An Archaeologist's Take on What Indiana Jones Gets Right—and Wrong—About the Field

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The movie franchise speaks to ethical issues at the very heart of anthropological thinking

Archaeologists can punch Nazis … metaphorically, Indy searches for his kidnapped father, an eccentric medievalist played by Sean Connery. The senior Jones disappeared while looking for the Holy Grail, the cup Christ used during the Last Supper. During the journey, set in 1938, Indy discovers a Nazi lair in a castle and whispers, “Nazis. I hate these guys.” And indeed, brawling with the Nazis becomes a recurring activity for Indy on his pursuits.

In reality, historical sites and artifacts are often misused for political purposes. Representations of the past have been manipulated by leaders across political and ideological spectrums. But nationalist and far-right ideologies have been especially active in this regard due to their tendency to idealize an imagined past.

The intellectual and ideological training apparatus in the National Socialist German Workers’ Party contained a specialized group for German prehistory. It was later incorporated into the interior ministry. The notorious SS also had a research and teaching unit for German heritage under the direct supervision of Heinrich Himmler, the man who laterThe communist regimes in the former Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc are intriguing in this respect.

of the party, Marxism was the sole acceptable reading of the past. Archaeology was tasked with the promotion of cultural unity among the communist nations, leading to an explosion of studies into Slavic heritage.Public domain via Wikimedia Commons In my home country, Bulgaria, former leaders expected archaeologists to find fodder for nativist propaganda. During the first decades of communism, the government emphasized Bulgaria’s Slavic ethnic background to blend its citizens with other nations under Soviet domination. Archaeologists were tasked with finding evidence that most of the medieval population was Slavic. Then, starting in the 1970s, the leadership reappropriated a nomadic Bulgar heritage.

 

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