keel echoed Charles Fort's infamous phrase from <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=lW1HAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+book+of+the+damned&hl=en&ei=HbgGTtiDDMegtweZp9nTDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Book of the Damned</span></a>, "I think we're property," while contemporary Jacques Vallee wrote of a control system that might be guiding (and not necessarily for the good) the religious and cultural development of humanity.<br />
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With the rise of abduction changing the face of ufology, Terrence McKenna's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Elves">machine elves</a>, which he said he saw while under the influence of DMT, became roped in with aliens, opening the suggestion that they weren't aliens at all, or not even necessarily physical in the sense we may suggest. Graham Hancock, famous for his books and tv shows arguing for lost Paleolithic Civilizations leaving traces like the Sphinx (or inspiring its makers), possibly from the continent of Antarctica, has picked up this idea, suggesting in his book <span style="font-style: italic;">Supernatural</span> (<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/dec/31/featuresreviews.guardianreview12">review</a>) that human modernity and civilization derives from contact and influence with such entities or constructs through the use of hallucinogens.<br />
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This is half the idea that Jones lays out in his "rant" above, that "clockwork elves" speak to DMT users, that they are not in our dimension but might be able to reach it via a machine like the Large Hadron Collider, and that they are the fairies and aliens of our legends and occult lore.<br />
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The other half of the equation according to Jones is that they are either worshiped or otherwise served by a secret global elite society. Jones himself says in the video that this sounds like David Icke's talk of a cult led by shapeshifting Reptilians (an idea lifted right from Robert E. Howard's fantasy story "<a href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Kingdom">The Shadow Kingdom</a>," and alluded to in the film <span style="font-style: italic;">Conan the Barbarian)</span>. Indeed, Jones is suggesting with this statement an immense time depth and possible purpose to the Illuminati he fears are planning to install a global police state to control those who aren't killed in vast depopulation plans. But an equally appropriate link would be to a section of Christian evangelicals that have embraced the idea that UFOs are demons in disguise. <a href="http://www.alienresistance.org/">One group has set up shop in the flying saucer Mecca, Roswell</a>, New Mexico (<a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2007/07/evolution-of-crashed-saucer-legend-part_07.html">I attended a Raelian meeting in their lobby</a>, something I still don't entirely understand). Nick Redfern has recently published a book, <a href="http://eventsfinal.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Final Events</span></a>, specifically suggesting something akin to Jones' concerns, of a group within the US government and US politics trying to contact and control such entities, or alternatively planning to turn America into a theocratic police state in order to fight such creatures, or rather, demons.<br />
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In short, Jones is arguing that there is a world-wide conspiracy that either is (or believes it is) contacting ancient extradimensional entities, ones with plans dangerous for humanity, in order that they can join with these entities. The group lives without morality, practicing bizarre rituals behind closed doors and acting without concern for Christian or conventional values, instead planning a bizarre future and the mass killing of millions. They intend to bring about the end of the recognizable world and let demonic aliens through interdimensional gates, ushering in the fall of man as dominant species on this planet.<br />
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If you read my other blog, <a href="http://miskatonicmuseum.blogspot.com/">Miskatonic Museum</a>, based on the history and science associated with the cosmic horror tales of H. P. Lovecraft, this should sound very, very familiar to you. It's the Cthulhu Cult with a bit of the Whateleys thrown in for good measure (compare with the excerpt from the <a href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Dunwich_Horror/Chapter_V"><span style="font-style: italic;">Necronomicon</span></a> in "The Dunwich Horror".<br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Nor is it to be thought</i> (ran the text as Armitage mentally translated it) <i>that man is either the oldest or the last of earth's masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, they walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They had trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man's truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them. They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraved, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again."</i></span></blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;">
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<br /><br />These stories speak of ancient conspiracies and cults of bizarre and amoral cultists who seek to allow horrific alien monstrosities known as the Great Old Ones into our world, to do horrible things to it and us, so that they can rule as humanity's masters, free from morality. Just as Lovecraft's writings were heavily influential (though not exclusively so) in creating the idea of ancient astronauts, are we now to see Lovecraft and co. birthing the 21st century's mix of demology, conspiracy theory, and paranormality?<br /><br />Jones would not be the first to take this route, as David Icke has pointed to the faux-Necronomicon by "Simon" and to <a href="http://www.crystalinks.com/emerald.html">Doreal's Howard and Lovecraft inspired writings</a> as evidence of his claims. Kenneth Grant's Typhonian writings also tread this territory, as ably dissected by Justin Woodman in his <a href="http://www.yog-sothoth.com/content/489-H.P.-Lovecraft-Lectures-by-Dr.-Justin-Woodman-The-Recordings">four-part lecture series on Lovecraft and "occulture,"</a> where he also discusses the alien astronaut tie, and briefly discusses Icke. It's a recurring theme in Nick Redfern's books, not just his <span style="font-style: italic;">Final Events</span> (in which he reports on, but does not believe in, this worldview, an attitude echoed by Jones in the above video), but in others where he describes occultists and Fortean investigators dealing with extradimensional spirits or entities, and elite secret groups well aware of them. Cattle mutilation researcher and Trickster theorist Christopher O'Brien <a href="http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/11091">has also speculated</a> that government or other shadowy operatives may be involved in animal mutilations as a method of controlling or preventing the arrival and actions of interdimensional entities through techniques similar to what ancient religions called blood magic and sacrifice.<br /><br />And so on, there are others. But Jones, a commentator that has appeared on Fox News and other mainstream mass media, <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/talk-radios-alex-jones-the-most-paranoid-man-in-america-20110302?page=1">that has been pointed to as the underground inspiration for Glenn Beck</a>, suggesting that the core of the secret societies he has dedicated his life to fighting, and in doing so becoming the highest profile conspiracy theory advocate in modern America, is a landmark moment. It could mean that Jones alienates (so to speak) many of his listeners. Alternatively, this may be a tipping point for mainstreaming what I believe is the coming focus of alternative or paranormal belief systems: demonology. I've outlined above how it has always been with ufology before there were flying saucers, and how it has grown. It is also a topic not too far from many discussions of ghosts and ghost hunting. The Warrens on a number of occasions emphasized the possibility of a demonic role in the hauntings they were involved in. More recently, demons and ghosts have mixed on ghost hunting television shows like Paranormal State. A <a href="http://www.theparacast.com/podcast/now-playing-april-3-2011-%E2%80%94-rosemary-ellen-guiley-and-philip-imbrogno/">recent book suggests a very similar model</a> behind beliefs in Djinn in Muslim societies, complete with an American secret effort to capture a djinn, and a secret history of djinn as masters of the planet aiming to re-enter our world and take it over. Even cryptozoology shades into the demonological and extradimensional in the writings of some of the authors mentioned above, and in narratives such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinwalker_Ranch"><span style="font-style: italic;">Hunt for the Skinwalker</span></a>, documenting a secret but high profile investigation in Utah in the 1990s, painted with heavy overtones of the interdimensional, an including Bigfoot in the mix.<br /><br />What might this change suggest? One obvious, perhaps too obvious solution, would be to point to the growth of politicized and radicalized religion in the United States, and an increasingly loud war with science. The idea of ghost hunting and parapsychology emerged out of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritualism">Spiritualism</a> in the Victorian era (when scientific progress was the definition of civilization over barbarism, and evolution the philosophical backbone of modernity), coming into its own in the interwar period, and gaining some modicum of scientific cover with psychic research in the mid-20th century. Around mid-century, cryptozoology and ufology both took their early cues from science, either in the form of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Slick">expeditions</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Heuvelmans">writings with a strictly biological bent</a> suggesting the discovery of unknown or supposedly extinct creatures, or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_Phenomena_Research_Organization">saucer organizations</a> modeled on amateur science clubs or scientific organizations, focused on collecting sighting data for statistical analysis.<br /><br />They did this in the era of big science, when laboratories could cure diseases, win wars, and build a better tomorrow through chemistry and atomic power. But then it all changed. Anti-science sentiments grew on the political left (over concerns of ecological damage, a revulsion at modernity, and the role of science in imperialism and warfare), and on the religious right (in ways too numerous to note, but generally involving both the clash with biblical literalism, and elements of populism and class conflict, what gets labeled "the Culture War" in the media). Within scholarship, the flaws and human frailties of the scientific community were also given a greater profile through postmodern and deconstructionist techniques (most famously Thomas Kuhn's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions">argument that science</a> is a succession of paradigms, tied to the production of knowledge and internal politics within the scientific community, rather than a simple accumulation of knowledge and understanding). For these and other reasons, science's prestige has been tarnished, and it is more often associated with visions of a future dystopia rather than a Gernsbackian or Jetsonian wonderland of Tomorrow.<br /><br />Should we be surprised that belief communities that had once modeled themselves after prestigious science, have now backed away from this role, and that some have turned to demonology in the face of a resurgent movement of Biblical literalism in religion and politics? <br />
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EDIT: Found an even more illustrative passage from "The Dunwich Horror." Read and compare with Jones' video.<br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>'It was—well, it was mostly a kind of force that doesn't belong in our part<br />of space; a kind of force that acts and grows and shapes itself by other laws<br />than those of our sort of Nature. We have no business calling in such things<br />from outside, and only very wicked people and very wicked cults ever try to.<br />... if you men are wise you'll dynamite that altar-stone up there, and pull<br />down all the rings of standing stones on the other hills. Things like that<br />brought down the beings those Whateleys were so fond of—the beings they were<br />going to let in tangibly to wipe out the human race and drag the earth off to<br />some nameless place for some nameless purpose.</i></span></blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;">
</span>ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-67912797807322337592011-05-07T19:46:00.002-05:002011-05-07T19:50:52.944-05:00When Prophecy Fails and the May 21 ApocalypseBy now, you may have heard of the <a href="http://www.npr.org/2011/05/07/136053462/is-the-end-nigh-well-know-soon-enough">Christian sect that believes that the world is going to enter its final days on May 21 of this year</a>, concluding with the planet's destruction in October.<br /><br />I could pontificate about this, but really, the best thing you could do between now and then, is to read the classic work on apocalyptic cults and cognitive dissonance, Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter's <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1891396986/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=spookparad-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=1891396986">When Prophecy Fails</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=spookparad-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1891396986&camp=217145&creative=399349" alt="" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important;" width="1" border="0" height="1" /> (link leads to amazon.com for purchase). It focuses on a flying saucer contactee group in the 1950s (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails">more info at the wiki</a>). The group advertised the end of the world, looking for others to be saved by their space brothers (the one leading them, Sananda from the planet Clarion, also appeared in the past as Jesus according to the group's views). Since it has been written there have been rebuttals and debate regarding the book's key element, the idea of cognitive dissonance. The authors argue that apocalyptic groups invest themselves so much in a falsifiable event (either the world ends, or it doesn't) that when it is falsified, they redouble their efforts and modify their ideology, because admitting their error (often accompanied by public and potentially embarrassing decisions such as quitting a job or leaving a community due to the end of the world) would be too painful. But never minding that, it is easily comparable to the current May 21 group, except that the May 21 group is closer to a much bigger religious tradition, while the followers of Sister Thedra were part of a much more fringe subculture.<br /><br />The opening of <span style="font-style: italic;">When Prophecy Fails</span> makes it clear exactly how unoriginal such apocalyptic groups are, and how often they follow a similar pattern: once the prophecy fails and the world continues, the group decides that their faith saved the planet, and they launch into a surge of proselytizing. It won't be terribly surprising if we see the same thing here.ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-46868817303720892912010-11-27T09:43:00.003-06:002010-11-27T09:47:09.254-06:00Spooky News - Now on Twitter!Sometimes something weird comes across my desk, and I don't have too much to say other than "Hey, look at this weird thing, but don't touch it you fool!" If headlines such as "Whitest Voodoo Priests Ever Team Up to Fight Hitler" or "US Military to Weaponize Flying Snakes" pique your interest, just follow me on Twitter by hitting the button on the right. These and other strange stories will show up in your electro-tickertape fresh from the workshop.ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36467490.post-4549496975337508802010-10-11T22:29:00.005-05:002010-10-11T22:54:00.557-05:00All the Myths are True (a little fun)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxEC1M9ofYbsMKrfMhybMzVlgKT1OVef45kwyyGjzll7_SYYLTb9rAY_PDo0W08O9O-eEByug8pa3ReVDMvrAPiVClgDwd5ulh-5jS4USWOCfA_3C6POewhsY-JmpcQJpvkqw/s1600/GROUP-AIMEE.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 259px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxEC1M9ofYbsMKrfMhybMzVlgKT1OVef45kwyyGjzll7_SYYLTb9rAY_PDo0W08O9O-eEByug8pa3ReVDMvrAPiVClgDwd5ulh-5jS4USWOCfA_3C6POewhsY-JmpcQJpvkqw/s400/GROUP-AIMEE.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5527000509673563842" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />One of my favorite songs over the last few years, and one eminently suited for the topics this site covers is Abney Park's "All the Myths are True." It's all about legends, monsters, lost cities, zombies and the like. They had me at "Scientists unearth enormous skeletons" You'll hear what I mean.<br /><br />Now, you can listen to it with Abney Park's Electro-Mechanical Music Listening Machine. Just twist the dial until the song you want is lined up with the selector cog within the machine's face. Or the winding stem. It's a little cantankerous.<br /><br /><center><param width="300" height="420" name="movie" value="http://www.abneypark.com/watch/watch.swf"><br /><param name="quality" value="high"><br /><embed allowscriptaccess="never" src="http://www.abneypark.com/watch/watch.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="300" height="420"></embed></center><br /><br />If you haven't guessed already, Abney Park is one of the music groups flying the steampunk flag. The band flies the <span style="font-style: italic;">H. M. S. Ophelia</span>, on the lookout for zeppelin freighters to plunder, and dodging air krakens of the sort we covered <a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2008/03/air-krakens-and-other-flying-monsters.html">over the</a> last <a href="http://spookyparadigm.blogspot.com/2009/01/tentacle-ufo-air-kraken-or-lovecraftian.html">two years</a>.<br /><br />You can check more of their music (I loved their last album <span style="font-style: italic;">Aether Shanties</span>, and they've got a new one coming out this week) and other sundry goods <a href="http://www.abneypark.com/">at their site</a> or <a href="http://www.myspace.com/abneypark">myspace</a>.ahtzibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03577845276318742985noreply@blogger.com0