Growing up watching the Indiana Jones movies gave me a very specific idea of what an archaeologist does. Filled with action, fights, and treasure, these movies make the life of an archaeologist seem glamorous and dangerous, thrilling and suspenseful. I can now tell you that they’re not wrong, if anything they undersell the excitement of the profession.
Each day starts at the fair and reasonable hour of 5 am. A choir of different alarms serenade my five roommates and I as we all don our swim trunks and plain t-shirts, the chic uniform of archaeologists. At breakfast we face the first booby trap of the day: wasps. The vicious creatures circle us throughout the meal in large quantities, going in for our food and guarding the jam containers with their lives. If we dare to take any jam we must be quick and direct, no lollygagging and no talking or else the wasps will strike. It’s a two-man job; one person bravely uses their utensil to go in for the jam while the other the other must expeditiously open and close the jam jar.
From there, the action of the day is just getting started. After a laborious yet refreshing hike to our dig site, the Acropolis, we break off into groups and we each tackle our own daily obstacles. I work in Unit One, on the northern side of the acropolis. The unit is merely 5m x 4m with walls everywhere you turn. Just getting in and out of the unit can be a feat in and of itself. The pieces of string marking the boundaries of the unit seem to think that their real purpose is to trip anyone who dares enter or exit the unit. Once you are out of the unit, the path to dump buckets poses its own set of hurdles. There used to be a trip wire living under the guise of another unit boundary, but that has been replaced by a hole with a self-proclaimed troll who demands that you pay the toll (I can’t make this stuff up). The journey then continues to the edge of a cliff, where you must slowly creep down the loose walkway or risk dropping your bucket, which is the most prized commodity on the dig site, down the cliff.
Within Unit One itself, the thrills of archaeology are aplenty. A primary task in our dearly beloved unit is leveling. To do this, you have to take your weapon of choice (sorry Indiana Jones but a whip won’t work for this), preferably a small pickaxe or trowel, and face the layers of dirt in one-to-one combat. In this type of fight, slow and steady wins the race. You can achieve victory by making sure no area is higher or lower than another and avoid digging holes at all costs. Another critical component of archaeology is articulating rocks. While this at first may sound trivial, it can actually lead to the greatest discoveries. No, I’m not talking about golden idols or the holy grail, I mean something much much more important. Walls. There is absolutely no greater thrill than finding a wall. You finally know what all the rocks were doing and you can remove the wall fall and get more of a sense about what is going on in the area. Walls give the whole area meaning, can help date the area, and are honestly just fun to work with. In the same way that knowledge is power, walls are treasure.
So while the movies may never actually show Jones wielding a trowel, they still capture the intrigue, daring, and delight of archaeology.