Just found this excellent article on the net. The article is by Marc Young, better known at https://cosmictusk.com … for his research for the Comet Research Group. The article is at https://grahamhancock.com/youngm1/ … and is dated to July of 2020. Marc Young is also responsible for the bibliography of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis which you can also find at Cosmic Tusk.
It concentrates on mainstream criticism of what it calls pseudoarchaeology, which Hancock’s books are supposed to represent – as well as various others. It has the handle, ‘Spiritual and Intellectual Colonialism: the Crusade against Pseudoarchaeology’ – something of a mouth full. We may note that Hancock is one of the latest ones in the firing line. Back in the day it was Velikovsky – in the 1960s and 1970s. With hindsight, some of that is probably justified. However, it is the zealotry of mainstream, or certain people joined at the hip with the mainstream narrative, that is most noticeable, as if they are privy to the truth rather than promulgating an hypothesis which may or may not be true. Similarities with the modern climate change agenda stick out like a sore thumb – a sort of liberal authoritarian stance. There must be a psychological reason why some mainstream supporters are so vociferous. What does it matter what the public likes to read. They are never going to read articles in academic journals. Why do these people think they are the fount of all knowledge on what happened in the past? Let’s face facts, their argument has big holes in it. For example, they accept, without a murmer of doubt, the idea of dark ages in the Aegean, Anatolia, and the Levant, at the end of the LB age. This all comes about as a result of adhering to standard chronology based as it is on Egyptian history. This history is supported by the C14 calibration model [originally just C14 data and tree rings]. However, the tree rings were clarified using standard Egyptian based dates, in spite of unbridgeable gaps in those tree ring chronologies during the Iron Age – the point where the calibration curve takes off. Hence, archaeologists in Britain complain of a lack of middle Iron Age archaeology whereas the early and late Iron Age has plentiful archaeology. The situation is just as bad in central Europe, and actually getting a reliable C14 date from mid first millennium BC is difficult, so much so we now have a succession of updates to the calibration – such as IntCal. Why would there be dark ages in the Aegean, what is now Turkey, and what was Phoenicia, but not in Egypt. It is because Egyptology is largely desk bound – the study of documents and monuments. Stratigraphy rules the roost in the surrounding lands, north, south, east and west. Yet, these self promoted guardians of the truth are quite willing to believe mainstream chronology is truth. Amazing.
With this in mind one should read the article at the links above – or you could key into your search engine the words Marc Young and the Crusade again pseudoarcheology. Marc Young is not concerned with whether Hancock is right or wrong but only that he has as much right to speculate as conventional archaeologists often do on what they find in the earth.