Category talk:Pseudoarchaeology

This should not be a child of pseudoscience

We have separate articles on pseudoscience & pseudoarchaeology. One isn't a 'child' or 'parent' of the other, and placing this as a child denigrates it. Doug Weller (talk) 14:33, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree. Our categorization follows the academic classification which do not mix category:Science and Category:Humanities. Therefore IMO within wikipedia's framework PseudoA falls within category:Pseudo-scholarship. (As I see, Category:Pseudohistory is already there.) -M.Altenmann >t 16:04, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree too, the pseudo* tree should generally mirror the genuine* tree. Alexbrn (talk) 16:22, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Hm. I'd have generally placed it under it, because pseudoarchaeology uses much the same "methods" as pseudoscience (similar gaps in logic and evidentiary standards) - they're definitely the same sort of thing. But I can see the point of all above - David Gerard (talk) 16:49, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Although parts of (pseudo)archaeology are conducted with methods used in the natural sciences, such as carbon dating, as auxiliary, I support the view that the legitimate field as a whole as well as its illegitimate counterpart should fall under humanities and pseudo-scholarship/pseudohistory, respectively. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 21:24, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Agreed except archaeology isn't history or a subset of it. Doug Weller (talk) 06:35, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

I think we need to include the post by Littleoliveoil, who is travelling, at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Skepticism#Category talk:Pseudoarchaeology should not be a child of Category:Pseudoscience agreeing when we come to a decision. Doug Weller (talk) 17:35, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

• Support, but not for the stated reasons. Category:Pseudoarchaeology is part of the broader Category:Pseudohistory, which is under category:Pseudo-scholarship. As history is not a hard science, so too pseudohistory is not a pseudoscience. Increasingly we are seeing a categorical division between pseudosciences and pseudohumanities which mirrors the division of academia. -- Andrewaskew (talk) 06:58, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

• Support. Lou Sander (talk) 13:04, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

The Lead Section for the article page Archaeology currently states:

  Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities.

This being so, the topic can reasonably be treated as either. The defining characteristic of pseudoarchaeology is that its proponents fail to adhere to scientific methods, nor do they garner appropriate peer review for their work, except from other pseudoarchaeologists.

In this respect, it is logical to include pseudoarchaeology as a branch of pseudoscience, and to disagree, respectfully, with Doug Weller, this in no way diminishes, demeans or "denigrates" the importance of the subject matter to be found within the category Pseudoarchaeology. In my own personal view, this assertion amounts to saying that the topics in "Physics" or "Chemistry" are demeaned by being branches of the "physical sciences". After all, the hierarchical classification scheme we use is simply to organise the vast body of accumulated knowledge we need to deal with, not to assign "importance".

If anything, I believe pseudoarchaeology may be simultaneously placed within any other categories where it might reasonably fit, e.g. pseudoscience, pseudohistory, pseudo-scholarship, etc.

Having said this, I propose the contentious label tag be removed from the category page, since nobody appears to challenging the validity of the category per se, but rather arguing about its hierarchical placement. Peter B. (talk) 23:46, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Peter B. I'm not sure if you've read Wikipedia:Categorization#Category_tree_organization - the way we use categories may not be the sort of categorisation you are talking about. I should not have used the word 'denigrate' as it just confuses the issue. As for the contentious label tag, that simply means that calling something pseudoarchaeology may be contentious, nothing to do with this discussion. Doug Weller talk 13:11, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Subcats

After moving all the people and texts to the new subcategories Category:Pseudoarchaeologists and Category:Pseudoarchaeological texts, most of the remaining articles are either artifacts or sites.

So I would like to have two more subcategories, but I am not sure what to name them. Category:Pseudoarchaeological sites and Category:Pseudoarchaeological artifacts spring to mind, unless somebody has better suggestions. --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:02, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

After looking at more articles, e.g. San Pedro Mountains Mummy, maybe "objects" is better than "artifacts". --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:10, 1 January 2019 (UTC)