Download PDF Spooky Archaeology Myth and the Science of the Past Jeb J Card 9780826359148 Books

Product details Paperback 424 pages Publisher University of New Mexico Press; Reprint edition (March 15, 2019) Language English ISBN-10 0826359140

Spooky Archaeology Myth and the Science of the Past Jeb J Card 9780826359148 Books Reviews

• This review is unsolicited, but Dr. Card is my co-host on the Archaeological Fantasies Podcast.
  
  Dr. Card's 'Spooky Archaeology' is the in-depth look at the origins of the weird and sometimes difficult to understand world of pseudoarchaeology. He takes an exhaustive look at the Victorian Origins of many well known modern fringe beliefs, such as Aincent Aliens, Fairies, and haunted and cursed objects. He ties these back to their apparent sources with well researched, argued, and presented history. Dr. Card's love of these topics is very clear and his commitment to understanding the 'why' and 'where' of pseudoarchaeological beliefs comes through in his writing. Dr. Card is a welcomed addition to the study of pseudoarchaeology and fringe beliefs. This book is a must read for any serious student of archaeology at any level of their career, and is a definite must for anyone who wonders about the beginnings of spooky, weird, supernatural archaeology.
• This book represents an astonishing amount of scholarship about how Archaeology is rooted in a curiosity about the mysterious and spooky past. The cultural influences of archaeology and the exchange between the facts and the fiction and folklore around ancient sites are revealed with great scrutiny. I do not want to scare you away from the book because it's an academic volume. Let me assure you that it is highly accessible even though a few chapters are perhaps intimidating in their depth, but laudable for their comprehensiveness. As you can see from the photo, my copy is stuffed with page markers (and the interior is full of highlights and margin notes).
  
  S.A. can serve as both a useful reference volume (it is!) and as an illuminating map to understanding how the science of archaeology has influenced the world of fiction through movies and TV shows as well as fictional works by horror and fantasy writers including H. P. Lovecraft. If you're at all interested in how archaeology got to *now* I would urge you to get this book. There's now a much more affordable paperback version too!
  
  Buy it. Just do it. Or go read it in your library if you must, but get it in your hands.
• Nothing else like this text exists, I'm sure. It's an incredibly well-researched, comprehensive look at the "spooky" side of archaeology such as the mummy's curse, witch cults, lost continents, ancient aliens, occultists and more. Invaluable for the student of archaeology to recognize how and why paranormal pseudoarchaeological ideas are so popular in the 21st century. Discussion and analysis of the public fascination with the past infused with mysterious and magical meaning is long overdue.
• Disclaimer I have not read this, so cannot speak to the actual content. However, several observations. Dr. Heather Lynn, whom I have read and enjoyed, recently came out with a new book titled "Evil Archaeology". For those who do not know her, she is self-characterized as an archaeologist who is outside the mainstream. Thus, this book seems to be a direct attack by mainstream academia on her latest book. The price alone should guarantee that almost no one will be reading this anytime soon. Sad that there does not seem to be any type of open-minded discussion about anything, in our universities these days.
• Haunted artifacts. Cursed mummies. Dangerously powerful crystal skulls. Demon infested ruins. If this all sounds like stuff you’d see on cable or read about on the Internet, you’d be right. But, as Jeb Card shows in this masterful work, what passes for fake archaeology and fake history today is basically a warmed over Victorian Era view of an ancient, mythic, and “spooky” past. Come for the brilliant scholarship, stay for wonderful insights.
• In July of 2018 a 10ft black sarcophagus was discovered in Alexandria, when opened it was filled with a red liquid (sewage runoff) and three skeletons. A petition to allow people to drink the "juice" has since gained 35k signatures. The text accompanying the petition reads "we need to drink the red liquid from the cursed dark sarcophagus in the form of some sort of carbonated energy drink so we can assume its powers and finally die". This is all in jest, obviously, but why could the person who made the petition safely assume most people would understand a joke about egyptian bone juice having magical powers? That is the type of question answered by this book, which is a more or less complete history of the supernatural beliefs surrounding archeology. Why is there so many old spooky stories about underground races of degenerated humans? When and why did Atlantis migrate from being an allegorical tool to an "actual" lost continent? All these and much more delved into. It's great.