Table of ContentsIntroductionIndiana Jones and Archeology Interview with a Professional ArchaeologistConclusion and ReflectionIntroductionIndiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of my favorite films of all time. (Personally, I think it's the best of the film series because it's the most creative and least ridiculous. It's a classic.) It's a movie I can't remember not liking . I bet a lot of people can relate to this, because Indiana Jones is one of the most famous characters of all time. On behalf of movie fans everywhere, we thank you, Steven Spielberg, for this wonderful character and entertainment. He's a classic character, fighting the undoubtedly evil "bad guys" and then calmly eliminating the nameless, unspoken characters who have no relation to the plot of the story. These adventures are supported by the wonderful and exciting 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 he doesn't even care to notice. He is a heroic figure in archeology who always gets more than he bargained for. He always concludes his adventure victoriously with his precious artifact. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"?Get the original essayIndiana 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 on 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 are both very different from Indiana. These two were more bookish and cultured individuals with their offbeat enthusiasm centered around archaeology. They were never figures of adventure like Indiana was and were shocked by many actions he wouldn't even think twice about. I must say that they were archeology enthusiasts rather than people willing to physically fight and risk their lives so that their enemies could not use a specific important artifact for their own evil advantage. In fact, Indiana Jones' father constantly criticized him (in a fatherly way) for his unorthodox career in their common area of ​​interest. “It’s not archaeology!” he exclaimed to his son. Indiana seemed to understand this. I believe a typical archaeologist would be much more like Henry Jones I and Marcus Brody than Indiana Jones, who is probably notoriously known to real-life archaeologists as the character many people misperceive them for. 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 their work important? Before delving deeper into this area of ​​study, I had to not only research the basics of archaeology, but also the basics of the field. I had to find out what makes archeology important, what is commonly discussed, and what makes artifacts important to our knowledge of history. In fact, why do we think learning about our history is so important and meaningful through archaeology? How can the things we learn about previous societies impact our current society? With my curiosity swirling in my head, I had to start simple. As a basis, I searcheda fairly simple definition of archeology: “Archaeology analyzes the physical remains of the past in search of a broad and comprehensive understanding of human culture,” SAA Archeology for the Public said in its introduction to American Archeology. This definition got me thinking about how the artifacts we find impact our knowledge of culture and societies. This field of study analyzes culture 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/mainly focus on because 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 in order to learn more about the societies that came before us. We do this so that we can recognize patterns to explain our questions about how the world has become the way it is today. Artifacts are analyzed in a context that “refers to the relationship that the artifacts have with each other and to the situation in which they find themselves.” (American Archaeology). I now had a very clear foundation in archaeology, but I needed more details. I needed more information about the career. 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. It was at the University of Chicago that I found a wonderful archeology department that explained very clearly the graduate courses required to obtain a degree in archeology. (Coincidentally, Indiana Jones had fictionally attended this school.) Many courses included the study of ancient languages ​​and cultures. These would be used to understand the records of ancient civilizations and use this knowledge to analyze artifacts and better understand a specific society. The information learned in these courses would be used daily in a career in the field. For example, if one were ever to work on analyzing an artifact for a newspaper, their knowledge of the history of a civilization would help determine the importance of that artifact to the civilization and to our knowledge of that civilization and its future impacts. But what will determine the significance of an artifact based on what we know about its provenance? What contributes to analyzing the value of an artifact or information found from it? I needed to further research the more technical part of archaeology. Once again, I had searched on the Internet but this source had not given me more simple and basic information. I found a newspaper article that was about 20 pages long. What I recognize from previously analyzing journal articles is that almost every sentence is important to understanding the topic it is written about. Value and Meaning in Archeology is an “archaeological dialogue” that discusses exactly what the title says. The significance of an artifact is essentially defined as the relevance of a piece to a society and the impact it had on that society. This is what archaeologists analyze first to see what impact it might have had on the society it came from and on future societies. It contributes greatly to the assessment of value. (Unlike significance), value is the importance of an artifact, including the context in which it is studied. When assessing the value, you must take into account its valuematerial and its importance (for a society). According to Samuels, "the concept of 'inalienable goods' demonstrates that it is not the circulation of objects, but rather the attempts to keep them out of circulation, that constitutes their value." He says the concept of goods that cannot be taken away shows that it's not how they fit in with other important artifacts, but how they stand out that gives them value. I most easily understand archaeological value as knowing that an everyday object is much less valuable than a historically significant item such as the Declaration of Independence. Determining the value was a lot more technical than I thought and there are so many things to consider. In assessing these values, Weiner, an archaeologist cited in the article, intends to "conceptualize exchange processes and values ​​that take into account the place of gender in social theory and lead to a reconceptualization of how the difference is transformed into rank and hierarchy.” It evaluates how an artifact contributes to social theory and can change the outlook of a society. I didn't realize how much of a technical field this was and how much consideration was given to determining the significance of a historical piece which would then be taken into account to determine its value. A valuable coin is usually associated with important events and/or people in history, but it may simply provide information about the past without any particular association. The value and importance of archeology is the most important part of the field because it is what makes everything found important in learning about past societies and how they contributed to our modern lifestyle today. 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 shows how value, once assessed, allows the artifact to find more information and clues about the past than a simple object. It is the meaning of an object that gives it value, whether from an archaeological, economic or personal point of view. Each archaeologist has their own view of value assessment, but they all have fundamentally the same concepts embedded in their methods. I wanted to know if there were any established standards that were always considered when analyzing an artifact. As I continued reading, I had found the basis of archaeological practices: "Value lies in at least three interconnected practices of the discipline of archaeology: as a technique for assessing the value ("meaning") of our object of study, material heritage; as an analytical tool to make interpretations of the past (for example to reconstruct past societies); and finally, a way of questioning our archaeological modes of inquiry, of asking 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 of asking why we study material heritage in the first place. These values ​​are “important for discussions of ethical practice, heritage, and interpretive reconstructions of the past.” Fundamentally, these practices are about knowing what value is for and how it is evaluated. After fully reading and taking notes on this journal article, I became more fascinated with this field of study. I was drawn to the technical definitions and terms used by these archaeologists, which they could so easily simplify. In journal articles, Isee their scientific language almost as a secret code between scientists in the field and the subject addressed. I still had some unanswered questions and wanted to get some personal insight from a professional archaeologist.Interview with a Professional ArchaeologistWhen searching for an interviewee, I had originally planned to interview a curator from the Met Museum. This idea was sparked when I recently visited the quickly ending Thomas Cole exhibition and admired the archaeological brilliance of the museum as a whole. I called and left a message at the Greek and Roman art department asking for contact information for a certain archaeologist I had found on the Internet. I stated my objective and gave my email. Unfortunately his contact information was inaccessible to me online and I never received a response and had to move in a new direction. I know Columbia University has a very good archeology department based on articles I already read before starting this essay. I made a list of six possible people for an interview and narrowed it down to three based on their specific area 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 enjoyed enormous success with her published work. She is also very concerned about how important archaeological sites are often destroyed and wants to preserve them for future generations. I emailed her my questions and she responded very richly and thoroughly to my questions in well-composed responses. Professor Bahrani had grown up with a love of archeology since his childhood. She had lived in Babylon, Iraq, home to many ancient sites that inspired her love of history and archaeology. It was an early passion that was ignited by “endless curiosity,” as she describes it. I myself have this same curiosity which cannot be stopped but only fueled by new discoveries. This is what drives her to want to know more about the past. She states that “we would not be who we are today if we had not inherited their knowledge.” (These are past civilizations that archaeologists study.) I often think about this in history class: What have we learned from these events that help us progress as a society? We learn from past mistakes and past successes. For Professor Bahrani, a typical workday consists mainly of teaching his students and advising those studying to also become teachers. She also researches and writes for her highly successful publications. She works more on archaeological sites once or twice a year and told me: “Right now, my fieldwork is in northern Iraq, in the Kurdish region. In the past, I used to excavate in Syria and I also do fieldwork in Türkiye. I am more and more impressed by his career and his success. I wanted to learn more about what she does by researching her online and her published work. What I had discovered was wonderfully astonishing. She publicly speaks out against the destruction of historic 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 for my brief view of Professor Bahrani, but learning about it coincided with one of his responses: "Probably the most difficult part of my job is the part in which I have to do.