When the general public thinks about archaeology they usually think about all of the ways the field has been portrayed in pop culture. Pseudoarchaeology and other pseudoscientific fields play a big role in how a lot of people view archaeology. This includes shows like Ancient Aliens, The Curse of Oak Island, and Hunting Atlantis; all of which are harmful to archaeology and often demean the exceptionalism of humans. In my last blog post (Archaeo-Horror: How Pop Culture Uses Archaeology as an Element of Horror) I talked about how archaeology is utilized in the horror genre and that this comes from pseudoscientific concepts. What most people don’t know is that archaeology can be creepy and spooky without needing to rely on fictional tropes and pseudoscience. I talked to some colleagues about their experiences in the field that left them creeped out, unnerved, and gave them goosebumps. While not all of these stories deal directly with archaeological sites or artifacts, it is important to understand that when you are a field archaeologist you still come across the remnants of human activity that may be modern but are just as informative to human behavior (sometimes in less than stellar ways). So, I ask you to think, why do we need aliens, cryptids, and curses when humans are creepy all on their own? Interview with Dr. Bill FarleyOur first jaunt in creepy archaeology comes from Southern Connecticut State University Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology, Dr. Bill Farley. Bill: One time working on an archaic Indigenous site in Connecticut (mostly chert debitage), we discovered a large, elongated, very clearly delineated soil stain feature. We started to excavate it and eventually started to find the first signs of large mammal bones. First, hooves - then, leg bones, followed by ribs and on and on. Eventually we realized we were meticulously excavating a horse skeleton and a not very old one at that. We were pretty sure what happened was a nearby farmer probably brought his backhoe onto the reservation (where we were working), excavated a hole, and dumped a dead horse into it upside down, then left. It was pretty wild! It was weird and creepy! The bones were all pretty fresh. We guessed from the condition that this horse was probably in the 50-year-old territory. Technically archaeological! Bryandra: I bet. I’ve never excavated a recently buried animal. We found an entire horse skeleton before but it was on the surface. I’m glad what you found was just a horse and not like a recently buried human. Horse skull. Image by Bryandra Owen 2018. Horse skeleton. Image by Bryandra Owen 2018. Horse hoof with horseshoe still attached. Image by Bryandra Owen 2018. Bill: Oh, that’s also creepy! You know actually speaking of that, another creepy experience I had once was finding a refrigerator, no joke, two miles deep in the woods on a survey once. A full size, probably 500 pounds, refrigerator. That creeped me out. How the hell did that get out there? Bryandra: Did you look inside? Bill: NO hahaha! There was either a dead body or a curse in the thing. Interview with Allie ReynoldsAnthropologist Allie Reynolds shared two encounters in the field that could have been a really disturbing find. As field scientists, in the back of our minds it’s not a matter of if we will find human remains but when. Allie: Fairly recently it was an entire duffle bag full of juniper cuttings. Like stuffed to the gills, then left to rot in the sun for several years. Slashed open. What were they trying to cover up the smell with? Weed has been legal for longer than it looked sun damaged. Bryandra: Weird! I swear things like this always make me really worried about finding a murder victim. Allie: SAME. Especially because I’m out here working in the desert in Southern California, and like as a high school student out here my bus passed by a still smoldering body. Like I know what happens out here. A few months before the bag, I was on site and could smell death coming from this cooler just off site. So, I got the monitor to make sure I wasn’t just hallucinating the smell, then we got the super, and one of them opened the lid with a stick. I swear to God I have never been so happy to see a goat skull. Apparently, that’s common and the sheriff was used to it. Sheep skull and attached vertebra. Image by Bryandra Owen 2018. Bryandra: Oh weird. People do weird things with dead animals. Being a Southern Nevada archaeologist, I can relate. Bad things happen in the desert. I’ve only had one run in with a fresh body, but I have heard so many stories from other ‘ologists about finding shallow graves and plastic storage tubs with remains in them. Allie: Apparently, it’s like a post cookout issue. I guess people are afraid that the butchered animal will be mistaken for a human so they dispose of them weirdly like that… in a way that makes them seem suspiciously like a human body dump. Bryandra: Interesting. Yeah, I would definitely be more inclined to think you’ve dumped a human body that way than a butchered animal. People are so interestingly bizarre. Interview with Dr. Rebecca DeanDr. Rebecca Dean, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Minnesota Morris, shares an unnerving tale that not only puts a pit in your stomach but reveals some of the real dangers archaeologists potentially face when in the field. Rebecca: Working along the Arizona/Sonora border, I was very glad to learn that drug smugglers often use baby strollers for transport and that there were not a lot of migrants with young kids abandoning strollers in washes because they just couldn’t carry them anymore. I’m glad that Dr. Dean only found a stroller and did not have an unwanted encounter with drug smugglers. There is a real danger of potentially running into illicit activities when you’re in the middle of nowhere. On top of all of the other safety concerns that comes with doing fieldwork, we always make sure we are not alone and that someone knows where we are. We don’t want to become a part of someone else’s creepy field story. Interview with EmmaArchaeologist Emma talked about how some artifacts found at sites can give her fellow archaeologists the creeps. If you have pediophobia (the fear of dolls) you may find this exceptionally terrifying. Emma: I personally take a lot of delight (despite other's horror) in finding porcelain doll pieces. Super common on late nineteenth century sites, especially in urban areas. Shovel test pits almost always yield at least one and the low-level creepiness is a delight. Bryandra: Finding dolls is always super creepy. I have not found any porcelain dolls, but I’ve found Barbie dolls. One of which had her head impaled on a stick inside a rock alcove. My PI also helped record a site several years ago that has infamously become known as the Doll Massacre site by local archaeologists. It was a dump site where someone or multiple people dumped hundreds of dolls, from baby dolls to Barbie dolls. Sprinkled throughout I’ve shared some of my finds and encounters (including some of my personal photos), but my truly creepy field story is finding a summoning triangle. During a survey for a project on reservation land, not far from a main access road into a state park, our tribal monitor stopped and my field director radio'ed me: "You better come take a look at this." I leave my transect line and head over to where my colleagues are standing to find several white rocks, rocks that do not belong, spread out into an alignment and then a more detailed cluster in the middle of the alignment that formed a circle within a triangle. A Triangle of Evocation or Triangle of Solomon, the top of the triangle aligned to point west. Image by Bryandra Owen 2018. At each corner of the triangle there was a large stone with writing/glyphs painted on them. West of the triangle was another larger stone that also had writing. One of the solstices had just past and it was clear that the stones with writing were marking the cardinal directions. A smaller stone at the west point placed to form the interior circle had a red dot painted on it. Outside of the triangle, with the lone large stone to the west, was another smaller stone with another red dot painted on it. These stones were aligned with the sun rise. In the middle of the circle was a crystal fragment. It was clear that it was not old, and therefore not an archaeological feature that needed to be recorded, but it definitely gave us pause. Jokes were made daring each other to stand inside of it, but naturally none of us were that stupid to actually do it. We puzzled over it for several minutes before moving on. Corner stone with writing. Image by Bryandra Owen 2018. Corner stone with writing. Image by Bryandra Owen 2018. Corner stone with writing. Image by Bryandra Owen 2018. Corner stone with writing. Image by Bryandra Owen 2018. Smaller stone at the western point of the triangle, facing east towards the sunrise, with a red dot painted on it. Image by Bryandra Owen 2018. When we returned back to the office, we of course had to share this bizarre find with our co-workers. I took it further, asking some sources who practice modern witchcraft, and align spiritually with modern paganism, if they knew what the heck this was. They did not disappoint me. One source informed me that it was a Triangle of Evocation used to summon demons or demonic spirits. It is commonly used in ritual magic and is possibly associated with Thelemic Magick, Kabbalistic Magick, or Satanism. Two potential organizations associated with Thelemic Magick are the Ordo Templo Orientalis and the Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn. Aleister Crowley was a member of the Ordo Templo Orientalis and then went on to found the Order of the Golden Dawn. The writing on the stones was up to debate though, with one source indicating that some of the writing looked like Kana (a Japanese script) and some looking like a form of Arabic. While my second source found some references within a book on witchcraft to the Triangle of Solomon, stating they had seen some of the symbols before but that the writing is often unique to the individual(s) creating the summoning triangle. The purpose is so that outsiders cannot use or reverse the incantation. It was and still is unclear which group, order, or sect potentially created the summoning triangle. It was even speculated that it could have been created by just a group of folks out messing around in the desert. However, the consistency and repetition of some of the symbols in the writing and the presence of a crystal in the center of the feature are strong indications in favor of this being a legit summoning triangle. Based on my one source, the crystal would have been used to gather and focus the power/energy being summoned. In any case, the person and/or persons who made the triangle trespassed onto tribal land. They were likely non-Indigenous people who were falling into the fictional trope that tribal land holds some supernatural force that can be harnessed a la Pet Sematary. This year the project that survey was for is starting construction. We were notified that a crew had come across this summoning triangle and were rightly concerned. While we assured them that it was not an archaeological site and they did not need to worry about destroying it, the crew that came across it refused to touch it or do any thing with it. It will be interesting to see if the feature remains standing out of pure superstition, eventually becoming old enough to be considered archaeology. Further Reading:
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