My experience is that almost nobody really understands what I do - I still
end up in many discussions about dinosaurs. How much time can one expect to
spend on something. In a one hour show, how much time can they really spend
premising the mechanics of GPR radio-wave reflection interpretation or
post-processing, or explain 50 years of change in time-space models of human
migration into the Americas? It's TV, that's what it is. Before his
anti-semetic tirade over his loss of the UNESCO chairmanship, I loved Zawi
Hawass just for that reason, because he tried to make every little potsherd
look exciting, in the same way that so many of us are drawn into the
discipline during our earliest fieldwork. These shows are just the same.
They wouldn't be on the air if it was someone droning on about the
cataloging process for 17,000 potsherds.

I love shows like this, they both let the public know what archaeologists
do, and let them know how they do it. I don't think it matters whether
people think we accomplish things in a drop of the that, they probably
didn't even know we accomplished those things before that. I've seen a lot
of weird stuff out there, but it never promotes looting, and promotes an
investigative (i.e. learning) mindset.

The people who want to know about the the most minor elements of our
discipline are generally, in my experience, other archaeologists - or people
who are interested enough to seek more information and probably end up
getting a degree. Do most wildlife shows go in depth about how they got that
cool shot, or what small particulars of the footage mean? No, nobody cares,
they want to see the cheetah eat the zebra.

I'd much rather have a bunch of people talk around the water cooler about
how last night on TV is was so cool seeing the burials using GPR (and then
starting a discussion about how someone else saw GPR used on CSI the other
night), or how amazing it was that the scientist was able to know that the
people from the disappeared civilization ate corn because of radioactive
particles in their bones (aka the cheetah eating the Zebra), than to have
them tune out and watch a reality TV show.

-Max