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The Modern Myth of Archaeological Fantasies with ArchyFantasies - Episode 5
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Warning this episode contains a lot of fun, Foregoing a special American holiday, Tristan speaks with pseudo-archaeologist debunker, Sara Head, also known as ArchyFantasies of the ArchyFantasies podcast. We debate skepticism, pseudo-archaeology, podcasting, archaeogaming and much much more,
Links
Twitter : @anarchaeologist
@ArchyFantasies
Music Credit: All music in this episode was created by Danny Boyle
“Alone at bar at 3am” are both copyright to Danny Boyle – contact @OhDannyBoyle for more information.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Archaeology Podcast Network
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
Modern Myths and Misconceptions: Truth or Fiction?
00:00:05
Speaker
I call upon my ancestors to judge me and my clan.
00:00:24
Speaker
Taking up a story, all the knowledge that we seek, broadening horizons into me. It's a modern myth, oh yeah. In this age of darkness, we will fight for truth at night. In this age of
00:00:45
Speaker
Now it's clear, misconception too healthy They told you what you want to hear Why can't you say that the truth will set you free? Expose this modern myth with me A myth
Satire and Politics: UK, EU, and US
00:01:42
Speaker
we don't have federal governments in the uk not yet not until america takes over nah it'll be russia sorry i mean let's be all right
00:01:54
Speaker
The oligarchical European Union of Great Britain and the small little adjacent state of America.
Philadelphia and July 4th: Historical Claims
00:02:03
Speaker
What a great way to introduce the show recorded on the worst day of history. Aren't you meant to be celebrating as an American?
00:02:14
Speaker
It's July 4th. We blow shit up. It's a great day. We roasted hot dogs. And I'm in Philadelphia. I mean, we're our city claims the founding of the 4th of July. So like Philadelphia. Oh, I thought you claimed the finding of like cream cheese or something like that.
00:02:32
Speaker
We do. We do. Um, pretzels. Those are also ours.
German Heritage and Family History
00:02:36
Speaker
Uh, the Philly cheesesteak. Sean, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Pretzels. I don't know, man. I don't belong to the state of Philadelphia. You're gonna have to, you're gonna have to bring your mitts over for that one because, uh, there's, there's, uh, plenty of people who will go to bat over that one. The Philly pretzel. The Philly pretzel is a thing.
00:02:55
Speaker
As a half-German, I find this incredibly offensive. I mean, I'm part German too, I don't give a shit. No, no, my family denounced Wilhelm back before the Great War, so. Oh, they denounced Germany, right, okay. No, technically they denounced the king. Okay, that's interesting.
Meet Sarah: Host of Archie Fantasies
00:03:23
Speaker
Yeah, the Kaiser. I'm guessing you don't really... nobody speaks... See, this is what I find interesting about German. German is quite often spoken in America, and I find that really weird. Do you speak any German?
00:03:40
Speaker
I'm Kleine Deutscher. Yeah, not very good. My grandfather was fluent. Yeah, my grandfather who is the Zander side of the family, so go figure that one. The Zander side of the family spoke German up until my mother's generation.
Debunking Pseudo-Archaeology in North America
00:03:58
Speaker
My grandfather didn't pass German on to them. And the German that I know I've learned in high school and college, I read it a lot better than I understand it spoken.
00:04:09
Speaker
But I can rate it. That's good. I should really introduce you to our listeners before we go into the archaeology of Archie fantasies herself. Be like, I am a random person who speaks bad German.
00:04:26
Speaker
Yes. You know, that should be intro to every, like, podcast that I do. It's like, here, what languages do you speak? Tell me! I'm not expecting to talk! God, now you're taking me back to my classrooms.
00:04:55
Speaker
Hello and welcome to modern myth or like I don't even know what modern myth is in German that's the extent of my German and yeah it's a
00:05:06
Speaker
podcast that states that archaeology is modern myth making. That means we're the liars. They're the liars. Everyone's a liar. And one of the people who claims to be a debunker of the liars is sitting on the on the internet with me. I was straight up called a troll the other day. I wear that badge proudly.
00:05:28
Speaker
Ah, yeah, but that's only because you
Sarah's Archaeological Background
00:05:30
Speaker
disagreed in an uncivil manner. Remember, Sarah, if you're civil, everybody will listen to you. That was completely civil. I just didn't agree. Oh, sure, sure. I bet. I bet they thought you went a bit hysterical.
00:05:49
Speaker
But anyway, I use that word especially for effect there. Would you mind letting people know what kind of stuff that you do on the internet that kind of gives people the impression that they need to fight you?
00:06:09
Speaker
I call people out. So I'm Sarah Head. I am the one of the three hosts for the Archie Fantasies podcast. I'm I guess the main host.
Societal Impact of Pseudo-Archaeology
00:06:19
Speaker
I also write the Archie Fantasies blog and run the Twitter account and all that good stuff. So I'm basically Archie Fantasies. And what I do with that is I go after
00:06:36
Speaker
the incorrect or bad or misleading use of archaeology and I try to kind of correct the record and what that looks like many times is I go after claims of ancient aliens and Phoenicians and that kind of stuff and
00:06:52
Speaker
I will admit most of my experience is restricted to North America and a little bit of South America just because that's where I'm trained. I'm a trained archaeologist. I do contract archaeology, CRM archaeology here in the States, and I've been doing that for, god, longer than I want to think about.
00:07:13
Speaker
And I will have a master's degree at the beginning of next year, so I have all of the fancy BS letters after my name to make me an authority in my chosen field. But of course, it's the actual secret payments that you get from the secret elite that really are the ones that mean that you are an authority. Isn't that right?
00:07:38
Speaker
Yeah, big archaeology is doing stuff. I don't know. I get accused of that more frequently than you think. We're all rolling in the money, aren't we? My favorite threat ever that I got from somebody was they didn't like how I had written a review of actually Unearthed America was one of the first seasons.
00:08:01
Speaker
and they didn't like my review and so they threatened to sue me until I lived out of my car and I said clearly you do not understand what I do for a living because I am currently living out of my car I'm not that threatened by that
00:08:22
Speaker
See, that's what I find very, very interesting is that a lot of the times when you're debunking and disseminating information, it's almost like there's two levels to the narrative.
Skepticism and Religious Myths
00:08:35
Speaker
The narrative is both that history is not as they tell you, and anybody who talks about it is not what you think.
00:08:45
Speaker
And I find that archaeologists sometimes do tend to be not secretive, but not willing to always say anything controversial, you know what I mean? There's this kind of not-typed-lipness, but this kind of reservation of saying things, and I think that means that it leaves it open.
00:09:10
Speaker
of the
00:09:25
Speaker
So I've been doing this now for 10 years. And the reason I got started in this is I am an atheist. And we, my partner and I belong to a center for inquiry. It's an atheist organization, atheist, free thinker, skeptic organization. And we were very involved with them, you know, and
Creationism and Biblical Narratives
00:09:51
Speaker
My partner has a YouTube channel that they've run forever where they just discuss just skeptical things. They came out of a very strict religious background and so they discussed all these things about basically coming out of religion. And one day we were talking about just the things that they were taught when they were a kid because they were also homeschooled so it's like the double whammy.
00:10:15
Speaker
and I came across this idea that there was an ice bubble around the planet and that when the Tower of Babel was struck down by God, part of the... he used a giant comet to do it and the heat of the comet melted the protective ice shield around the planet and that is what caused
00:10:43
Speaker
the great global flood. And what? Yeah, so I mean, I'm having the same reaction you did. I'm just like that. Where? How? And yes, I have so many questions. And there are no answers. Like, you probably have the exact same questions I did. And there's really, you just go miracle of faith. And like that answers the question.
00:11:06
Speaker
But so I really got into this and I'm like, surely to not, surely not people don't really believe this. And so, you know, you get on the internet, you start scouring the internet and I'm like, no, really, people believe this. And not only do people believe it, they try to use archaeology to prove it. So when I very, very first got started with this, I started with a YouTube channel and I made videos addressing
00:11:30
Speaker
these mostly religious claims, creationist style religious claims, using archaeology to support the idea that the planet's only 6,000 years old, and that, you know, the events of the Bible are literal truth, and there's archaeology to support that. Because, I mean, I'm not slamming religion or anything, if you want to believe stuff, believe stuff, whatever.
British Empire and Pseudo-History
00:11:52
Speaker
But do know that the archaeology does not support the Bible.
00:11:58
Speaker
There are some correlations between biblical things that are mentioned in the Bible, and we can find archaeology remains that seem to correlate, but they're not usually what you would expect. And there's certainly no evidence of a global flood. There's no evidence of a great cataclysm that knocked out all of civilization, and then it just regrew from the grass. I don't know.
00:12:27
Speaker
But there are groups that will argue with that. And so so that's how I very first got started with it. I was making these these different videos. And I just was kind of goofing around. I have I had one that was all claymation. I mean, that's how goofy it was with stop motion claymation. Oh, that's cute. It was. I'm actually really proud of that stupid little video about aliens. Yeah, and that's about the time that ancient aliens really started taking off because it's been on the air for
00:12:56
Speaker
15, 16 years? 16 years too long. Right. Yeah. Well, clear here in America. Yeah. We don't get cool shows here in America. No, no. Can I just say that, like, UK has terrible shoes as well, but they're mostly basically saying, hey, British Empire wasn't so bad. They got trains, didn't they? Oh, we civilized people. And you're like, who are we?
00:13:24
Speaker
I kind of prefer the aliens to these racist dog whistles that kind of imply that no country in the world had any form of social organizing before the Brits have arrived. Well, as an American who apparently thoroughly trounced your asses in a war that I don't even think most of the country was aware they were fighting at the time, thank you for the trains. Apparently we do it better, even though we don't.
00:13:54
Speaker
I never meant for this podcast to be like 4th of the July themed as well, because this is turning more into- You should not have planned it for the 4th of July! I didn't plan
American Flag Etiquette
00:14:05
Speaker
it! I forgot it was even a thing! This is my point!
00:14:10
Speaker
So what you're telling me is you don't have American flags all over the place and you're not like wearing American flag themed clothes? Me personally? Or like the city in general? Is that not what all Americans wear, like American flags on the 4th and 12th, right?
00:14:29
Speaker
Here's some more like fun wrap your head around this shit. My family's military family, army military for the most part, and there is a very strict flag code here in the United States that does tell us what we are and are not supposed to do with images and actual flags.
00:14:46
Speaker
And one of the things you are not supposed to do is wear the flag as clothing. So no, my family does not do that because we're actually informed. The rest of America, I will not go that far. Well, I mean, come on.
Pseudo-Archaeology and Racial Bias
00:15:05
Speaker
Stereotypes about America exist for a reason. Yeah, they're not really stereotypes.
00:15:11
Speaker
No, no, but the thing is that- The stereotypes would imply that they're unfair characterizations.
00:15:17
Speaker
Yeah, what's quite interesting though is that you kind of have to deal with this lack of knowledge in a lot of the things that you deal with. So what do you think your main aim is when you're trying to make this content that debunks things like ancient aliens and other adjacent kind of ideas? What are you trying to get across to people?
00:15:42
Speaker
because it's not just telling people the facts, because people don't really care about the facts, it seems. They really don't. So what is more along the lines of what are you trying to do? Well, I mean, when I started the whole arcie fantasies thing, I was not versed in pseudo-archaeology as well as I am today. And what I mean by that is people would come to me and they'd be like, aliens built the pyramids. I mean, because that's like the most common one.
00:16:12
Speaker
And of course you're like, that's stupid. And then your knee-jerk reaction is to just make a video about how stupid that idea is. And that is not helpful. And it's also not even getting close to addressing the actual problem of that statement.
00:16:28
Speaker
As I have gone through the years of doing this, I have changed my focus away so much from trying to point out the inaccuracies of an individual claim. And what I'm trying to do now is to kind of understand
00:16:45
Speaker
why people want to believe in any kind of pseudo-archaeology, be it aliens from another planet, or different versions of American history, or the current thing right now is the lost civilization, the great father race that bequeathed culture and society upon everyone. Well, everyone who wasn't already white.
00:17:13
Speaker
I mean it does actually like right now I'm having a lot of conversations about effectively race and the inherent racism of these kinds of claims and the other thing I
Government Views on Pseudo-Archaeology
00:17:25
Speaker
have to keep in mind when I'm having these conversations is that these people aren't racists and they don't see the racism in their statements but that doesn't stop the claims and the statements from being racist and so
00:17:43
Speaker
Right now, in this very moment, I'm trying to figure out how I can kind of effectively point out why certain claims are racist to people who don't
00:17:57
Speaker
understand that and but without having these people feel like I'm calling them racists because when you start attacking people's ideas and beliefs they take it very personally and it then becomes a personal attack and my goal is not to personally attack anyone unless they you know come at me first but that doesn't doesn't change the fact that there are serious serious issues and
00:18:25
Speaker
The pseudo-archaeology and the racism that pseudo-archaeology builds on and creates is affecting at least my country right now at the governmental level. I mean, we have government officials that believe that the pyramids are grain silos. We had a guy who was working for our government that believed in lizard people.
00:18:51
Speaker
that believe the politicians and the British royalty were all lizard, shapeshifting lizard people, like truly honestly believes that. You know, I mean, our president was taking conversations with people that believe that there was a lost race that came to America that were part of like the tribes of Israel, the lost tribes of Israel, and that they were either overwhelmed by or wiped out by the people who became Native Americans. So I mean, there's a lot of
Racial Stereotypes and Perspectives
00:19:21
Speaker
There's a lot of pseudo-archaeology that is affecting, it's not just funny TV, it's literally affecting the daily lives of at least Americans. I'm not sure how these things translate in other countries because I don't have that first-hand experience.
00:19:37
Speaker
What I find really interesting is when you were kind of saying about this, like aspects of racism that I remember hearing like a conversation between two people with somebody who ostensibly is like a right wing kind of YouTube personality. And basically the person talking to them was basically asking them, okay, so what level, what standard is there for somebody to be considered racist?
00:20:06
Speaker
and this right-wing personality was basically, well, I don't think there's ever a situation where you could say that somebody actually is racist. Like, the bar was so high
00:20:18
Speaker
that literally no one was a racist. You cannot be a racist, because anything that was perceived as racism is just a personal preference. And I think the issue here is that people see
00:20:39
Speaker
Racism is almost so weaponized that it becomes this impossible standard. It's almost like you have to prove that somebody was worse than Hitler, and even that in itself is an- And now you've lost the argument.
00:20:54
Speaker
Yes, no, but that in itself is like there's more nuance to that. You know, like why why do we not think Google Goebbels was like worse because he actually contributed to some of the like planning and the ideas behind gas chambers or why do we not think Hitler was more awful? You know, like why is it all in Hitler? But what I mean is like people have to be this spooky kind of like otherworldly form of evil to even be considered racist.
00:21:24
Speaker
whereas you can easily point to institutions and structures as racist and people are like, well, what do you mean that it's just
Meritocracy: Myth or Reality?
00:21:32
Speaker
the way it is? I mean, like, I've got a big problem with meritocracy. Meritocracy is just, it's absolute lies. But people are so bought into that idea of meritocracy as the default, as the almost scientific
00:21:47
Speaker
default of humanity? Well, meritocracy, if you're good at something, you'll get far. I know so many people who are amazing, but they've not been able to get anywhere. And I know so many people who are definitely not amazing, who've got into very, very high positions of power and wealth. So this idea that people have
00:22:12
Speaker
almost like there are these default ways of thinking and there's no such thing as perspective, there's no such thing as context. That's the real issue, isn't it? How do we tell people perspective and context matters? You know, it's so infuriating, but that's the problem of all archaeology, not just pseudo-archaeology, you
Archaeology's Role in Pseudo-Archaeology
00:22:34
Speaker
know? Well, I think that's where archaeology kind of falls a little flat because, you know,
00:22:39
Speaker
As I mentioned, I'm in grad school and since nobody else has done it, my thesis is on pseudoarcheology and it's on the effects of pseudoarcheology on archaeology. One of the major issues that I keep coming up against as I'm doing this research is if you track
00:23:02
Speaker
modern pseudo-archaeology back to where we can say, ah, this is recognizably modern pseudo-archaeology, not the Victorian era, even though a lot of our pseudo-archaeology ideas and themes come out of the Victorian era. But when you start seeing these alien abductions and alien Atlantis and crop circles and just all of these other ideas that we're like, ah, poo-poo, poo-poo.
00:23:31
Speaker
The problem that was occurring at that time was actually with archaeology, professional archaeology, because at that point in time, archaeology had pulled in on itself as a profession and they had become basically secretive and they had become very self-focused because
00:23:49
Speaker
They were developing theory and they were having arguments within the professional realm there, but they were doing it all behind closed doors and they weren't being open with the public about it. And because of that, what effectively happened was archaeology removed itself from the public playing field and created a void. And in the absence of that void, as the great and holy Carl Sagan has explained to us,
00:24:15
Speaker
When the professionals stepped back, the charlatans just rushed right in. I mean, nature pours a vacuum, so it's going to fill that. And that's what got put out there as archaeology, is all these, you know, in search of and secrets of and, you know, then the ancient aliens started and all that good bullshit. And you mentioned this earlier in the podcast, there are a lot of archaeologists who are
00:24:46
Speaker
hesitant to interact with the fringe and with pseudo-archaeology because various reasons, a lot of them revolve around, oh, it's harmless fun. I don't want to have my professional image be smirched with this. I hear a lot of people tell me, oh, that's just dumb. I don't have time. But what's happening with those kind of ideas is that
00:25:12
Speaker
since we don't counter it and we don't interact with it and we don't put an alternative out there or you know the proper answers out there the public has latched on to you know psychic archaeology and dowsing as a form of you know poor man's gpr and aliens of course and oak island is real and you know just all kinds of
Public's Critical Thinking on Pseudo-Archaeology
00:25:40
Speaker
wacky things that don't make sense when you really sit down and think about them, but since the public themselves have never been shown how to critically think their way through these questions, and they've never been presented with the real factual archaeology that exists, they don't have the tools they need to recognize and think their way out of fringe and pseudo-archaeology. And that's on us.
00:26:06
Speaker
definitely I think this is the thing is that but it's not it's not like it's difficult because it can also sound really condescending to archaeologists who do really good archaeology outreach to like say well you just haven't done enough work because that's not the point here and that's totally fair yeah
00:26:25
Speaker
I think it's instead, it's kind of like, you know what I would personally like to do, because I remember suggesting this one time, like to somebody who was doing like producing like TV, I was like, you'll be really good if you had like a segment on the archaeology of archaeology, or like the phenomenology of archaeology, how people experience the production of the past.
00:26:46
Speaker
through like, you know, being in the field, you know, talking about the sights and the signs of actually, you know, getting your hands dirty and not even mention the artifacts and stuff. And just kind of do it like, and they were like, oh, no, nobody, nobody could understand, nobody will understand why you're doing that. It almost feels like in these shows, the actual methodology of the archaeology itself is like inconsequential.
00:27:14
Speaker
to the actual stuff, whereas in reality, the archaeology is all part of it. The archaeology is actually quite fundamental to the research. If you don't do the archaeology well, you can't really have good results.
00:27:37
Speaker
So I think this is the thing that we could actually gain more interest in is when we kind of open up the physical access to archaeology. You know, this is why I think things like open digs are really good. I was actually recently on an open dig. It was a project over in Glasgow and it was open to everybody. Is this the one that got beat up on
00:28:06
Speaker
on uh twitter the other day no no no this is um i don't know actually which one was that uh there was a tweet that went out and it oh maybe they were oh no no no this is a different one no no the person who responded was from maryland
00:28:25
Speaker
I'll come back to that one, but no, this was a different one and actually it was really good because I mean, when I got there, there was actually a lot of archaeologists from around Scotland there, you know, and even though they had not signed up to the dig, they actually just come with their own volition, they were like de facto supervisors in
00:28:47
Speaker
way you know because they were like even I with my very limited excavation skills was like you know like I could tell people like okay I need you to kind of do these skills and this is the kind of thing you're looking for etc etc you know I know how to cut turf
00:29:08
Speaker
that's one skill that my one of my former bosses literally said to the next person who was giving me a job like I mean he's inexperienced but boy can he cut turf geez you know it was like yeah
00:29:24
Speaker
That's actually the Twitter picture that went around. We talked about it on our gaming podcast vlog thing. We were all incredibly impressed with how well that sod was cut and laid out. I thought that they were sheets of plastic until we zoomed in on the picture and I was like, oh my god, those are individual squares of sod. That's just stunning compared to the crap I do when I'm out digging.
00:29:52
Speaker
No, you are an excellent archaeologist. Don't let the facade drop. Sara, we've got to keep up appearances. I'm not a damn good archaeologist, thank you very much. But what I do... Just not neat. I'm not paid to be neat. I'm paid to dig, and that's what I do. There's the difference between CRM and, unfortunately, academic level archaeology.
Challenges in the Archaeology Industry
00:30:20
Speaker
I don't have a month to spend on one unit.
00:30:24
Speaker
Yeah, and this is, you know, this is a wider problem with the archaeology industry, is that a lot of the time it really nestles people into certain spaces. You know, we have people who are legitimately excellent and everything, and I don't know what it's like too much in America. I know a little bit here and there, but in the UK there's issues of, for example, drop-off.
00:30:52
Speaker
after two years, there's an incredible cliff of people who are in the industry and fed up with the conditions and the pay and the situation. And they say, look, I can get a better wage, a more secure situation, and less stress somewhere else. And I'll do that. I know a lot of archaeologists who have transferred into IT and a number of other things.
00:31:20
Speaker
And the industry has now said, oh, we're short of archaeologists. But at the same time, the archaeologists who are already there are not getting paid very well or have no good conditions.
00:31:36
Speaker
And so it's like, well, if you pay, you know, like, if it was actually market situation, you know, capitalism, then you'd expect if there was a large demand and a low supply, that the individual workers like wages would go up, you know, that supply and demand, that's pure capitalism.
00:31:56
Speaker
But it doesn't seem to be working like that people are not despite the high demand. It doesn't seem to be the people are wage going wages going up or anything like that. So I think the industry needs to take a hard look at itself and what it's actually providing. Yeah, I mean, we have very similar issues over here as well. It's but the problem with
00:32:20
Speaker
I think the problem here in America is we do have that drop off. We do have a very steep drop off and people leave. I know people who go and start becoming truck drivers because they just make so much more money driving trucks than they do doing science. We are the highest educated, lowest paid professional field in the States is CRM archaeology.
00:32:45
Speaker
For our level of education, we make pretty much what an entry-level retail worker makes, and we don't get benefits. And I'm not attacking any of the companies I work for. I work for a very great company right now. I'm not going to mention who it is. I adore them. They send me out on fantastic digs. But the reality of the situation is,
00:33:11
Speaker
I'm worth more than they pay me. And yeah, but that's a factor of the industry. That's the industry. They know they know that I'm worth more than they're paying me. They know that that all of the people they're hiring are worth more than they're paying them. And it's not it's not them being dicks. It's because it's contract archaeology and the nature of the beast like they have to keep their overhead as low as possible in order to land jobs here in order to get the contracts
00:33:40
Speaker
they need to hire me so I can even get paid what they're going to pay me. So it's a very vicious cycle. I mean, I think capitalism is to blame in general because I'm not a capitalist.
Public Perception of Archaeologists
00:33:53
Speaker
And even though I participate in it because I live here and there's like, what else am I going to do? No, don't worry. This is a safe space for optimism. Trust me. I can say I'm anti-capitalist all I want, but the reality of it is I'm going to go buy a Starbucks.
00:34:10
Speaker
I don't think that really counts. To be anti-capitalist is just basically to decouple people's worth from economic value, to say people's values beyond what they can be paid. Hey, have a Starbucks, go ahead, enjoy. I mean, the people at Starbucks roughly make what I make an hour, so I'm kind of supporting my fellow workers.
00:34:32
Speaker
solidarity yes but the problem is that's not reciprocated hey you're an archaeologist you got a great job you get to be indiana jones you get to dig up treasure oh it's so annoying isn't it
00:35:04
Speaker
I am probably the only archaeologist most people are ever going to encounter because I'm constantly interacting with Joe Public. I am in the small towns. I am digging alongside their roads. I am shopping in their shopping marts, and I'm going to their gas stations on my breaks, muddy and in my safety clothes. And, you know, most people initially think we're some kind of construction worker because we have to wear so much ridiculous safety clothes for no apparent reason.
00:35:06
Speaker
And I don't even deal with it.
00:35:32
Speaker
Mainly so that we stand out. I think I don't even think it's a safety thing anymore. It's just a uniform at this point, but The reality of it is is people, you know, oh, what are you guys building? Oh, we're not building anything. We're archaeologists. We're doing a survey Oh, really? Did you find any gold? Well, no, um, at least I don't get dinosaur bones so much anymore But good kids quit around here. I get they can be tall. Yeah around here I get asked if I found Hoffa, but I have not found Hoffa yet. So what's that?
00:36:01
Speaker
Hoffa is a real famous gangster or mobster leader who went missing like decades, decades ago. They never found Hoffa's buddy. And so that's kind of a joke around here. Whenever you're digging, people are like, oh, did you find Hoffa? It's like finding Henry VIII.
00:36:20
Speaker
He's probably also under a parking lot somewhere. We call them car parks. Excuse me. This is a UK-based podcast. We spell color with a U, okay? And we don't recognize the 4th of July. Okay. This is clear, because this is my holiday. Also, it's my anniversary, so... Oh, lovely. Do you feel bad yet?
00:36:45
Speaker
Uh, well, hey, I didn't know that before I asked you. So it's your choice. Okay. You are free to come on the podcast. See, see, that's the kind of freedom. Yeah, exactly. And that's the problem with capitalism, isn't it? Oh, are we free to choose though in capitals? Are we? Anyway, this is completely off topic.
00:37:08
Speaker
I know, and I absolutely love it. I love it. But what I really, really love segue is that, you know, it's really nice speaking to somebody who also creates their own content because you understand like how this stuff goes. You understand like you're not nervous in front of a bike, are you? Well, not anymore. But you put me in front of the camera. It's another story.
00:37:36
Speaker
You actually mentioned your RQ RPG group thing just previously. So can you tell me a little bit more about that? Well, it's I don't want to talk about it like, as if I am more important to it than just somebody who shows up on it. This is actually Bill Ochter's brainchild and Bill is trying to create the brand of the RQ RPG building off of the
00:38:04
Speaker
very niche archaeology subsection called archaeogaming actually it's legitimate and it's awesome and hey it is legitimate i know you're listening and you're awesome okay well and you brought up sean graham and i know that he's also kind of like one of the yes and this terrible stone and uh oh yes and ginger gamer megan oh for god's sake dennis
00:38:30
Speaker
Yes, I got it. I feel I don't feel as bad now. A good shout out to, yeah, I think this should be also a good shout out for all the people at University York like Colleen Morgan and others who like are doing like really cool like archaeology of the physical remains of like electronics and stuff as well. And I mean, we've got some amazing people here in America that are really starting to take off to you like Digital Hammurabi and oh crap, I'm totally gonna space on her name, but I'm going to give you her
00:38:59
Speaker
Twitter stuff. She's actually a historian by profession, but she is archaeologically trained and she plays. I interviewed her and I just never got the podcast up, which is a whole other story. Anyway, we've got people here in the States who are doing the archaeo gaming stuff as well. The University of York is just the first one to kind of legitimize it, which hopefully that'll trinkle down over here eventually. I don't think the US has quite embraced
00:39:29
Speaker
any form of digital archaeology as a legitimate form of archaeology. We have a real hard time recognizing some of the more modern focused archaeologies here.
Archaeo-Gaming and Digital Archaeology
00:39:40
Speaker
As a historic archaeologist, I still have arguments with my co-workers in the field over if a site is actually
00:39:52
Speaker
an archaeologically valid site simply because it's a settler or a homestead or a farm and not one flake. So I mean that's still an argument we're having here but we also don't have as much history as y'all have over there.
00:40:09
Speaker
Well, yeah, but I think the archaeo game is interesting because it does represent a really new kind of like way of doing stuff. Like, can I also mention that a guy who does the YouTube videos, archaeo soup, I don't know if you're familiar. Oh, God, I love him. Yeah, he did my intro music.
00:40:29
Speaker
yes no he did he does did does yes um yeah no he he's done a lot of recently actually a lot if you go and check out archaeosip on youtube he's done a lot of um archaeology like archaeo gaming related content so he it's really really good and there's another one
00:40:48
Speaker
There's somebody else who did it and I'm forgetting her name. I think I will remember it because she recently did like Zelda Wind Waker stuff or Breath of the Wild stuff and it was so good. Florence Smith Nichols, that's who it is and she's absolutely awesome and you should really go and check out. I'll put that in the show notes, but there's some really like I just think archaeo gaming is one of those spaces that is it's so cool, but it's also a great way to get people hooked on archaeology.
00:41:18
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, Bill has started doing the archaeology of Fallout 3. So he's going through the game playing it as an archaeologist and looking at the archaeological remains of the third Fallout game. And so you can watch him play that as well. But the archaeo RPG is building off of archaeo gaming, which tends to be more focused on digital spaces and video games and the experiences of those things.
00:41:47
Speaker
But gaming in general, let's see, I am a second generation gamer. My parents were gamers. I go to Gen Con every year I can afford to go. So it's like I'm a gamer period in a discussion. And gaming can encompass all forms of role play, not just video games. But when you say archaeo gaming, you're usually talking about the digital space.
00:42:10
Speaker
RQ-RPG I think is a little bit more focused, well I know the RQ-RPG itself is focused on what we would call tabletop RPG, pen and paper. We use, which is ironic because we actually use the Roll20 website to create our digital maps for our game. And we use the D&D website to store our character sheets and we use Discord for dice rolls and that kind of stuff and just communication. So even though we're still
00:42:41
Speaker
ostensibly playing pen and paper, D&D, or role-playing games, we are still using digital space to facilitate the game itself.
RPGs and Societal Implications
00:42:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of like pen and processor, right? Yeah, pretty much, yeah. See what I did there? It was, actually. I've got to give him just a bill when it comes out, because he's done a lot of work. And one of the things that we, as a group, because we do have a small group, and Bill really wants to
00:43:11
Speaker
interact with role-playing games as archaeological spaces and things like that, artifacts. Not just looking at the written books and the character sheets and that kind of stuff, but also looking at
00:43:30
Speaker
how we as archaeologists can interact with these make-believe spaces. And one of the things that we've really been talking about lately is because we focused on D&D for the most part. And we are really I mean, D&D is a really problematic game. And it's also the grandfather of like all the other game systems out there. And so
00:43:56
Speaker
We have to examine D&D as this predecessor, but we also have to address the fact that D&D is built on a colonial racist appropriation.
00:44:10
Speaker
Right. I mean, it is. Sarah, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to block you. The word police are coming in because you use the R word and it wasn't appropriate. You didn't meet the standard of worse than Hitler here. How can you say that RQ RPGs are
00:44:32
Speaker
Racist. How can our RBG be racist? I can completely understand why it's colonial. Yes, it is. Well, of course, that's how I got a podcast in the first place. Do you know what? Let's examine this in a really decontextualized way. So it doesn't even mean anything anymore. So Mr.
00:45:03
Speaker
No, there are certain people I know online who would have a field day with this about debunking the way in which the left is just applying racism to everything. And that was my attempt at an impression of quite a famous podcaster who talks a lot of shit. And I hope somebody picks up on that one. I don't know if you recognize it as a skeptic, but I'll leave it there. So why is
00:45:30
Speaker
You go ahead. Why is RPGs? Why are RPGs racist? I don't get it. Well, I mean, okay. Right. If you RPGs are racist, because they are literally based around race.
Race as a Social Construct in D&D
00:45:43
Speaker
Race in the real world is a social construct. And again, we've discussed this on our our weird podcast, blog, archaeo RPG thing that we do once a week. And race is one of these weird things in the real world. That is
00:45:58
Speaker
both completely made up and real. So I can I can sit here and say the concept of race is completely socially constructed. It doesn't mean anything. And the only weight that race has in the real world is the weight that we as a society and a culture put on it.
00:46:17
Speaker
And then I also have to say, race is a real thing because if you are someone who belongs to one of these race groups that we have decided exist, your entire life is affected by that perceived race. So racism is completely made up and also incredibly real. That being said,
00:46:38
Speaker
When you go into D&D specifically, because again, D&D kind of started everything. I cannot think of a game system that is not based at least a little bit off of the D&D system. D&D hardcore created races. You can be human, you can be an elf, you can be a dwarf, you can be... There are orcs. We were talking about the racism of orcs. And, you know, you can be a goblin, you can be all kinds of weird shit.
00:47:08
Speaker
And each racial group, which are distinct as far as the game is concerned, keep in mind this is all make believe, each of these groups gets racial bonuses and has skill sets that are inherent to the race. Is racial bonus just another word for privilege?
00:47:32
Speaker
Can I go around saying to people, check your racial bonus, bro. Go check that. I'm actually gonna argue that's not the same thing just because of the way the game mechanic works. No, of course, of course. I am trying to do something called humor here, you know? Well, you should stop.
00:47:53
Speaker
Oh, Jesus Christ. Right, I'm gonna kick you, Jesus. This is not good. You're in my house. You have to tell me everything I do is great. I'm just kidding. Do I also have to tell you that your comb-over's nice? I don't know if I'm receiving hairline. What are you saying about my hair? Oh my God. No, my hair's fine. It's fine the way it is. Oh, Lord, I'm sorry. I didn't actually hit a button.
00:48:21
Speaker
There's no button. There's no button. What were we talking about? I think we're talking about this, the distinction of all these racial like these are very distinct things. Although I do remember in D&D, you could be a half orc barbarian rogue. And I remember that being quite a good class. No, it's not such a good class.
00:48:47
Speaker
the game yeah I mean no if you're just sitting down and you're thinking about okay I want to play if you're if you're trying to min max and you're like I want to play the best barbarian that I can I'm gonna go for like orc race or or dwarf or even human because I'm gonna get my strength bonuses and my stamina bonuses and then I'm gonna play barbarian
00:49:06
Speaker
which gives me weapons bonuses and stuff like that because my class is not my race and I get bonuses for my class, which can be applied. Now see, actually interestingly, when D&D first came out, certain races could not be certain classes. And that has gone away as the story, the game has developed. So pretty much, I don't think there are any class restrictions as far as race is concerned anymore. And you can even multi-class now, so I mean,
00:49:37
Speaker
so much geekery here i am i am apologizing for but can you get can you gain class consciousness consciousness that's the question sarah class consciousness so when i say class in the dnd system i'm talking about your job there are social and class structures well i am talking about job two and with the new feed system
00:50:04
Speaker
You can actually reflect your social status within your race group through feats now. So, I mean, it's interesting to watch the game evolve over the years because it's self-aware. It's a self-aware game. It is a changing game. Each edition comes out with new stuff. And again, the game isn't itself racist. It's not out there.
00:50:33
Speaker
you know, championing racism. It's just the basis of the game and the base concept.
00:50:41
Speaker
of the game is colonial and racist and it's unfortunate but then we so what do I do do I just burn the whole fucking thing down and be like ah fucking I'm out I know lots of people who are not white who enjoy role play as much as I do one of the best parts of going to Gen Con is being in a building with like
00:51:04
Speaker
55,000 other people and our only goal in life is to go roll dice and play games. Nobody hates anybody. Everybody's wearing something weird. We all have our geek shirts and we're all discussing dice. I mean, this is... It's like Mecca. It's an amazing experience. If you've never gone to Gen Con or another larger game convention, you really need to go. It's an amazing space. And it's a multicultural space. There are...
00:51:31
Speaker
People who are not white, who are not Christian, who aren't even straight, you know, there are non-binary people, there are gay people, there's any kind of person you can think of, you're going to find at a gaming convention because gaming itself is inclusive. You can make your, you make up a character, that character can be anything. You can make believe your character to be any damn thing you want, and then you play it through a scenario. That is the gist of roleplay.
00:52:00
Speaker
It's when you start getting into the systems, the gaming systems themselves, like D&D is a gaming system, and you start playing by D&D rules, and now you start encountering, you know, race restrictions, class restrictions.
Diversity in Role-Playing Games
00:52:16
Speaker
The concept of good and evil in D&D. Back when orcs were very first introduced into the game, they were not player characters. You could not play them as a player. They were only non-player characters because they were meant to be the villains of the story. And so there's the idea that orcs are inherently evil. You know, you can't be an orc and not be bad.
00:52:42
Speaker
And that has changed again over the years. You can now play half works. You can play a full-blooded orc if you want. It's the way the game has evolved based not only on social consciousness, but also on just player demand. People want to play orcs. Cool. People don't go into that. I mean, with the exception of one person I can think of because they wrote an article about it, most people don't go into playing non-human races thinking, haha, I'm being racist, you know?
00:53:10
Speaker
Or I'm sticking it to the man by playing this non-white race, which is effectively what the human race is in D&D. If you're a wasp, you are human.
00:53:24
Speaker
No, I know you mean white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, but yeah. So in this RQ-RPG, are the classes like, what's it called, shirt detector? What's it called, dry siver, lithics expert? You know, what we originally set out to do with the RQ-RPG group was we were going to
00:53:47
Speaker
We tossed around the idea of either interacting with D&D as archaeologists and experiencing the game, knowing what we know now, or building a game of our own and trying desperately to not have colonial racist issues. And Bill is still very strongly working on trying to build a game that
00:54:14
Speaker
I don't think we're trying to not be racist and colonialist anymore. I think we're trying to build a game that is self-aware of those issues because in all honesty, I'm not positive you can have a game that isn't like
Creating Self-Aware RPGs
00:54:27
Speaker
that. I don't know if you can take those elements out of a game, but what you can take out
00:54:33
Speaker
is the appropriation and you can take out the non-self-awareness of the game and I think you can use gaming as a fantastic tool to teach these kind of awarenesses to people and so we last time we were on the air we decided that we're going to play this specific adventure that's already been written up for D&D
00:54:58
Speaker
And it actually has the archaeologist class in the
Educational Archaeologist Class in RPGs
00:55:03
Speaker
book. And there's a cartographer class in the book. But I know that Bill and Tom have both sat down and home brewed up an archaeologist class. So I don't know what we're going to end up doing. We're going to be tooling our characters up to level five, which also allows us to multi-class. So I might do an archaeologist cartographer. Yeah.
00:55:27
Speaker
That sounds good. But then the goal is to interact with the game. Kind of like what we did, what Andrew Reinhardt did with the No Man's Sky game, interacting with the game as an archaeologist. I remember we had ethics discussions before the survey began and we decided what were good ethics as far as naming. Because in No Man's Sky you're allowed to name the things you quote unquote discover, but the things already have names, which implies that there's some kind of native
00:55:56
Speaker
system, you know, something has already named these things, it's not just unidentified animal, they have names, the planets have names.
Ethics in Virtual Archaeology
00:56:04
Speaker
So what are we going to do as archaeologists? Are we going to go in and rename it whatever we want? Or should we maintain the native name of the thing? And I mean, we had some serious, legitimate serious discussions about how we were going to do the archaeology in No Man's Sky. And they're the same conversations we're having in the archaeo RPG about
00:56:22
Speaker
you know, how best can you interact with a make believe world? And that is inherently racist and inherently colonialist. And how do you interact with that and be aware of it? Exactly. I actually I once tried to write an RPG once it was post apocalyptic, so not really the same. And I tried to make on the back of a sheet of paper a combat system with skills. You can't do that, by the way. So it was very largely like kind of like
00:56:53
Speaker
but it was very narrative driven. It was basically I sat and said, right, ask me what happens next in this world. I thought it was very good. Okay. But no, I think the RPG stuff is really awesome. It's really interesting. And you said you're doing that now you're kind of doing weekly or
00:57:12
Speaker
Yeah, we're trying. I think we're doing every other week. And this week was weird because, you know, here in America, we celebrate this thing called the fourth. So we didn't want to be recording on the, you know, the America's birthday. I mean, yeah, terrible to record a podcast in the fourth. That would be rude. Jeez. I got to release this really quite far from the fourth. So this is not going to be as funny, you know, once people. It'll be even more hilarious, actually. It'll be my little sin after the fact.
00:57:42
Speaker
But no, we're recording every other week on Thursday evenings right now. And I know that we, like I said, we decided we were gonna do this particular campaign. So now we're all trying to adjust our characters. And I don't know if we're going to like start the game next Thursday or if we're still gonna be kind of discussing it. But Bill's vision for how this is gonna go is like the vlog cast is going to be,
00:58:10
Speaker
part archaeologists talking about archaeology and life and part us playing a role-playing game.
00:58:17
Speaker
which is a typical role-playing game, really. No, it is. It absolutely is. You've described it. And it's such a big thing on Twitch as well. Critical Role is one of the big podcasts out there. And so there's a market for it. There is a market for it. I will admit, I don't watch any of them or listen to any of the podcasts that are out there. Yeah, it's because you want to isolate yourself so that you're just not like them, remember? Sure. You have to do your own thing.
00:58:47
Speaker
You know what? That makes me sound noble. I'll go with this.
00:58:52
Speaker
I've got like, I've got actually like a last little bit for you to react to live. Okay. Well, it's not like it's all edited, but it's actually a little bit of pseudo archaeology that I've just come across. So if I said, if I said the word Glastonbury to you, do you understand what that means? I know it's a place. Glastonbury Music Festival is like one of the biggest music festivals. I know that. Yes.
00:59:17
Speaker
So Miley Cyrus was recently performing at Glastonbury, right? I'm sorry. That just tells me what kind of taste y'all have in music. She then said she wanted to go and visit Stonehenge, right? Where she had a spiritual experience.
00:59:49
Speaker
She added, I hope the aliens believe in me.
01:00:02
Speaker
I'm sorry. Do you know why I think it's really good? A lot of the time when we talk about ancient aliens, it's usually in non-European contexts where it's like, oh, I don't think these ancient people had the guts to do it. So I quite like that it's like, oh, hey, now the white people are not good enough to do their own history. Aliens in it as well. The aliens believe in me. That's just beautiful.
01:00:30
Speaker
Okay, but here's the problem. I can't speak to the spiritual aspect of it at all, because spiritualism is, you know, a personal thing, whatever.
Debunking Stonehenge Alien Myths
01:00:40
Speaker
You want to believe the rock is talking to you. I can't tell you it's not. What I can tell you is there's plenty of evidence to suggest that aliens are not involved with Stonehenge. I can be very definitive about that. Just because I know how archaeology works, which I understand is kind of a cop out, but
01:01:01
Speaker
I am also aware of the archaeological excavations that have occurred in the area and just the overall study that has occurred at Stonehenge from its rediscovery to the modern era.
01:01:13
Speaker
I just there's nothing there that would suggest anything other than human intervention in the construction and maintaining and maintenance of Stonehenge because I'm sure your listeners are all very aware that Stonehenge is not just that little circle of stones that we're all so familiar with. It's a very large area and has been in use by humans as some kind of space for
01:01:40
Speaker
eons. Probably it's religious and religious or spiritual in nature, because why else would you maintain a space that long? But that's also an archaeological cop out. Oh, it's ritual. Yeah, I mean, you can have functional rituals as well. I mean, oh, God, we could talk another hour by that.
01:02:02
Speaker
um hey do you think rituals provide functions so can you actually like arguably define them as something different than actual like things that you do like tool making is isn't archaeology itself for ritual for like dealing with the past oh god how can we deal with this that's for another time uh everything human beings do is ritualistic do you get up in the morning and brush your teeth and go to the bathroom and then you eat food i mean that's that's your ritual everybody's got them
01:02:32
Speaker
sometimes i miss out on one or two of those things so i hope you decide it is your own adventure book oh dear right uh anyway i better wrap this up uh before we start talking about ritual uh where can people find uh the stuff that you do
Supporting Sarah's Work Online
01:02:52
Speaker
I am very fortunate in that if you simply Google archaeological fantasies or archie arch y fantasies, you will find me because I am the only one right now. But my main
01:03:09
Speaker
place that I like to go is my blog where the podcast is also linked to, and I promise you there will be a podcast again. I just have to get my head on straight. But that is archifantasys.com, so A-R-C-H-Y, fantasies.com. Can't miss it. I am on Twitter pretty regularly. I have an Instagram that I'm figuring out.
01:03:32
Speaker
I'm not really sure how to use Instagram as a tool right now. I'm on Facebook. I tend to ignore it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I love Instagram, but I'm just not sure how I can use it. I mean, I love it for like better than Facebook. I love sharing pictures and my cats are all over the damn place. I'm just not sure how to use it for argue fantasies yet.
01:03:55
Speaker
We'll see, we'll see. That's something for listeners to look out for, you know? That's something in the future. That's fantastic. You can go look at it and maybe give me some suggestions. But yeah, my main places are the blog and the podcast and the Twitter account. And if you will allow, I have a Patreon. If you think I'm cool, you can give me a couple dollars on my Patreon account. I would appreciate it greatly. Dollar of dollar bill, y'all.
01:04:21
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I hate to beg for money, but I'm going to beg for money. So yeah, that's how I pay for the website. I mean, it is. It's how I pay for the website. It's how I pay for, you know, my time that I have to take off to edit podcasts. It's how I paid for the mic I'm using. I mean, I use the money that the Patreon provides to pay for the show and the blog. So it's not like it's just going out there so I can buy candy all day long.
01:04:45
Speaker
But you do buy candy. Anyway, that's fantastic. And thank you very much for coming and speaking with me. Well, thanks for letting me be on. This was a lot of fun.
01:05:00
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.