Stephen Williams (archaeologist)

Stephen Williams (August 28, 1926 – June 2, 2017)^[1] was an archaeologist at Harvard University who held the title of Peabody Professor of North American Archaeology and Ethnography.^[2]

Fantastic Archaeology

Williams is best known as the author of Fantastic Archaeology (1991) and a course at Harvard based on the same material; a critical examination of pseudoarchaeological claims such as Atlantis, Mu, fringe related pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact theories, psychic archaeology, etc. He also discusses claims made in the Book of Mormon about the prehistoric Americas. The book has received positive reviews.^[3][4][5][6]

Anthropologist Julia C. Lowell commented it "should be read by any archeologist concerned with educating the public about the past".^[7] The archaeologist Francis B. Harrold described it as an "important contribution and an "invaluable reference work for anyone interested in unconventional beliefs about the human past".^[8]

According to Kenneth Feder, "Williams's book is a valuable contribution to the regrettably short list of publications by professional archaeologists examining, responding to, and debunking extreme claims made in the name of the discipline."^[9]

Notable students

• Tristram Randolph Kidder

Publications

• An Archaeological Study of the Mississippian Culture in Southeast Missouri (1954) PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Yale University, University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
• Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory (1991)
• Excavations at the Lake George Site, Yazoo Country, Mississippi, 1958–1960 (2004) Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.