Indiana Jones and The Work of Real-life Archaeologists

Introduction

Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of my top favorite movies of all time. (I personally think that it is the best of the film series for being the most creative and least ridiculous. It’s a classic.) It is a movie that I can’t remember not loving. I bet many people can relate to that, for Indiana Jones is one of the most famous characters of all time. From movie lovers everywhere, we thank you, Steven Spielberg, for this marvelous character and entertainment. He is a classic character, battling the undoubtedly villainous “bad guys” and then cooly eliminating the nameless, unspoken characters that are irrelevant to the plot of the story. These adventures are supported by the wonderful and exciting music of John Williams. Kids and even adults imagine themselves in his leather jacket and iconic hat, with a whip fighting off the enemies with ease and courage that he doesn’t even care to notice. He is a heroic figure of archaeology that always gets more than what he bargained for. He always concludes his adventure victoriously with his prized artifact.

Indiana Jones and archaeology 

In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Henry Jones (the first), Indiana Jones’ father (played by the renowned Sean Connery), unintentionally joins him on another one of his dangerous adventures of surviving the Nazis in search of an important artifact. This time, a colleague of theirs, Marcus Brody, joins him as well. Jones I and Brody are also archaeologists but are both very different from Indiana. These two were more bookish and cultivated individuals with their quirky enthusiasm centered around archaeology. They were never figures of adventure as Indiana was and were shocked at the many actions that he wouldn’t even think twice about. I must say that they were archaeological enthusiasts rather than someone who would physically fight and risk their lives so that their enemies wouldn’t be able to use a specific artifact of significance to their own evil advantage. As a matter of fact, Indiana Jones’ father would constantly criticize him (in a fatherly way) about his unorthodox career in their common field of interest. “This is not archaeology!” he would exclaim to his son. Indiana seemed to understand that. I would believe that a typical archaeologist would be much more like Henry Jones I and Marcus Brody, than that of Indiana Jones who is likely notoriously well known by real-life archaeologists as the figure many people falsely perceive them as. The movie industry does give us false portrayals of careers but is it possible to be Indiana Jones for a career? What does a real archaeologist do and why is their work significant?

Before getting too deep into learning about this field of study, I not only had to research the basics of archaeology, but the basis of the field. I had to find out what it is that makes archaeology important, what is commonly discussed, and what makes artifacts significant to our knowledge of history. In fact, why do we believe that learning about our history is so important and significant through archaeology? What impact may the things we learn about previous societies have on our current society? As my curiosity swirled through my head, I had to start simply. For a basis, I searched a fairly simple definition of archaeology: “archaeology analyzes the physical remains of the past in pursuit of a broad and comprehensive understanding of human culture,” the SAA Archaeology for the Public had stated in their introduction of American Archaeology. That definition had me thinking about how exactly the artifacts we find have an impact on our knowledge of culture and societies. This field of study analyzes cultural and structural changes in societies to see how we have socially and technologically advanced over thousands of years. There are many specific topics that someone can study/primarily focus on since this is a very broad subject. (American Archaeology). It was explained that this field of study is not direct learning about history, but making discoveries and analyzing them in order to learn more about societies that came before us. We do this so that we can recognize patterns to explain our questions of how the world became so today. Artifacts are analyzed with context that “refers to the relationship that artifacts have to each other and the situation in which they are found.” (American Archaeology). I now had a very clear basis of archaeology, but I needed more specifics. I needed more of an insight on the career. What are the educational requirements and what do professional archaeologists do on a daily basis?

I would answer this question by searching for such information through a University. The University of Chicago was where I had found a wonderful archaeology department that very clearly explained the graduate school courses that were required to earn a degree in archaeology. (Coincidentally, Indiana Jones had fictionally attended this school.) Many courses included studying ancient languages and cultures. Those would be used in order to understand the records of ancient civilizations and use that knowledge to analyze artifacts and better understand a specific society. The information learned from these courses would be used every day in a career in the field. For example, if ever working on analyzing an artifact for a journal, their knowledge of the history of a civilization would counterplay as a part of determining how significant this certain artifact was to the civilization and to our knowledge of that civilization and its future impacts. But, what will determine an artifact’s significance from what we know about where it came from? What contributes to analyzing the value of an artifact or piece of information found from it? I needed to further investigate the more technical part of archaeology.

Again I had searched the internet but this source did not give me more simple and basic information. I had found a journal article that consisted of just about 20 pages. What I recognize previously analyzing journal articles is that almost every sentence is important to have an understanding of the topic that is written about. Value and significance in archaeology is an “archaeological dialogue” that discusses exactly what the title says. The significance of an artifact is basically defined as how relevant a piece is to a society and how much of an impact that it had on that society. It is what archaeologists analyze first to see how that could have impacted the society of where it came from and future societies that came along after. It heavily contributes to the assessment of value. (Different from significance,) value is how important an artifact is including the context in which it is being studied. When assessing value, you have to take into account its material value and its significance (to a society). According to Samuels, “the concept of ‘inalienable possessions’ demonstrates that it is not the circulation of objects, but rather the attempts at keeping them out of circulation, that constitutes their value.” He is saying that the concept of possessions that cannot be taken away shows that it isn’t how it fits with other artifacts of significance but how it stands out that makes it valuable. I most easily understand archaeological value as knowing that an everyday item is much less valuable than a historical piece of significance such as the declaration of independence. Determining value was much more technical than I had thought and there is so much that goes into consideration. When assessing such values, Weiner, an archaeologist cited in the article, intends to “conceptualize exchange processes and values which accommodate the place of gender in social theory and leads to a reconceptualization of how difference is transformed into rank and hierarchy”. He assesses how an artifact contributes to social theory and can change an outlook on a society. I didn’t realize how technical of a field this was and how much was put into consideration to determine a historical piece’s significance which would then be taken into account to determine its value. A very valuable piece typically has an association with important events and/or people in history, but it could just give information about the past without having any special associations. Value and significance in archaeology is the most important component of the field because it is what makes anything that was found important to learning about societies from the past and how the contributed to our modern lifestyle now. According to Marx, a well-known historian and philosopher of the 19th century, “it is value, rather, that converts every product into a social hieroglyphic”. This quote is saying how value, when assessed, makes the artifact found more information and clues about the past than just an object. It is the significance an item has that makes it valuable, whether in an archaeological, economic or personal perspective of it being special. Each individual archaeologist has their own views of assessing value but they all basically have the same concepts embedded within their methods. I wanted to know if there was any sort of set standards that are always taken into consideration when analyzing an artifact. As I read further, I had found the basis of archaeological practices:

“Value is located within at least three interconnected practices of the discipline of archaeology:

• as a technique for assessing the value (‘significance’) of our object of study, material heritage;
• as an analytic for making interpretations of the past (e.g. for reconstructing past societies); and finally
• as a way to question our archaeological modes of inquiry, to ask how the first two practices produce particular effects and shape specific histories as (un)authorized. In this last instance value is therefore also a way to question why we study material heritage in the first place.” These values are “important to discussions of ethical practice, heritage, interpretative reconstructions of past.”

Basically, what these practices conclude of is what value is used for and how it is assessed.

After completely reading and taking notes on this journal article, I was more fascinated with this field of study. I was pulled in by technical definitions and the wording these archaeologists use that they could so easily simplify. In journal articles, I see their scientific language almost as a secret code between scientists of the field of whichever topic is being discussed. I still had a few questions that were unanswered and I wanted to get some personal insight from a professional archaeologist.

Professional archaeologist interview

When searching for an interviewee, I had originally planned on interviewing a curator from the Met Museum. That idea sprouted when I had recently visited the promptly closing Thomas Cole exhibit there and had admired the archaeological brilliance of the Museum overall. I called and left a message for the department of Greek and Roman art in request to get the contact information of a certain archaeologist that I had found online. I stated my purpose and gave my email. Unfortunately, her contact information was inaccessible to me online and I had never gotten a response and had to go in a new direction. I know that Columbia University has a very good archaeology department based on articles that I have previously read before starting this essay. I kept a list of six possible interviewees and narrowed it down to three based on their specific field of research and whether or not they studied art more than archaeology. My first reply had truly enlightened me. Zainab Bahrani is a professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University and has been extremely successful with her published works. She also is very concerned with how archaeological sites of great significance are often destroyed and she wants to preserve them for future generations. I emailed her my questions and she very richly and thoroughly answered my questions in well-composed responses.

Professor Bahrani had grown up to love archaeology since childhood. She had lived in Babylon, Iraq which has many ancient sites that inspired her to love history and archaeology. It was early-on passion that was ignited by an “endless curiosity” as she describes it. I myself have that same curiosity that cannot be stopped but only fueled by new discoveries. That is what drives her to want to know more about the past. She states that “we would not be who we are today if we had not inherited knowledge from them.” (Them being past civilizations in which archaeologists study.) I often think of that in a history class: what have we learned from these events that help us advance as a society? We learn from past mistakes and we learn from past success.

For Professor Bahrani, a typical workday is mostly teaching her college students and advising those who are studying to become professors as well. She also researches and writes for her publications that have been very successful. She does more hands-on work at archaeological sites once or twice a year and she told me that “right now my fieldwork is in the north of Iraq, in the Kurdish region. In the past, I used to excavate in Syria, and I also have some fieldwork in Turkey.” I became more and more impressed with her career and success. I wanted to learn more about what she does by researching her online and her published works. What I had found was wonderfully amazing. She publicly speaks out against ISIS’s destruction of historic sites in the Middle East and many people’s belief in the practice of cultural cleansing. She is an archaeological activist. This was very significant to my brief view of Professor Bahrani but learning about this had coincided with one of her responses: “The most difficult part of my job is probably the part in which I have to deal with some of the destruction that is taking place. Seeing these sites damaged or destroyed is very sad and frustrating, but we do our best to salvage and preserve what we can for the next generations.” It felt so incredible to be able to contact and communicate with someone that has a strong passion and fights to defend it, not only for herself but for future generations.

I had to finalize my interview with mentioning Indiana Jones although I was afraid that such a question would derail my interviewee’s view of my maturity and find a small high school interview of mine beneath something of their standards. I tried to word such an interview question as maturely as I could but Professor Bahrani had given her opinion of this character perfectly and with gratitude: “It is funny that you ask about Indiana Jones. It’s true that many people seem to think that archaeologists are like that, treasure hunters and adventurers. In fact, archaeologists do a great deal of their work sitting at a desk or standing in a lecture hall in front of students!” That seems very realistic. She also stated “I prefer Indiana Jones to Lara Croft (who people also mention to me sometimes) because she destroys ancient sites rather than protecting them! Maybe we need a new archaeological hero.” Her statements were exactly what I needed to sum up my research. I had gotten the real insight that I needed to know what a career in archaeology is about. I really love what they do and it is so fascinating. It is a technical and analytical field that requires opinions and an open mind. It is constantly questioning what we know and what we want to know and find connections or patterns of civilizations. Archaeology is piecing together information for better understandings but not like a puzzle because an understanding can’t be completed. It is constantly changing and expanding.

Conclusion and Reflection

It is true that Indiana Jones is very entertaining while not exactly fitting of a typical archaeologist. His career of adventure is something that pulls him away from accuracy but pulls us to love his adventures. Movies typically do portray their characters and their identities inaccurately compared to the real world. I agree with Professor Bahrani that what makes Jones more appealing is his passion for archaeology and preserving it for people to learn. Although his heroism may not be all that realistic, it is a more adventurous rendition of a typical archaeologist’s dedication to maintaining great historical value. I believe that Indiana Jones’ career could be somehow been legitimately recreated but in a less adventurous way except in this day and age, his immediate use of guns to eliminate another would be very unacceptable, and he would be seen as more of a criminal than a hero. There would be no people that were unquestioningly labeled as “bad” for being Nazis and the hero would not have the extreme luck of always being missed by bullets shot by teams of people. Maybe we do need a new, realistic archaeological hero; not a Tomb Raider or a treasure hunter, but people like Zainab Bahrani that (verbally) fight to defend artifacts and historic sites so that the history can live on. Maybe not really physically fighting or ridiculously and unrealistically adventurous, but not giving up our keys to history. These heroes now fight to keep our cultures vibrant and our history alive so that it can live on to teach our future societies from past failures and success. These sites and artifacts are what make archaeology what it is! This field requires curiosity that will lead to discovery and all fueled by passion. Passion and curiosity are what will keep archaeology forever alive and keep our world-wide cultures flourishing with diversity. Indiana Jones may not be an ideal hero to archaeology, but he fights for what all archaeologists dedicate their lives to: learning.