What’s it all about?
This class is all about digging up Archaeology’s dirty little secrets: the charlatans, the fraudsters and the downright dishonest. We will study some famous archaeologists from past centuries and probe a little deeper into their discoveries. While they did make important finds, there was also fraud aplenty, theft, controversy, and possibly an ancient curse or two.
What will we cover?
You won’t be learning any practical techniques, the only digging we’ll be doing is into the past! We’ll start with a brief overview of what archaeology is all about, and some of its basic rules and guidelines.
Then we’ll look at case studies of archaeologists who made some of the most stunning finds in modern history. We’ll discover what they uncovered and why these discoveries were so groundbreaking. But we’ll pay lots more attention to the dark underbelly of these finds. We’ll see that smuggling, hoaxes and rampant egotism often went hand-in-hand with great archaeological discoveries. We’ll think about whether these men should be called ‘archaeologists’ or ‘treasure hunters’, and we’ll end on a philosophical note, asking can we (or should we?) judge people of the past according to the standards of the present?
Who will be teaching?
Avalon has a Bachelor of Arts in History, as well as a Postgraduate Diploma in Classical Studies and Archaeology from the University of Melbourne and a Certificate in Latin. She is also writing academic articles about Roman history. In her spare time she reads whodunits, but never manages to guess the murderer.