Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology

Book info: Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology (Paperback, 344 pages) – Oxford University Press, 2025. Language: English.

A common goal in virtually all social science courses is to teach students to think critically. Most students who sign up for this "fun" archaeology course have not been asked to think deeply about how we know what we know. Clearly, it is important for anyone interested in the human past to know, for example, that there is no evidence for a race of giant human beings, and no broken shards of alien's laser guns under Egyptian pyramids. Debunking such nonsense is fun and useful in its own way, but of much greater importance is the process we employ to determine that such claims are nonsense. Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries uses archaeological hoaxes, myths, and mysteries to show how we can truly know things about the human past through science. Frauds is not just a book about how we know what isn't true about the human past; it's also about how we know what is true.