I recently came across an article that breaks down almost every aspect of Indian Jones in the perspective of an archaeologist. I think the article was meant to be quite humorous, at least it made me chuckle.

Some people argued that Indiana Jones movies depicted what an audience would expect and want to see from a movie “about archaeology.” These people seemed to be more like film fans rather than fans of archaeology itself. Their comments seemed less than competent compared to those who appeared to be archaeologists or at least knew something about the topic.

Others seemed to know enough to state that the Indiana Jones story and movie does not depict an archaeological scene at all. They made comments that were more details about Indiana Jones’ life. For example, they pointed out what his teachings were, usually in the introduction of a movie, inaccurate. This lead me to believe they may have been archaeology students themselves since they knew what would be taught, but did not comment on the actual findings.

The third type of commenter I recognized was someone who is well trained in the field of archaeology.  Some thought the movies were a complete joke about their profession and did not take much offense, but others saw the Indiana Jones movies as a way of mocking an archaeologist’s life work. They made comments about how he dresses, how he carries a whip, and how he never even hints of following proper protocol for an excavation. They also did not like how each find was either devastating because a valuable item mysteriously disappeared, or how the only other alternative seemed to be that there was a large shiny object and all other things were ignored on the way to retrieve it.

I think the Indiana Jones movies should not be based on archaeology. They should be considered treasure hunting movies. Although some things follow archaeology-like structure, not enough does. For example, how Indiana Jones is a professor and has or is a field worker just like our  current professor and my previous archaeology professor.

Archaeology is about understanding culture and studying artifacts to find that out. I do not believe Indiana Jones’ main goal is to understand the culture of a place he is ‘excavating,’ instead, he is looking for a treasure. In addition to that, he never follows any excavation rules and skips over large parts of sites that would give him helpful evidence about a culture, if that is what he was looking for.

Overall, I agree with the article that Indiana Jones is not a proper example of an archaeologist.