As you may recall, last year I developed a survey to collect information on Canadian beliefs in the supernatural, paranormal, cryptozoological, and pseudoarchaeological. Inspired by and modified from the Chapman Survey of American Fears (specifically their paranormal section), I wanted to gain some insight into whether or not Canadians believe in these topics. We can see from the Chapman survey that American beliefs are on the rise, but do Canadians believe on the same scale? I also wanted to…

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Pic: A screenshot of the opening sequence of Legends of the Lost In December 2018, the Travel Channel aired a 4-episode special (ratings were so low that I highly doubt a second season will be ordered, so I’m calling it a ‘special’ for now) titled “Legends of the Lost”. Hosted by actress Megan Fox, each episode examined a different archaeological topic and featured Fox travelling to various sites and institutions to talk to experts about whatever topic she was exploring in that particular…

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Pic: The title slide from the lecture I gave at Carleton University After a chilly fieldwork day, I was excited to find this beautiful gift waiting for me at home – a special copy of my Shannon Lecture Poster! On October 19, 2018, I had the wonderful opportunity to give a public lecture at Carleton University in Ottawa, ON, as part of the 2018 Shannon Lecture series. This year’s theme is “Bad Archaeology”, organized by…

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Pic: View of the historic Britannia Shipyards in Steveston, BC. I grew up in Steveston and it feels so good to finally be home after 4.5 years away! After almost 4.5 years of living in Ottawa, it finally happened – we moved back west. More specifically, we moved back to the southern coast of British Columbia, where our friends and family are and where we grew up. And I have to say I’m pretty excited…

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Pic: Image credit goes to Iva Says The other day I was awake far too early, sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee and trying to wake my brain and body up for what was going to be a very hot fieldwork day (I can confirm it ended up being an extraordinarily sweaty day). As is my morning routine, I was browsing the Twitter news on my phone when suddenly a notification popped…

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Pic: (Photo by Robyn Lacy) I presented some preliminary research at the Canadian Archaeological Association’s (CAA) annual conference in 2017, to a very full little room! I logged into Twitter this morning and one of the first tweets I saw was from a digital friend asking about conferences. They were curious about both nerd cons (i.e. ComicCon, FanExpo, etc.) and academic conferences. What really caught my attention was their comment on asking if there were…

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Pic: Screen capture from the introduction to my survey Have you ever heard about the Chapman University Survey of American Fears? If you’ve read my post introducing you to pseudoarchaeology, than you definitely have heard of it. The header image is a summary of the Chapman survey results! The Chapman survey is really interesting. Researchers at Chapman University wanted to know what American people really thought about subjects like Bigfoot, aliens, and Atlantis, among many…

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Pic: As I learned, only some people have psychic access to proof for the existence of Atlantis (Source) **IMPORTANT** Insulting and judgmental comments will not be tolerated or published. If you haven’t already read it, I strongly suggest reading Part One of my discussion. It’s full of background information on the myths of Atlantis that will help you make the connections to Part Two, my discussion about the talk itself. But, if you haven’t read the…

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Pic: The stage in the auditorium where the talk was held These were the posters we found on telephone poles which alerted us to this event Last weekend while out on the town, my husband and I came across several posters for a speaking event titled, “Atlantis: Myth or Reality?” As you know by now, pseudoarchaeology is an interest of mine and Atlantis is one of the most popular pseudoarchaeological theories out there. So of…

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Image: from Arnold (2006: 154-155) Following the Fox announcement I ran a quick poll on Twitter asking who would be interested in a genuine archaeological discussion of pseudoarchaeology You may have heard the recent announcement that Megan Fox (yes, from Transformers) is producing and staring in a new show for the Travel channel. Titled, “Mysteries and Myths with Megan Fox”, the series features Fox as she “re-examines history” with the help of various experts. Who these experts…

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