The Legacy of Lovecraft and the Supposed Horrors of Archaeology lives on in modern Pop Culture.
Many cultural touchstones and media touch on this theme -- some of them more Lovecraftian, some of them more archaeological, but one franchise typically stands out in the memory of popular culture where it concerns the intersection of both.
The Mummy Franchise
There is an easy and direct connection here that has been discussed extensively by archaeologists such as Kevin McGeough and Peter Hiscock, among others. The first film was made in 1932, with actor Boris Karloff as the main antagonist, followed by a myriad number of films and additional media up until 2018. The film focuses on a group of archaeologists facing an Egyptian Mummy who has a curse associated with him, and many of the stereotypes and problems are present in this franchise. And it is, in fact, the franchise that much of the research into pop culture and archaeology began with, and it is likely to remain in cultural memory for a very long time.
Many other movies and television shows share these kinds of tropes, thanks to this first film.
The Arkham Horror Files are a set of traditional games and some book adaptations all made and produced by Fantasy Flight Games. There are card games, board games, miniature games, and dice games all set in the same Arkham Horror Files world, with many of the “Investigators” crossing between games as playable characters. They are a good example of a modern adaptation for several reasons, the chief of which is the writing and lore that has been added to and put together to make this world come together.
The biggest set of worldbuilding and lore that the games have put together in one fairly cohesive piece is in Arkham Horror: The Card Game. It is a cooperative game - meaning the players win or lose as a team together - and the storytelling is extensive and extremely well-written. It takes heavy inspiration from the lore while updating it and making it accessible and new for a modern audience. The extent that the developers have gone to is quite impressive and not only is it a well-designed game, but it’s also incredibly immersive for a card game.
The tropes of the supernatural clashing with archaeological investigations are still there - and not all of it is strictly “archaeological” although there are quite a lot of direct references to archaeologists who are other characters, archaeological work that has been done, and a few Investigators that are directly related to or are archaeologists. The pictures to the right (or below on mobile) show some of the most notable examples, but all of the Arkham Horror Files have these connections.
The Dicebreaker YouTube Channel’s feature on the popularity of Call of Cthulhu in Japan and why it beat out Dungeons and Dragons.
These games, produced by Chaosium, are both very similar to the Arkham Horror Files. The game started as a Pen & Paper game in 1981 and is now on the 7th Edition, and it is one of if not the most popular RPG in Japan, beating out even Dungeons & Dragons.
It was adapted as a video game in 2018 by Focus Home Interactive, in which an Investigator named Edward Pierce comes to a strange place in search of answers. The video game is not immediately recognizable as archaeological, but many of the themes are very similar and there are art collectors, historians, ancient artifacts, and the Necronomicon, a book often associated with antiquity and Archaeology in the Cthulhu Mythos.
But looking back at the Pen & Paper game, even the Introductory Set already sets the players well into an archaeological mindset, with multiples of the ready-made characters being archaeologists or in fields that are often misrepresented or misunderstood as archaeology, such as Antiquarians, Classicists, Historians, Museum Workers, Paleontologists, etc. Mysteries involving ancient artifacts and an overall theme in the game of antiquity and the modern era (the game takes place in the 1920s) collide throughout this franchise.
This is one of the franchises that has very much embraced the link between Lovecraft & archaeology.
Other Media
These are just two main franchises that are directly linked to archaeology & Lovecraft in a very stated way from the beginning, but they are far from the only ones. The two above have very obvious connections, much like the Mummy movies, and much like other major franchises mentioned earlier. Click on the titles or images below to read more about the various pieces of media.
Other
While the main types of media that tend to catch a lot of attention have been listed, there are a few more things worth mentioning. A big one that is similar to the Arkham Horror Files is the general category that could be described as Detective Horror. This is largely due to Agatha Christie, who was at one point married to an archaeologist, Max Mallowan, and who spent a fair amount of time on dig sites herself. While she may be the main inspiration for it, others have taken her idea and run with it.
Video Games
Quite a few video games represent this link between Lovecraft & archaeology and, although Call of Cthulhu is a great example, many more exist. Some of them are very new and some of them are quite a bit older. A lot of these titles might have slipped between the cracks as well, due to being made by smaller studios. Others, like Dredge, caught the attention of a large part of the world and won the Indie category for the Game of the Year Awards in 2023. Small or big, these games rest on the connection between the two subjects in some way or another.
Star Wars
The Star Wars franchise is full of references and reactions to archaeologists. Most notably, both runs of the Doctor Aphra series (2016-2019; 2020 - present), are all about archaeological themes. The Screaming Citadel crossover comic series and the first few issues of the first run of the series both have a very Lovecraftian theme intermixed with them.
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