Index Introduction Indiana Jones and Archaeology Interview with a Professional Archaeologist Conclusion and Reflection Introduction Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of my favorite films of all time. (I personally think it's the best of the film series because it's the most creative and the least ridiculous. It's a classic.) It's a film I can't remember not loving. I bet many people can relate to this, because Indiana Jones is one of the most famous characters of all time. From movie lovers everywhere, we thank you, Steven Spielberg, for this wonderful character and entertainment. He's a classic character, fighting off undoubtedly evil "bad guys" and then coldly eliminating nameless, unspoken characters who are irrelevant to the plot of the story. These adventures are supported by the wonderful and emotional music of John Williams. Children and even adults imagine themselves in his leather jacket and iconic hat, with a whip fighting enemies with an ease and courage that they don't even bother to notice. He is a heroic figure of archeology who always gets more than he bargained for. He always ends his adventure victoriously with his precious artifact. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Indiana Jones and archeology In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Henry Jones (the first), the father of Indiana Jones (played by the famous Sean Connery), unwittingly joins him in another of his dangerous adventures of surviving the Nazis in search of an important artifact. This time, one of their colleagues, Marcus Brody, also joins him. Jones I and Brody are also archaeologists but they are both very different from Indiana. These two were more educated and cultured individuals with their eccentric enthusiasm centered on archaeology. They were never adventurous characters like Indiana was and were shocked by the many actions they wouldn't even think twice about. I must say that they were passionate about archeology rather than someone who would physically fight and risk their lives so that their enemies could not use a specific significant artifact to their own evil advantage. As a matter of fact, Indiana Jones' father constantly criticized him (in a fatherly way) for his unorthodox career in their mutual field of interest. “This is not archaeology!” he exclaimed to his son. Indiana seemed to understand this. I think a typical archaeologist would be much more like Henry Jones I and Marcus Brody, than Indiana Jones, who is probably notoriously well known to real life archaeologists as the figure many people mistakenly perceive them to be. The film industry gives us false representations of careers, but is it possible to be Indiana Jones for a career? What does a real archaeologist do and why is his work important? Before delving deeper into this field of study, I not only had to research the basics of archaeology, but the basics of the field. I had to find out what makes archeology important, what is commonly discussed, and what makes artifacts significant to our knowledge of history. Indeed, why do we believe that knowing our history is so important and significant through archaeology? What impact can the things we learn about previous societies have on our current society? As my curiosity swirled in my head, I simply had to begin. To begin, I looked for a fairly simple definition of archaeology: “archaeology analyzes the physical remains of the past in search of a broad and comprehensive understanding of human culture,” SAA Archeology had statedfor the Public in his introduction to American Archaeology. That definition got me thinking about how exactly the artifacts we find impact our knowledge of culture and societies. This field of study analyzes cultures and structural changes in societies to see how we have progressed socially and technologically over thousands of years. There are many specific topics that someone can study/focus on primarily since it is a very broad topic. (American Archaeology). It was explained that this field of study is not about learning history directly, but about making discoveries and analyzing them to learn more about the societies that came before us. We do this so we can recognize patterns that can explain our questions about how the world came to be today. Artifacts are analyzed with a context that "refers to the relationship the artifacts have with each other and the situation in which they are found." (American Archaeology). Now I had a very clear archaeological basis, but I needed more details. I needed more career information. What are the training requirements and what do professional archaeologists do on a daily basis? I would answer this question by seeking such information from a University. The University of Chicago was where I had found a wonderful archeology department that very clearly explained the graduate courses required to earn an archeology degree. (Coincidentally, Indiana Jones had fictitiously attended this school.) Many courses included the study of ancient languages ​​and cultures. These would be used to understand records of ancient civilizations and use that knowledge to analyze artifacts and better understand a specific society. The information learned from these courses would be used every day in a career in the industry. For example, if one ever worked on analyzing an artifact for a newspaper, their knowledge of the history of a civilization would play a critical role in determining how significant that particular artifact was to the civilization and to our knowledge of that civilization and its its future impacts. But what will determine the meaning of an artifact based on what we know about its provenance? What helps analyze the value of an artifact or information found in it? I needed to delve into the more technical part of archaeology. Again I searched on the Internet but this source did not provide me with simpler and more basic information. I had found a newspaper article that was only about 20 pages long. What I recognize when analyzing newspaper articles is that almost every sentence is important to understanding the topic being written about. Value and Meaning in Archeology is an “archaeological dialogue” that discusses exactly what the title says. The significance of an artifact is basically defined as how relevant a piece is to a society and how much impact it has had on that society. It's what archaeologists analyze first to see how it might have impacted the society it came from and future societies that came after. It contributes strongly to the evaluation of value. (Different from meaning) value is how important an artifact is including the context in which it is studied. When evaluating value, it is necessary to take into account its material value and its significance (for society). According to Samuels, “the concept of 'inalienable goods' demonstrates that it is not the circulation of objects, but rather attempts to keep them out of circulation, that constitutes their value.” He is saying that the concept of goods that cannot be taken away shows that it is not how it fits in with other significant artifacts, but how it fits indistinguishes it which makes it precious. It's easier for me to understand archaeological value as the knowledge that an everyday object has much less value than a historical piece of significance like the Declaration of Independence. Determining value was much more technical than I thought and there is so much to take into consideration. In evaluating such values, Weiner, an archaeologist quoted in the article, intends to "conceptualize processes and values ​​of exchange that accommodate the place of gender in social theory and lead to reconceptualizing how difference is transformed into rank and hierarchy." Evaluate how an artifact contributes to social theory and can change the vision of a society. I didn't realize how technical this field was and how much it was taken into consideration in determining the significance of a historical piece which would then be taken into account in determining its value. A very valuable piece is typically associated with important events and/or characters in history, but may simply provide information about the past without having any special associations. Value and meaning in archeology is the most important component of the field because it is what makes everything that has been deemed important to learn about past societies and how they contributed to our modern lifestyle now. According to Marx, a well-known 19th century historian and philosopher, “it is rather value that transforms every product into a social hieroglyph”. This quote explains how the value, once assessed, causes the artifact to find more information and clues about the past than a simple object. It is the meaning that an object has that makes it precious, whether from an archaeological, economic or personal point of view, because it is special. Each individual archaeologist has their own perspective on assessing value, but fundamentally they all have the same concepts embedded in their methods. I wanted to know if there is some sort of fixed standard to always take into consideration when analyzing an artifact. As I read further, I had found the basis of archaeological practices: “Value is found within at least three interconnected practices of the discipline of archaeology: as a technique for assessing the value ('meaning') of our object of study, the material heritage; as analytical to give interpretations of the past (for example to reconstruct past societies); and finally as a way to question our modes of archaeological inquiry, to ask how the first two practices produce particular effects and shape specific histories as (un)authorized. In the latter case, value is therefore also a way to ask ourselves why we study material heritage in the first place." These values ​​are "important for discussions on ethical practice, on heritage, on interpretative reconstructions of the past". Basically, what these practices conclude is what value is used for and how it is evaluated. After fully reading and taking notes on this journal article, I was more fascinated by this field of study. I was attracted by the technical definitions and words used by these archaeologists that they could easily simplify. In newspaper articles, I see their scientific language almost as a secret code among scientists in the field of whatever topic is being discussed. I still had some unanswered questions and wanted to get some personal insight from a professional archaeologist. Interviewing a Professional Archaeologist When looking for an interviewee, I initially planned to interview a curator at the Met Museum. That idea came about when I had recently visited the closing Thomas Cole exhibition there and admired the archaeological splendor of the Museum as a whole. I called and left amessage to the Greek and Roman art department asking for the contact information of a certain archaeologist I had found online. I stated my purpose and provided my email. Unfortunately, his contact information was inaccessible to me online and I had never heard back and had to go in a new direction. I know Columbia University has a great archeology department based on articles I read previously before starting this essay. I kept a list of six possible interviewees and narrowed it down to three based on their specific field of research and whether or not they studied art more than archaeology. My first answer really enlightened me. Zainab Bahrani is a professor of art history and archeology at Columbia University and has had much success with her published works. She is also very concerned about the way archaeological sites of great importance are often destroyed and wants to preserve them for future generations. I sent her my questions via email and she responded very richly and thoroughly to my questions with well composed answers. Professor Bahrani had grown up loving archeology since childhood. She had lived in Babylon, Iraq, which has many ancient sites that inspired her to love history and archaeology. It was an initial passion ignited by an “endless curiosity,” as she describes it. I myself have that same curiosity that cannot be stopped but only fueled by new discoveries. This is what drives her to want to know more about the past. He states that “we would not be what we are today if we had not inherited knowledge from them”. (They are past civilizations that archaeologists study.) I often think about this in history class: What have we learned from these events that help us advance as a society? We learn from past mistakes and we learn from past successes. For Professor Bahrani, a typical workday consists mostly of teaching her undergraduate students and advising those who are studying to become professors as well. He also researches and writes for his own very successful publications. He does more hands-on work at archaeological sites once or twice a year and told me that “right now my fieldwork is in northern Iraq, in the Kurdish region. In the past I used to dig in Syria and I also do some field work in Türkiye." I became more and more impressed with his career and his success. I wanted to learn more about what he does by researching online and his published works. What I had found was wonderfully surprising. He speaks out publicly against the destruction of historical sites in the Middle East by ISIS and against many people's belief in the practice of cultural cleansing. She is an archaeological activist. This was very significant to my brief opinion of Professor Bahrani, but learning about it coincided with one of her responses: “The hardest part of my job is probably the part where I have to deal with some of the destruction that is happening. Seeing these sites damaged or destroyed is very sad and frustrating, but we do our best to save and preserve what we can for future generations." It was so incredible to be able to contact and communicate with someone who has a strong passion and fights to defend it, not only for herself but for future generations. I had to end my interview by mentioning Indiana Jones even though I feared that such a This question would derail the interviewee's view of my maturity and find a little high school interview of mine below their standards. I tried to phrase such a question in the most mature way possible, but Professor Bahrani expressed her opinion on this character in a way.