![ancient alien glyphs ancient alien glyphs](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GalelDlRGnE/Tr08E2jyVuI/AAAAAAAAAnI/E3g_sAqSfhg/s1600/Ovni+maya.jpg)
This thesis examines the contemporary interplay between satire and politics, focusing on texts that envisage and engage with politics in unconventional and often mischievous ways. On what basis do we make claims about our past? How much do or can we as archaeologists know? Why do many people often prefer interpretations that fly in the face of scientific evidence? This course is intended to explore the various processes by which accounts of the past are created-whether by archaeologists, novelists, the general public or the lunatic fringe. These range from the stereotypes of Indiana Jones and Lara Croft in film, through Victorian concepts of ‘progress’ and later Nazi propaganda, to claims for Phoenician or Egyptian cities in Australia and America and space aliens as the source of all ‘sophisticated’ technology. This course will track some of the perceptions, uses and abuses of archaeology and, consequently, of interpretations of our cultural past.
![ancient alien glyphs ancient alien glyphs](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/ancient-symbolspaper-4056738.jpg)
![ancient alien glyphs ancient alien glyphs](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/16/8a/45/168a459488b9e5837ef5870a694468a9.jpg)
Sometimes, these attitudes colour the past in such a way that they give rise to unusual and quite unorthodox interpretations of archaeological data. Just as contemporary attitudes to race, politics, religion and gender affect the way we look at the present, so, too, do they colour the way we look at the past. Like all social sciences, archaeology is an activity which is conducted by people in the present and both its purposes and its discoveries are firmly enmeshed in contemporary attitudes and beliefs. The practice of archaeology does not take place within a social vacuum. This topic is taught by myself or Heather Burke.