It is first and foremost the archaeological communities’ job to educate. With in this umbrella it is their responsibility to explain to those who believe in pseudoarchaeology what is facts and what is fiction. Many people who believe in pseudoarchaeology are more miss informed than anything. Many people have been told things they think are true, and when presented with logical evidence are more that happy to change their view on the past. Those are the people who it is our responsibility to educate and help to understand the word as it really is. On the other hand, there are people who refuse to change even in the face of logic and fact. They refuse to see reason and will only believe what they want. It is not our responsibility to forcibly change people over to see the truth only to provide them with enough information to make their own choices.
I think the best way to go about doing this is general education of the public. Many of the media outlets that people are exposed to on a regular basis are fake history and pretend facts. For instance, the entire history channel is about aliens and other such nonsense. Exposing people to other sources of information such as real documentaries or shows would allow them to see the world for what it actually is, as supposed to only through the lenses of Ancient Aliens.
Along with general education on what is real, educating people on what is fake. Informing people that many different places they get information are not doing so honestly would also be important. Discrediting a source that is wrong helps future people from believing it in the first place, and people usually tend to keep with logical arguments once they hear believe them. Going after facts and ideas is a much more efficient approach than one person at a time, because it can change the minds of all the people who believe it as supposed to just one.
The confrontation between pseudo archaeologists and real archaeologists is not a direct one it is a slow process of teaching people how to not only see the world as it is but to think critically for them selves about what is happening around them. As much as we would all love to discredit each pseudo archaeologist at a time there are just too many people who believe what they say instead we need to discredit what they say and teach people how history actually happened.
I very much agree with you that educating the general public is key. The way that shows like Ancient Aliens are presented, with ‘experts’ and a huge educational sounding network like the history channel backing them, it’s easy to see why someone with no knowledge of archaeology could fall prey to these sorts of ideas. Because these sorts of shows do have so called experts, people with doctorates and credentials, why shouldn’t someone who barely knows anything about the topic think they are being lied to?
It’s not just about educating them on archaeology or discoveries, but I also believe it’s important to teach the general public about how to identify misinformation and false experts. It’s fine to teach them the truth about the discoveries, the context of the artifacts or the history of the site, but it takes more than that to really inform them for the future. We have to be able to make sure the public knows who to take information from. To someone who knows nothing about academia, there is no reason they should trust one person with a doctorate over another.
You’re right about critical thinking too. This is a skill that can help in more than just pseudoarchaeology, but pseudoscience in general. We see with things like climate-change deniers that many people just believe what they hear from one source that they seem to trust, when what they need is the skill set to do the research on their own and discover the truth for themselves.