First of all, we don’t fight nazis on a regular basis. Nor have I ever seen anyone melt from the Arc of the Covenant. In reality, it’s a whole lot less glamourous. Indy is far too clean to be working on a dig. We spend all day scraping though dirt and rocks, looking for little bits of pottery, glass and bone. Every now and then we’ll find something bigger and prettier, but not often. Rather, we are looking for the little things, details which can tell us so much. Every day, Emily and I will look up at each other and laugh because both of our faces are covered in ash and dirt. The dirt goes through both clothing and gloves. It’s inescapable. I’m convinced it will take at least three showers to get all the dirt out of my hair and skin once I get back home.
Another thing that’s different between Indiana Jones and real life is that it’s not just about the Holy Grails and Arc of the Covenants of the world. While the big, showy things are fun, it’s more about the unimpressive looking things which won’t be in a museum nor will tourists be too interested in. Our hole in the ground is a lime kiln. It’s a pit filled with rocks, hardened lime and dirt. So much dirt. It’s not pretty, or showy, or anything a random person off the street would find too interesting. But it’s still important. It tells us things about the everyday lives of the people who used it. It tells us that there was need for a lime kiln up on the top of the acropolis. We can learn more about how they made cement, how they built their kilns and what they burned. None of this would make the front cover of a magazine, but it’s all important and if we are all looking for the Holy Grail, no one will find the information that the lime kilns of the world have to offer.