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Bad Archaeology · 2M ago

Yet another ‘Tomb of Jesus’

It seems a bit greedy. Every few years, another “genuine tomb of Jesus” is identified with great confidence. Some people are serial identifiers and this latest story is one of those. Curiously, it’s dated 1 March 2012, although I received it on 29 February (presumably on the back of neutrinos from t
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Bad Archaeology · 3M ago

Responding to criticism

By and large, it’s something I avoid. Many of the criticisms levelled against either this blog or the main Bad Archaeology website are trivial, vapid or misinformed. I tend to give a short reply to the original comment and move on: there isn’t usually anything substantial in the criticism that warra
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Bad Archaeology · 4M ago

Dowsing in archaeology (part 2)

I’ve described my direct interaction with dowsing in a previous post. The semi-serious hunt for the eighteenth-century Cheese Warehouse on the bank of the River Dee in Chester yielded equivocal results: we “identified” a rectangular “anomaly” that most of us agreed upon. The problem was that the one
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Bad Archaeology · 4M ago

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 90,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 4 days for that many people to
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Bad Archaeology · 6M ago

Sticks, wires and pendula: dowsing in archaeology

This is another of those posts I’ve been meaning to write for some time without knowing quite where to start. I’ve been given a kick start by a twitterer (Marcus Smith) and by a recent BritArch announcement of a dowsing ‘experiment’ (you must be a subscriber of BritArch to see the link!). The proble
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Bad Archaeology · 6M ago

“Over 1,000 Mayan Codices discovered in museum basement”: really?

Here’s something that seems to have passed by the mainstream archaeological news outlets. A press release by someone called Gregg Prescott MS, a Self-Growth Expert, claims that “Over 1,000 Mayan codices were discovered in the basement of a Los Angeles museum, presumably owned by Randolph Hurst [the
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Bad Archaeology · 6M ago

The Bosnian ‘pyramids’ of Semir Osmanagić

This story has been around a while now, but I’ve been ignoring it for reasons I don’t fully understand, although I have suspicions that ought to become clear. The first anyone heard about supposed pyramids in Bosnia was in 2005, following a series of high profile public announcements based on a stor
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Bad Archaeology · 7M ago

Why are the “Dropa Stones” the most searched for subject on Bad Archaeology?

Looking through the search terms by which people have been brought to the main Bad Archaeology website, I’ve discovered that far and away the most common search term is “Dropa Stones”. What are they and why are people in search of information about them being directed to my website? Even more import
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Bad Archaeology · 7M ago

Royston Cave, the Knights Templar and The da Vinci Code: an underground conspiracy?

Royston Cave is a fascinating and unusual monument in the small market town of Royston, Hertfordshire. It consists of an artificial bottle-shaped circular chamber in the chalk bedrock, originally around 5.2 metres (17 feet) in diameter and 7.7 metres (25 feet 6 inches) in height, with a band of stra
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Bad Archaeology · 7M ago

2012: the end of the world and “proof” that the Maya were guided by extraterrestrials

While browsing Real Ufos (“Amazing! – the Best Real UFO videos & news posted from around the world”) yesterday, I came across what promises to be a huge story, if true: New Mayan film claims proof of aliens with government support? It’s a difficult phrase to parse, unfortunately. Is it a “Mayan film
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