ABSTRACT
The three distinguishing traits – characteristic topics, a distinct institutional context and controversial methods – are linked historically. The nineteenth century saw the professionalisation of various academic disciplines that study the distant past, including history, archaeology and comparative linguistics. Alternative archaeology arose as a result of identity construction and boundary maintenance: two emerging fields defined each other in starkly negative terms. Perhaps, it is therefore only to be expected that nearly all the literature on alternative understandings of the distant past is either partisan or debunking. The chapter provide some indications as to how alternative archaeology has intersected with a widespread fascination for the paranormal and for altered states of consciousness. Sources sympathetic to the quest to understand the distant past by paranormal methods, from Buchanan to the present day, have envisaged their attempts as the vanguard of a movement that would soon become mainstream.
