Process Essay 2: Its Archaeology Just Not Very Good Archaeology

Kimberly Craft
ANTH 244
Dr. Neusius
17 October 2010
Essay 2: Its Archaeology, Just Not Very Good Archaeology

An archetype of the male form, unremittingly cool, the definition of suave and display of awesomeness - Indiana Jones may be described as a lot of things, however a good archaeologist is debatable. For this essay, I chosen to evaluate the archaeological methods of Dr. Jones as found in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, to see how his form of archaeology holds up to contemporary standards. To start at the beginning of any archaeological inquiry, it appears that Dr. Jones makes use of historical documentation, native informants, and a sound intuition in locating his archaeological
sites of interest. These methods of discovery are not so far away from the techniques of today’s archaeologist.
However, since archaeological sites are not always so clear cut as they are in the movies -a sites characteristics are dependent up the geographical as well as cultural context in which it formed- most archaeologist find it necessary to employ a variety of surveying and sampling techniques just to locate and define the parameters of the site. Once a site has been outlined, the next step is excavation. For the modern archaeologist, the objective of this research is to maximize the preservation and minimize the destruction, all the while abstracting as much information as possible at the time of digging but leaving the site open for future archaeologist to continue research upon the advent of new technologies. To these archaeologists, a site is approached with the belief that it is not solely artifacts that have value, rather the whole of the site is
contextually rich and consequentially, excavation becomes a meticulous endeavor, often taking years. They are concerned with the collection of details and provenience. Indiana, on the other hand, truly personifies the ideologies of old archaeology for when he locates a site, he enters it, locates the desired artifact, takes it and goes. His process takes minutes, hours, or a day at most. He is not concerned with the site as a whole or what its seemingly insignificant elements can reveal about the culture that once existed there. There is no data collection in his method nor care for provenience or factual accuracy. Worse, more often than not his archaeology is destructive. To reach that one artifact, be it because of his constant run-in with bobby-traps or his general disregard for site preservation, he has the habit of stepping on, kicking, throwing, shooting, or whipping any obstacle that comes in his way (even if it is an artifact itself). Even more alarming is his repeated desecration of burial remains, most memorable being using a human femur as a torch. Any sound archaeologist, upon seeing his excavation methods, should abhor his actions and lament the ruin of such rich and valuable sources of information. Following the excavation of a site (the collection of data), the next step is the interpretation of data as part of the Middle-Range Research process.
For Indiana Jones, his failures in excavation can be tied into his aim overall with the gathering of artifacts. Unlike the contemporary archaeologist who wants to contribute to anthropology’s understanding of culture by answering the questions of who are we and why do we do what we do, where culture is taken as a complex whole, the goal of Indiana is to investigate just one separate cultural process, hence the disregard for any information the site might provide other than the sought after artifact and subsequent absence of methods for interpreting data. There is little middle-range research on his behalf. However, for the modern archaeologist, the methods for interpretation of data seem to overflow with abundance. There is dating, which offers methods for both relative and absolute, there is typology and classification, and faunal and floral analysis, all of which work towards explaining patterns between human behaviors and their material remains (of the why in archaeological inquiry). There are also other interesting subfields of analysis like studying coprolites, paleopathologies and bioarcheaology, osteology, and cognitive archaeology which are used to construct past lifeways and paint a picture of the past as a complex
whole. To bring this evaluation of the archaeology of Indiana Jones to a close, it may be concluded that although his means of archaeology are lacking in comparison to the developments as found in contemporary archaeology, what he does is still, in-fact, archaeology- it is just representative of an older form of it, which could use some modern revisions.