The Science article titled “Believe in Atlantis? These archaeologists want to win you back to science,” interviewed various professionals in the archaeology field about the proliferation of pseudoarchaeology claims, including keynote speaker for this past April’s Antiquites Action Symposium, David Anderson. For context, in a 2018 survey, over 50 percent of Americans believe in Atlantis and 41 percent believe in ancients aliens which is cause to declare the situation a “crisis that needs to be stopped,” according to Associate Professor of Art History Stephennie Mulder.
“It’s really a life-or-death issue,” says Stephennie Mulder, an archaeologist and art historian at the University of Texas in Austin, who organized a 30 March symposium there called “Aliens, Atlantis, and Aryanism: ‘Fake News’ in Archaeology and Heritage,” at which Anderson was the keynote speaker.
Television programs like History Channel’s Ancient Aliens, Legends of the Lost and alternative publication outlets help perpetuate false stories - stories that Mulder says are entangled in a ugly revival of white supremacist ideology. Mulder founded Antiquities Action as a way to educate the public in conversations about the destruction, looting, and illicit trafficking of antiquities around the world. The 2019 symposium focused in on a particularly topical area of study for members of the group, engaging and methodically debunking pseudoscientific theories spread by popular culture.
Article author Lizzie Wade wrote that “archaeologists have historically been hesitant to tackle pseudoarchaeology,” and archaeologists should be more open about their work. The UT Antiquities Action symposium is a way to do just that and connect archaeologists and their expertise with the public. The most recent symposium invited professors from a variety of universities, including UT Austin and the University of Maryland, Eric Powell of Archaeology Magazine and Lauren Hahn Bussiere of SEARCH, Inc. The day-long affair covered an array of topics from the myths surrounding Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi to teaching Atlantis in the classroom to, most importantly, understanding the deeper social, cultural and political meanings behind pseudo-archaeological ideas.