Why Archaeology & Pop Culture Matter
However you stumbled across this blog, you might be wondering why this random crossover of archaeology and pop culture matters. I wanted to write this early on in the life of the blog, as it is very important to me, my research, and to the academic field itself. This crossover is common and cyclical, as shown in the following graph I made:
The point of the graph and the point of my research is that neither pop culture nor archaeology exist on their own, they are constantly influencing and influenced by each other. Many archaeologists end up in the field because they loved Indiana Jones, or played the Tomb Raider games as a child and wanted to become Lara Croft. At the same time, neither of those characters would exist if the field of archaeology did not, and the development and change of those characters over time were influenced by the development and change within archaeology as well.
“They’re digging in the wrong place!”
So that very fact alone makes the topic worth looking at, but not all archaeologists agree on that. There are often two main camps within the high towers of academic archaeology. On one extreme are figures like Cornelius Holtorf, who strongly believes that pop cultural references to archaeology are beneficial and should be used by every archaeologist for the purpose of education. On the other extreme, they only see it as a negative, in which only bad stereotypes and false representations are seen in the media. Archaeologists today tend to fall along the spectrum, usually favoring one side over the other.
An image of Indiana Jones as portrayed in his Lego game. Game Capture by Author.
But my research focuses heavy on the cycle of influence between the two fields, and that we should not dismiss pop culture from academic study. It is worth talking about because of how archaeology is portrayed constantly across genres and mediums. A large portion of the non-archaeologist population might have at least heard of Indiana Jones, but not many will have heard of Ian Hodder, who is one of the most influential theorists in the field today but who I have never come across outside of the field.
Cal Kestis looking at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Game Capture by Author.
So for that reason, using things like Star Wars that people do know and can relate to in a much deeper way to talk about these ideas that are normally full of confusing terms and complex thoughts is my passion project. Most of the posts on this blog will focus on this crossover, but I felt this was important to talk about early. However, with that I want to know, what fictional archaeologist is your favorite?
