I recently received a Laura Croft poster from my no-longer-a-teenager son, who no longer wanted a photo of a scantily-clad Angelina on his wall (figure that out).  What I'm not clear about is how her (fictional) father and mentor got so bloody rich as an archaeologist.  Obviously, he wasn't working for the State of New Mexico . . .
This past summer I met an archaeologist, from a couple of generations back, who told me that he acquired the first of his "collection" of prehistoric pottery in lieu of a paycheck when still a relative youngster in the profession.  I wasn't sure then -- or now -- how to respond; I think I just nodded my head.  Now, if he has told "civilians" out there about this experience (and I certainly don't know that he has), those civilians are buoyed in the notion that archaeology is about the "stuff."
Haven't we all met more folks than we care to think about who, upon learning that we are archaeologists, remark something like, "I always thought that was so interesting," and "I almost majored in that in college"?  Where did that interest collapse for them?  Probably at about the point where they realized, if only in a dim and cloudy sense, that they were more likely to do lithic analysis to assess patterns of mobility (or record colors of bottle glass while looking for patterns of access and consumption) than fight Nazis over the Ark of the Covenant, or have co-eds write "I love you" on their eyelids.
Which probably makes all of us who stayed on as anthro majors . . . a whole profession of cheap dates.
 
 
Jeffrey L. Boyer, RPA
Office of Archaeological Studies
P.O. Box 2087
Santa Fe, New Mexico  87504
tel: 505.827.6343
fax: 505.827.3904
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
 

________________________________

From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY on behalf of Daniel B. Davis
Sent: Fri 9/23/2005 7:30 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: da vinci code & archaeology



Unless there is a secret government team searching for the Ark of the
Covenant (don't look in Ethiopia!), the only large-scale archaeological
contribution to public perception and ideology is Indiana Jones and Laura
Croft. Think about all of the crime investigation shows on TV; public
perception has been altered to the point where the findings of juries are
now negatively influenced. If the presentation of the defense or prosecution
doesn't match what jurors saw on CSI:Miami, somebody's in trouble.
As part of a larger public consciousness, archaeology as myth is much more
appealing than archaeology as truth. We don't control our image; it is
filtered, refined, highlighted, and packaged in personas that reek of
adventure and sexuality. How can lithic analysis to assess patterns of
mobility compete with that?

-----Original Message-----
From: geoff carver [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 8:20 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: da vinci code & archaeology


I heard a paper on "The Da Vinci Code" at a session on iconoclasm at the EAA
in Cork a couple of weeks ago. Basically, the gist was that it wasn't even a
good thriller, but that, since the villain was an archaeologist trying to
reveal the "truth," while the heroes were a few folk trying to repress it,
this had implications for archaeology, our dealings with the public and how
we perceive ourselves.
Ignoring the philosophical dimensions (what is "truth"?), are we at the
point where it is "better" to repress unpleasant "facts" for the "fair &
balanced" infotainment that seems to pass for news (and, some critics would
have it, the formulation of public policy)? There was an interesting (though
possibly inadvertent) juxtaposition of the DVC paper and another one which
used photos from Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib to make its points about the
powers of imagery, and I can recognize how some people might prefer to think
that they were part of some divine plan, rather than the accidental result
of random evolutionary forces, etc., but...
The question is: how did we get here? Inverting the old reverence for
truth-sayers and the wise, in favor of whatever the market imagines we would
rather hear (or is willing to pay for us to hear)...?
Is archaeology contributing or resisting this trend?




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