I put my battle against pseudoarchaeology down for a few years, but I recently agreed to give a presentation in Evansville, Indiana, opposite the Ancient Aliens travelling road show. So I've been using my YouTube channel to reinsert myself into the discussion. So far, most of the stuff I've come across related to ancient aliens has been old hat and pretty boring. I've been catching up on Randall Carlson, Graham Hancock, and others. My sense is that there really isn't much that's truly "new," but that's been true of this stuff since the late 1800s.  Anyway, if you're a YouTube kind of pers ..read more

I have done a horrible job at keeping this website active over the last few years. My current situation isn't as conducive to blogging as my life was in South Carolina, principally because I'm not teaching. No "Forbidden Archaeology" or field school. I miss teaching a little bit, but not much. I also got pretty tired of dealing with all the pseudo-archaeological nuttiness. I was getting worn out playing whack-a-mole and life is just to short to keep spending energy discussing the same things over and over again. I stayed disengaged from the circus around Graham Hancock's series on Netflix. I ..read more

I don't know how many of you are still around, but I'm posting to let you know that I'm opening a new front on YouTube this Wednesday (February 2, 2021). Jim Vieira and I are teaming up to try an online program that we'll livestream on this channel. Here is my announcement of our first episode, which will focus on the Dragon Man skull and some other apparently "large" human remains from our evolutionary past: Here is the conversation where Jim and I discussed the basic ideas behind this endeavor: I don't have the skills or the software to stream anything other than a basic conversation at th ..read more

I've had two new papers published this fall. The first, a critique of the evidence for Early Holocene caribou hunting on the submerged Alpena-Amberly Ridge in Lake Huron, came out in PaleoAmerica in October.  Here is the abstract: A series of papers has developed the claim that stone features on the submerged Alpena-Amberley Ridge (AAR) in Lake Huron provides unique insight into the Paleoindian caribou-hunting economies of the Great Lakes. The documented human occupation of the AAR dates to the late Early Holocene (about 9000 calendar years ago): however, a time when glacial ice was far t ..read more

This morning I woke up to the news that there was a video on YouTube discussing Swordgate, Hutton Pulitzer's colorful past, and his current involvement in various efforts to question the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election (the content was originally produced in March, but posted to YouTube just recently). I haven't followed Pulitzer's exploits closely since Swordgate faded (other than him contacting the University of South Carolina to lie about me), and he has removed most of his online baloney. So listening to this podcast -- an interview with Mike Gorman of Frank Magazine about h ..read more

A large chunk of the information that the public gets about archaeology comes via non-professional media.  Even as a professional, I often hear about new "discoveries" first through news articles passed around on social media. These articles, usually written by non-professionals, vary widely in quality and intent. Some are pretty good. Some are intentionally sensationalistic. Many are misleading to one degree or another.  The bad ones irk me. If we're concerned about what the public knows about archaeology (we should be) then we should care when popular articles get things wrong. Th ..read more

This is my biannual post to assure you that (1) I'm still alive and (2) I'm positive I'll get back to producing regular content any day now. At least one of those statements is true. We've been in Illinois for over a year now. It's been a busy time, with various family/health/professional issues bumping around like billiard balls. Overall we're in pretty good shape, especially given the background of the pandemic. Right now I'm not missing teaching at all and I'm not sorry to not be navigating the screwed up political/cultural situation in South Carolina. I have thought very little about pse ..read more

I've been working to restructure my social media. I have created a new ZeroPointMechanic YouTube channel for my art content, removing all the art videos from my Andy White Anthropology channel and putting them on the new channel.  I did this after realizing that I was feeling like the multiple personalities were diffusing my enthusiasm for creating new content. If you like my art, please subscribe to the new channel. If you don't like my art and mostly like to be outraged at my take on pseudoarchaeological nonsense, please do nothing except leaving me thumbs downs.  I've got plans ..read more

This is a quick post to confirm that I am, indeed, still alive. I last wrote in June of 2020 as we were moving from South Carolina to Illinois. A lot has happened since then, and I have for the most part been quite happy to not comment publicly on any of it. I would like to get back to writing more, however. So let's start with this quick update. Work I'm now employed as a Research Archaeologist at the Illinois State Archaeological Survey (ISAS). My position involves no teaching, which I'm finding to be a relief. Like the rest of the University of Illinois, we're operating under COVID constra ..read more

I have been very bad at making regular blog posts this spring. It's been pretty busy: on top of dealing with trying to somehow teach field school online due to the COVID-19 shutdown, we've been attempting to educate our kids at home, keep my wife's business afloat, and find time for me to finish up the excavations at 38FA608 by myself.  And then we decided to move. So now we're doing that, too. I have accepted a position as a Research Archaeologist at the Illinois State Archaeological Survey starting in September. I'll write more about that after we get settled in Champaign-Urbana. Deci ..read more