Indiana Jones. Professor. Adventurer. Archaeologist… or Raider?

With his iconic fedora, brown leather jacket and bullwhip, this rugged explorer has been sparking increases in enrollment for Archeology departments across the country since his cinematic debut in 1981. Created from the first collaboration between George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, Indiana Jones has not only become one of the most entertaining film franchises of all time, but helped redefine the entire adventure genre. Indy’s wild success has also created a huge misconception about what true archeology is — as this Anthropology major discovered during her college years as she excavated on a dig while listening to the Indiana Jones theme music anthem.

Indy was inspired not by noted archeologists at prestigious institutions, but by the whip–cracking adventurers featured in the pulp magazines and the 1930s and 40s adventure movie serials that Lucas and Spielberg enjoyed as children. Those stories were in turn inspired by real–life explorer Roy Chapman Andrews. Let’s take a few moments to sort out the myths from the reality of exactly what constitutes authentic “archeology” by correcting the misconceptions created in the Indiana Jones movies.



Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Let’s start with the adventurer's outfit. While fedora hats may be popular among some archaeologists and professors, Indy’s costume was directly inspired by Charlton Heston's Harry Steele in Secret of the Incas (1954). Another thing to note is that while some archeological research happens on site in South American jungles or Egyptian tombs, the majority of the “digging” is conducted in libraries and labs. Even when on site, archaeological excavations are a painstakingly detailed process that involves cataloging and mapping objects and locations to answer questions about the culture of people who lived long before us. Archeology is about uncovering a people’s unknown narrative — not going on a treasure hunt. It is very unlikely you will ever see any archaeologist storm into a temple to grab an artifact as Indy does at the beginning of Raiders in the iconic boulder scene.





Temple of Doom (1984)

Set in 1935, making it a prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark, this film opens in Shanghai at the Obi–Wan night club with Dr. Jones bargaining with a Chinese gangster to obtain an ancient diamond. The difference here between Hollywood’s famous relic hunter and a real archaeologist is that archaeologists are looking for knowledge more than treasure, and they aren’t pirates or grave robbers looking for valuable objects that can be sold to museums or to black market antiquities dealers. The objects archaeologists prize aren’t shiny and “valuable.” They are stone tools, ceramic fragments or bones — all of which provide information about a people’s history and culture.

