I think it is the professional duty of archaeologists to counteract and refute pseudoarchaeological claims and individuals. The practice and belief in pseudoarchaeology has a far more significant range of effect than it first appears. Pseudoarcharchaeology is only one of many fields of pseudoscience. And even believing in one pseudoscientific field is an avenue to believing in many more. There are many contemporary issues that are informed by scientific fields. And if there are people who appear to be professionals who echo their own ill-informed, fearful, or hateful beliefs; those people will only become further entrenched in those same beliefs.

This is how we end up with people trying to deny climate change, which has resulted in a severe lack of action from the United States government in particular. This lack of legal action to counteract the effects of global warming, which is our responsibility to take care of as we are the ones who are one of the leading producers of pollutants and waste, has resulted in an imminent crisis situation for humanity at large. The abilities of the government to create and destroy narratives also played a prominent role in Nazi archaeology. The Nazi Party was able to effectively create evidence for what they considered an ideal cultural heritage for the people that they considered “native” Germans. Not to mention that the “ideal cultural heritage” they chose for their message of white supremacy were the Aryans who were a decidedly not white iteration of the Persian Empire and were an Indo-European group. And it is the lack of knowledge of people in general and a willingness to believe what they want to hear when they hear it that results in people continuing to believe such myths. If archaeologists and other scientists were able to effectively refute pseudoscientists than things might be less likely to reach critical points like these.

If not archaeologists than who? These issues need to be addressed and no one else has the expertise and the knowledge required to educate people on these matters. The easiest way to refute these claims is to address them as they come to our attention in our personal lives. And to address them as an educated individual with compassion and understanding, it is an incredibly easy thing to believe what we are told. It is significantly harder to go out of our way to prove ourselves wrong. There are a fair amount of people who are genuine and do not intend to fall into the often racist or harmful ways of thinking that are common in pseudoarchaeology. While educating them on the subject may not ultimately change their beliefs or the people that they will affect with their beliefs. It matters that someone tried to educate them, that someone told them that they were wrong. Even if it was only once.