Table of Contents

Part 1: The Phenomenon. Introduction: An Epistemology of Archaeology 1. Diagnosing Pseudoarchaeology 2. The Attraction of Non-Rational Archaeological Hypotheses: The Individual and Sociological Factors 3. Sceptics, Fence-Sitters, and True Believers: Student Acceptance of an Improbable Prehistory 4. Memoirs of a True Believer Part 2: Five Case Studies 5. Esoteric Egypt 6. The Mystique of the Ancient Maya 7. Pseudoarchaeology and Nationalism: Essentializing Difference 8. Archaeology and the Politics of Origins: The Search for Pyramids in Greece 9. Rama’s Realm: Indocentric Rewritings of Early South Asian Archaeology and History Part 3: Pseudoarchaeology in its Wider Context 10. The Atlantean Box 11. The Colonization of the Past and the Pedagogy of the Future 12. Pseudoscience and Post-Modernism: Antagonists or Fellow-Travellers? 13. Concluding Observations