Susan A. Johnston

I like all of Professor Johnston's courses. Having read the Textbooks that go with this course, I enjoyed it, and also have enjoyed more the "other books of interest" suggested. I used to send for the course guide that the Modern Scholar series makes available, but was thrilled to discover that I can download them. This makes it possible, when I borrow a course from the library, (because, after all, how often are you going to want to listen to the same course?) to look up the suggested reading before it arrives, and read them along with the audio lectures, rather than a week or two later when the library gets them in. I especially liked her perspectives on cultural differences and religion. She also didn't start from the usual premise that since magic is impossible, any effects from it must be placebo or imagined. (She didn't endorse it either, but at least she was fair.)… (mais)

While I agree with most of what Professor Johnston said about archeological methods and care being needed to avoid making bad leaps of logic, I'm afraid it didn't take long for me to get tired of listening to this course. As I'd finish a lecture, very often I'd think: "I wish I could get paid for being snarky for hours on end!" Having made the point that one should always build one's conclusions on the facts, and avoid basing interpretation on our cultural expectations, she proceeds from the premise that anything that smacks of ESP must be ridiculous,and once someone has accepted the reality of magic or astrology as possible, you can't believe anything else they say. Perhaps that's a bit of an overstatement, but not by much. The subjects of the lectures range from Stonehenge to the Pyramids, from King Arthur to the Mayan Calendar, and are fascinating, but the constant disparaging tone has a seriously adverse affect on the enjoyability. Of course, if you have the same attitude, I'm sure you'd enjoy laughing at all the poor benighted souls that accept the evidence for ESP as well, but I didn't.… (mais)

The biggest thing I learned from listening to Icons of the Iron Age: the Celts in History and Archaeology was that pretty much everything I thought I knew about the Celts was wrong. Professor Johnston tells us where the term 'Celts' comes from, what ancient sources have to say on the subject, and why we should be taking the information in those ancient sources with more than just a grain of salt.

We also learn what's available in the archeological evidence and the probable reasons that the Romans were able to conquer the Celts.

The course guide includes some nice photos. If you're at all interested in the Iron Age and/or the Celts, I recommend these lectures.… (mais)

Prof. Johnston opens Myths and Mysteries in Archaeology with a discussion about how we know things, which became more interesting as she goes beyond first-hand knowledge. I chuckled when she used the Professor from 'Gilligan's Island' as an example of the kind of source that was likely to be believed. I laughed aloud when she brought up the subject of ancient astronauts, even though she said she would be looking at whether there is any evidence for that. (If you insist that aliens have visited the Earth in the past, I'm likely to snort. I'm just as likely to snort you insist that idea is ridiculous.) There are two lectures per compact disc. The accompanying booklet has helpful photos and summaries of the lectures.

I very much appreciated the fact that Prof. Johnston lectured about cultural bias and subjectivity in science. The explanation about hypotheses was definitely more detailed than I remember from school. Her explanation about what archeology in lecture 2 was helpful.

Lecture 4 covers the discovery of America and the claims about which Europeans might have come here before Columbus. The Vikings and St. Brendan are included, as are the Grave Creek Stone, the Davenport, Iowa tablets; the 'ogham' stones in New England, and the Kensington Runestone.

Lecture 5 is about ancient Egypt. Prof. Johnston asks good questions about ancient aliens and the pyramids. Her comment about a painting in the tomb of Ptah-Hotep reminds me about what happened when we got clearer photos of the supposed face on Mars.

The ancient aliens are discussed more thoroughly in lecture 6. Yes, she brings up Erich von Däniken. I remember reading his Chariots of the Gods? when I was young. At the time, I was impressed. Now I enjoyed the debunking. The Nazca lines, the statues on Easter Island, and the relief carving of the Mayan king Pakal (color photos included) are covered.

On the other hand, Prof. Johnston's recounting of the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah had an inaccuracy. Lot didn't plead with the angels until after they'd taken him and his family outside the city. (See 'Genesis' chapter 19, verses 19 - 26.) Good questions about von Daniken's theory, though.

Stonehenge and Ley lines are covered in lecture 7, while King Arthur gets lecture 8.

Lecture 9 is about using ESP to help with archeology. Edgar Cayce, David Jones, Frederick Bligh Bond and Captain John Allen Bartlett, as well as Karen Hunt the dowser, are discussed. Nice to know that mastodons and mammoths did not live in the same parts of what would become North America.

Lecture 10 covers archeology and Christianity, more specifically, those denominations that take the Bible literally. (I'm Catholic. We don't.) She is not rude about it. I did enjoy hearing about the Piltdown Man again. I have an old textbook that includes Piltdown Man as real. It was published about the same time that the skull was proved a hoax. How embarrassing.

Lecture 11 is about New Age Archeology. This series came out in 2010, so the idea that a Mayan calendar predicted the world would end on December 21, 2012, is discussed as not yet being disproved.

No, there was no Year Zero. Although she uses 'BCE' (Before Common Era) and 'CE' (Common Era) instead of 'BC' (Before Christ) and 'AD' (Anno Domini, 'in the year of our Lord'), the dating is still before and after Jesus' alleged birth date -- which probably is some years off. In medical terminology, zero is the moment of birth. Your first decade of life is from birth until your 11th birthday because the whole ten years won't have passed before then. Your second decade of life ends on your 20th birthday, et cetera. That's why I'm 62 and in my seventh decade of life.

We're in the 21st century because the century will end at midnight on December 31, 2100. The second millennium was from the first second after midnight January 1,001 through midnight December 31, 2000. It had been only 1,999 years when New Year's Day came on 2,000.

The discussion of crystal skulls mentions the Indiana Jones movie.

Lecture 12 is about Plato's Atlantis and whether that place ever existed. Plato's method for his dialogues has a 20th Century television counterpart: Steve Allen's 1977-1981 PBS show, 'A Meeting of Minds'. The same historical figures would meet for two episodes. His first guests were Cleopatra, Thomas Paine, Theodore Roosevelt, and Thomas Aquinas. I loved the show and would recommend looking it up.

On the other hand, the idea some persons have that Plato abandoned his trilogy because he was calling the Greek gods into question regarding their decisions about humans makes no sense to me. My parents gave me my first book of Greek myths and legends when I was nine years old. Their gods could really misbehave when it came to dealing with humans. (*cough* Zeus cheating on his wife, Hera, with human women *cough*)

I had plenty of fun with lecture 13, which is about places claimed to have been Atlantis. (My mother was from Wisconsin. I'm not surprised that she never mentioned the theory that Atlantis was in her home state to her children because Frank Joseph's Atlantis in Wisconsin: New Revelations about the Lost Sunken City came out in 1995, just four years before her death. I'm sure she would have scoffed.)

The final lecture is about genuine mysteries in archeology. I'd never heard of some of them.

If you're interested in archeology, myths, possibilities, and debunkings, you should like this offering in the Modern Scholar series. By the way, each lecture is introduced by the well-known audio book narrator George Guidall.… (mais)