Archaeology In The Film Raiders Of The Lost Ark

To the majority of the American public, Indian Jones films are the closest they will ever get to even considering what the work of archaeologist looks like. This is too bad because the film represents a very cliché version of archaeological field work that kind of discredits the amount of time that is put into actual archaeological field work. In the film, Dr. Jones is a archaeology professor and a fearless archaeologist who travels the world attempting to protect the hidden artifacts in the world’s oldest archaeological sites. In this film he is searching for the Ark in order to prevent the Nazis from finding it first. Through action packed scenes, a love interest, and fighting evil Nazis, Jones is able to find the Ark and protect it. The film is very well put together, but in an attempt to tell an exciting story, the realistic side of archaeology is lost. In the film Raiders of the Lost Ark, archaeology is skewed through action, and time, but the ending holds some truth. There are few scenes throughout the whole time that do not include some sort of action. Whether

Whether through planning, excavating, or putting the pieces together, time is a very critical part of the process. Even when archaeologists have a good idea of where to look for something, like Indiana Jones did in the movie, it is going to take them a very long time to actually uncover the archaeological site and apply their findings to the archaeological context. In the movie everything was already uncovered and waiting to be found, but in real life things are not so easily to uncover. Obviously a movie only has so long to tell a story, so the plot line will have to move fast. However, the pace that this movie moves at would leave audience members to believe that archaeology is a faster paced process than it really is. The redeeming part of this movie is the few instances where truth was woven into the plot