Xenoarchaeology: Considering Regmaglypts

-Just a quick thought this evening on a possible (and personally-recommended) entry into the future xenoarchaeologist’s playbook. Xenoarchaeology, (insofar as I’ve been engaged in its development,) is deeply interdisciplinary in principle. As such, it is useful to promote and incorporate unfamiliar astronomy and planetary concepts into a field perhaps initially or reflexively dominanted by archaeological forensics concepts. This may be specifically relevant when […]

Xenoarchaeology: Reality and Fantasy

Cultural Xenoarchaeology For reasons I can’t immediately explain, (the recent rash of technical publications addressing the concept of “xenoarchaeology” or “non-terrestrial artifacts” nonwithstanding,) there is a tantalizing idea cropping up in a number of recent and upcoming films and television programs. (See: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Prometheus, Ancient Aliens.) This concept, simply, involves the […]

Xenoarchaeology imagined: Lovecraft vs. von Däniken

Clashing Pioneers of Xenoarchaeological Thought The idea of alien archaeology, or more appropriately, “Xenoarchaeology,” is a mainstay of current science-fiction. Hopefully, it may soon graduate to the realm of science-fact. In this light, it is fruitful to consider a couple of prime examples of cultural influences and to discuss which amongst them leans more toward fiction or […]

Xenoarchaeology Critical Mass

Xenoarchaeology Rising 2011 has been a good year for the nascent pursuit of xenoarchaeology as serious science. After beginning a conversation with a 2010 Viewpoint article I authored in the journal Space Policy, which was intended as a broad, conceptual justification for the further development of xenoarchaeology as a field, I was rewarded with a generally favorable review […]

Research supports possibility of non-terrestrial artifacts in Solar System

In a professionally-risky but scientifically-admirable move that came as a bit of a shock to me, two Penn State University researchers recently authored a study that claimed, statistically-speaking, that not enough of the planetary surface areas (at sufficient resolution) and volume of the Solar System has yet been surveyed to rule out the presence of what they term “non-terrestrial” […]

Resurrecting Astro-paleontology

A quick note today pointing to an interview with astro-paleontology pioneer John Armitage that was recently published on the Space Archaeology blog. In short, Armitage pioneered research (see: Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, vol. 30, pp. 466-9, 1976) that was quite nearly lost to the sands of time until rescued by Steve Wilson and posted […]