I heard a paper on "The Da Vinci Code" at a session on iconoclasm at the EAA in Cork a couple of weeks ago. Basically, the gist was that it wasn't even a good thriller, but that, since the villain was an archaeologist trying to reveal the "truth," while the heroes were a few folk trying to repress it, this had implications for archaeology, our dealings with the public and how we perceive ourselves.
Ignoring the philosophical dimensions (what is "truth"?), are we at the point where it is "better" to repress unpleasant "facts" for the "fair & balanced" infotainment that seems to pass for news (and, some critics would have it, the formulation of public policy)? There was an interesting (though possibly inadvertent) juxtaposition of the DVC paper and another one which used photos from Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib to make its points about the powers of imagery, and I can recognize how some people might prefer to think that they were part of some divine plan, rather than the accidental result of random evolutionary forces, etc., but…
The question is: how did we get here? Inverting the old reverence for truth-sayers and the wise, in favor of whatever the market imagines we would rather hear (or is willing to pay for us to hear)…?
Is archaeology contributing or resisting this trend?