How National Geographic Lost Its Way
National Geographic Channel’s Diggers shows metal detector-wielding people working at historic sites looking for relics and passing themselves off as legitimate investigators of the past. For them, finding relics is a competition in which the finds are judged at the end of each episode to determine which person found the best goodie.
Some of the episodes have focused on historic battlefields. Dr. Tim Gross, local archaeologist and instructor at USD, will draw on recent work at the Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument by real archaeologists, with the help of metal detector enthusiasts, to highlight the sharp contrasts between the destruction of the past shown on Diggers (and Spike TV’s American Digger) and how archaeologists use the artifacts they find, along with the context of these artifacts, to learn about the past.
Info, San Diego County Archaeological Society, 858-538-0935.