Dr. Duncan Earle
For centuries, people have turned to water witching, or dowsing, as a way to locate water hidden beneath the land. Modern science finds no measurable proof that it works—yet countless practitioners insist it does. Anthropologist Dr. Duncan Earle offers a perspective outside the usual debate, showing how the practice connects to shamanic traditions, intuition, and human evolution. From this view, the dowser is not a trickster or scientist but a kind of healer, attuned to subtle cues in the environment that others overlook.
Drawing on his research and experience, Dr. Earle explains that it’s not about the stick or the instrument—it’s about the person. Skilled dousers sense their landscape, channel intuition, and respond to unconscious signals in ways that may appear random but offer adaptive insight. Like the shamans of old, they operate outside the logic of everyday life, relying on alternative ways of knowing. This talk invites us to reconsider dowsing not as hoax or miracle, but as a practice rooted in human intuition and deep connection to the land.
Dr. Duncan Earle is an anthropologist whose career has taken him deep into Indigenous communities across the U.S., Mexico, and Central America. His research and teaching explore the connections between culture, ecology, and spirituality, especially how traditional wisdom shapes the way people live with their land. He has written and taught widely on shamanic practices, Indigenous resistance, and ways of knowing that don’t always fit into Western science.
In his talks, Dr. Earle draws on both scholarship and lived experience to show how old knowledge can shed light on today’s questions—from the intuitive art of dowsing to the sustainable farming systems that have kept maize thriving for thousands of years. He reminds us that there is no single way of understanding the world, and that ancestral practices often hold keys to healthier landscapes, communities, and futures.
