Linda,

Thanks for your message.. I haven't seen any of those movies for some
time...it will be interesting to go back and watch them again, with the
"what I know now" attitude.  Your reaction is similar to mine when I saw
"Candyman"...the film about a graduate folklorist (female) investigating
urban and supernatural lore...

On Fri, 19 Apr 1996, Linda Seguin wrote:

> Regan Myriam Lee writes:
> "...forgive me for my ignorance, but *why* is the Harrison Ford character
> "Indianna Jones" considered a "bad" scientist?"
>
> I remember going to see "Indianna Jones and the Last Crusade" with the rest
> of the crew when I was in archaeological field school.  Don't get me wrong-
> I love those movies, but we laughed through the whole thing.  If my memory
> serves me correctly, didn't he stomp through a bunch of skeletons just before
> setting their tomb on fire?  Or maybe it was the bad guys who started the fire
.
> Anyway, *real* archaeologists carefully measure and map *every* object they
> find; they don't just stomp through everything else to get to the "good stuff.
"
> I never saw Indy with a tape measure or a notebook.  I don't think I ever even
> saw him with a trowel!  Ostensibly, archaeologists are looking for the
> information that objects can give them, they're not hunting for buried
> treasure.  For a more accurate depiction of the archaeological method you
> might check out the "Calvin and Hobbes" strip in which Calvin concludes that
> "Archaeology is the most mind-numbingly boring job on the planet."  Sometimes
> it is. :)
>
> Linda Seguin
> Science Library
> University of Georgia
>