This post is based on a video from my YouTube channel.
Every archaeologist has a different reaction when they hear the words, “Indiana Jones”. In this post, you will find the YouTube video of 4 archaeologists reacting to all 5 Indiana Jones trailers and a full transcript of the video (with relevant links).
YouTube Video
YouTube Video Transcript
Special thanks to my archaeology friends for joining and providing their commentary. Here is more information about them:
- Anya Gruber: www.anyaegruber.com (website) & https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/archaeologist-connection-past/ (recent article)
- Katherine Chiou: http://kchiou.people.ua.edu (website) & http://archaeobotany.ua.edu (lab website)
- Adam Netzer Zimmer: https://people.umass.edu/azimmer (website) & https://twitter.com/acnzimmer (Twitter)
Here you will find the complete transcript of the video in the previous section. There are time stamps for every minute if you want to navigate to a certain part.
Adam: [00:00:00] The tagline of all of these movies is something that shouldn’t be disturbed.
Anya: I truthfully don’t know when a whip would ever be useful on an archeological projection.
Katie: How does he get funding to do this? Like what is he telling the funder he’s doing?
Smiti: Every archeologist has a different reaction when you mention the words Indiana Jones. I’ve gathered three of my archeology friends.
Anya: My name is Anya.
Adam: My name is Adam.
Katie: I’m Katie Chiou,
Smiti: to react to all five Indiana Jones trailers. Now, fair warning, there are. Spoilers, and it’s been a while since we’ve seen the movies.
I don’t remember.
Adam: We’re such bad fans.
Smiti: But if you’re curious how archeology in real life compares to archeology in Indiana Jones, keep watching.
Adam: This can definitely not be the original trailer. Right?
Smiti: I didn’t get the original trailers, but we’re just gonna go with
Indiana Jones Trailer: it.
Dr. Jones, [00:01:00] you’re a man of many talents.
Smiti: Do we actually get trained in how to fly airplanes?
Anya: Like thanks, it would be useful.
Katie: No, but do you guys know how expensive that is? I mean, we can barely afford our equipment as in it’s, I can’t imagine like actually affording like a private pilot license as well.
Indiana Jones Trailer: It’s something that man was not meant to disturb.
Adam: This is like the tagline of all of these movies is like, Something that shouldn’t be disturbed. Okay, great. So leave it.
Smiti: I always tell like both my three year old, well four year old and people, I’m like, okay, don’t put your, the pickax all the way behind you.
Anya: Basic tool safety
Adam:
we were also in this shot, like he’s clearly about like 30 seconds away from an OSHA violation and putting that through someone’s [00:02:00] foot.
Katie: Yeah, but I think also at the same time it’s showing how he is like doing this, the classic supervisor thing, and he’s like standing there monitoring everybody while they’re doing all the waivers.
So yeah.
Smiti: But like also on the right side, I think the guy is holding the pickax wrong. Unless I’m like, wait.
Anya: Right. The sharp end is at the oh, you saw that? Oh my gosh.
Katie: Um, yeah, OSHA
Anya: it is, it sunset, like they’re not going in about a half an hour. They’re not gonna see anything like you had to cover that up.
Like where are their tarps?
Adam: All of my best thing happens when it’s almost pitch black. It’s the best time to see everything.
Anya: They’re just about to find something. They’re like, we can’t stop.
Katie: Or they’re like, oh, there’s no shadows. We finally get to take the pictures. Not get glare.
Indiana Jones Trailer: Is the A before he. He’s invincible.[00:03:00]
Let her go.
Why did it have to be snakes?
Smiti: I hate snakes. Do you all have any snake stories?
Katie: Just the, just the idea of snakes. The specter of snakes. Like in, uh, coastal Peru, there’s a coral snake that apparently will kill you in like 30 minutes if you come across it. And so like, basically that was told to us the whole time.
It was like, watch out for snakes because if you get bitten by one, like not even the helicopter is gonna save you.
Adam: See, this is why I pitch that everyone should do archeology in Iceland cuz there’s no bugs. Yeah. And there’s no snakes and there’s like only occasionally rats, fish. You’re never gonna see ’em on an archeological site.
Katie: But it’s cold Adam. It’s freaking cold there.
Anya: You don’t sweat as much. I, I have uh, a Maya region snake story. That’s not my own, it’s my friends. There’s a snake. I dunno if I’m going to pronounce it right, but it’s like the Fer-de-lance snake. Mm. Um, and it’s apparently very, very venomous. And at the site, the supervisors told her she was a [00:04:00] TA on the project, like, watch out for the snake. They’re super dangerous. So she was like scouting a new site with a bunch of field school students. They had to like walk over this area that had some like leaves and just like general kind of forest litter. And then later someone went by the the site to again. And then under this log was a mama Fer-de-lance snake with a bunch of babies right in there area where they had just been, and they were like, whoops, not take this area.
Katie: That’s the reason why I’m not a Mayanist.
Indiana Jones Trailer: I’m going after that truck.
Oh. I don’t know. I’m making this up as I go.
Adam: That is,
Anya: that is, that is real.
Katie: Yes. Seat of your pants of your pants archeology.
Anya: Me as a TA, honestly,
Indiana Jones Trailer: but[00:05:00]
Anya: I truthfully don’t know when a whip would ever be useful on an archeological projection.
Katie: Basically like what the, the filmmakers were thinking when they were like, oh, what’s the best accessory? For Indy.
Adam: Every archeologist.
Katie: Yeah, exactly. Maybe the trowel wasn’t like sexy enough.
Indiana Jones Trailer: Trust me. The old legend of the Shankar Stones, the villagers’ Sacred Rock was taken.
Adam: My absolute favorite part of all of the Indiana Jones movie is the whole like taking the heart out and it’s still beating in his hand. We’ll just be standing in the kitchen making can dinner and I’ll just do that to my partner.
I’ll just like grab his chest. Yep. Heart.
Anya: Sure he loves that. No,
Smiti: Adam. Growing up after I saw that scene, I was like, wait, can I do that?
Indiana Jones Trailer: Village Stories, Dr. Jones, fortune and Glory Kid. Fortune and Glory.
Adam: Isn’t [00:06:00] that what we’re all in it for? Like clearly just so much funny.
Indiana Jones Trailer: You know how to fly, don’t you? No. Do you,
Katie: I think this one had the scene with like eating the brain or something, right? At the dinner table. Oh, that was this one? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Which I don’t know if any of you have had to deal with like certain cultural differences in terms of like eating and stuff. I guess archeologists have to encounter different people and interact with locals. Don’t think this was very accurate.
Anya: There could be definitely more cultural sensitivity. I would say a little more respect, I think. Yeah, certainly in the trailer, A few moments of stereotypical portrayal. What we try to avoid.[00:07:00]
Katie: How does he get funding to do this? Like what is he telling the funder that he’s doing?
Indiana Jones Trailer: Your potato.
Lady, we go for ride. You
know what? He’s crazy.
I thought archeologists were always funny. Little men searching for their mom,
mommy
Anya: I’m a funny little man.
Indiana Jones Trailer: Indy, your father, they have them. Dad found out more than he was looking for
Junior. Don’t call me that. [00:08:00] Please. I want you to find the grail. I’ve heard this bedtime story before.
Adam: This is something that art bothers me so much in so many different movies, and I think it’s in this one too, that whenever you see a skeleton in an archeological movie, it’s always still fully articulated. It’s articulated. Yes. It bothers me so much.
Katie: Yeah.
Adam: The number of times that I’ve dug in the ground in like a body that’s fully encased in soil, and even then they’re not fully articulated. So if you really think that someone’s gonna like lie in a stone sarcophagus for a few hundred years and like still be all in just the exact same position, not that.
Indiana Jones Trailer: Eternal life. Dr. Jones, the gift of youth to whoever drinks from the grail after you junior.
This is a tolerable.
[00:09:00] No ticket.Smiti: Does punching Nazis happen every movie?
Katie: I don’t think in the second one. The second
one was like, not really Nazi.
Anya: I don’t think so. Okay. Were there Nazis in the first one? In the first one we Is it mostly this one?
Adam: Yeah, it is. The Nazis in the first one as well.
Anya: It’s, yeah. We just forgot about the Nazis in the second one.
Smiti: I don’t remember.
Adam: We’re such bad fans.
Katie: We’re so bad somebody, you should have found better archeologist.
Adam: I will say at least that part is accurate now that like archeologists are actually having to stand up against Nazis again. So yeah,
Indiana Jones Trailer: I didn’t know you could fly a plane. Why yet? When go, you call this archeology,
Anya: seeing various farm animals at the site is accurate. Yeah. I was like, you got them.
Katie: And then real and cows ending up in [00:10:00] your excavation pit. Yeah. Yeah. It’s always a fun thing.
Adam: Wait, wait does that happen to you?
Katie: Yeah, they fall in sometimes. I mean, it’s a health and safety thing, right? I mean, you just have random holes in the ground and they don’t know they’re there.
Adam: So guess I’ve never dug around a like dug in a place that had cows around. I’ve never even thought about that as a possibility.
Indiana Jones Trailer: I.
Are you crazy? Don’t go between them,
you know, sharing your adventures.
It’s an interesting experience. Legend says that a crystal skull was stolen from a mythical lost city in the Amazon. Whoever returns the skull to the city temple will be given control over its power. You. Help us find it.[00:11:00]
Put your hands down. We, you’re embarrassing us. Grab, go do something else. Grab the steak. So these box
Anya: These boxes definitely have the same vibes as my soil samples.
Katie: You get these kinds of boxes. I have plastic ones. These look classy.
Adam: One of the sites that I work on, the cemetery that was excavated, oh. It was, they were, all of the remainder were put into cardboard boxes and stacked on top of each other. And like I have so many photos that look pretty much exactly like this. Everyone thinks like, oh, you’re out digging. No, I’m literally just opening box after box, after box after box. And you’re like, this is gonna be this one and this column, next column.
Indiana Jones Trailer: Damn. I thought that was closer.[00:12:00]
Smiti: Everyone asks like, what would be your weapon of choice in the zombie apocalypse? And I think, you know, sometimes I would go pickax, but shovel I think is a fair all around it’s, it’s
Adam: just like a good tool for anything I think it is.
Katie: Just make sure to use your legs and not your back.
Indiana Jones Trailer: Come on, genius. Go, go, go, go, go. What’s he gonna do now? I don’t think he plants that far ahead. I think I’d cover my ears if I were you.
You’re a, a teacher. Part-time
Katie: what his teaching load. I’m curious
Anya: one credit you’re there,
Adam: do you think you get the course release to go do this stuff?
Katie: Yeah. I’m curious. Maybe that’s part of the grant.
Anya: I’d love to see a syllabus. Hopeful, please not teaching an [00:13:00] archeological ethics class.
Smiti: There is a spoiler alert for you Katie. Apparently there’s aliens in this one.
Anya: Nos. We love aliens. Not in this context.
Katie: Now we need dinosaurs. We need dinosaurs in this one.
Adam: Oh, I still want to tell you things about this movie, I guess. I don’t know if you want spoilers or not, but
Katie: Yeah, just spoil it.
Adam: So there’s like, there’s this whole, there’s this scene with the whole like throne room with all these alien statues, like looking over and then it turns out that the entire temple is just a spaceship.
Anya: I hate it cuz like, it sounds cool, but I don’t like it in the context of trying to say that he’s an archeologist because we don’t need that association anymore. Mm. So just like have like a cool alien temple in like a totally different movie. You know what I mean? Yeah, that’s
Katie: like a huge part of movies or whenever archeology is in there, it’s either this stuff with the adventure or it’s the aliens and like the, oh look, old ancient people are like pointing at stuff in the sky and then, you know, they knew Alien existed.
Adam: I have a story related to this. Which there’s, there were, there’s a show that I will, I will leave unnamed, [00:14:00] um, that was like, quote unquote an archeology show that they were looking for human remains of a specific type. And a few years ago, I just happened to bump into one of them and I was like, oh, I recognize you for some reason.
Oh yeah, I was part of x, y, Z show. Oh, that’s really cool. Like, I work with human remains. Oh, you know the truth. Then, oh, head the truth about what, you know, what they’re hiding. Yes. Cool. The Smithsonian, the government. I’m like, have you ever been to the store rooms in any of these places? Like if any of us had any knowledge about any of that kind of stuff, it would. Like we would be out immediately.
Katie: I just saw this idea that like, we are all harboring this thing. Like that’s an in thing to become an archeologist is like you get this like special access to this knowledge and like in reality like people can’t agree on anything and like get in like squabbles about the pettiest stuff, so like, Yeah. This idea that we’re organized enough to like keep this secret is hilarious.
Adam: If you have your PhDs already, and I’m almost there, but I’m hoping that [00:15:00] like when I defend it’ll be like Finland. They give you a top, the top hat and the sword.
Anya: I wish sword.
Adam: It’s like if you get a PhD in archeology, they hand you the scroll of secret knowledge that buzz you all above the truth.
Katie: Then if you spill the beans, there are consequences.
Indiana Jones Trailer: So,
Adam: This is definitely like every single awkward department party that it’s like, oh, I’m gonna celebrate so-and-so’s birthday.
Yeah.
Hey, there’s free food in the lounge if you want all to get it.
Anya: And then getting the email like three 3:00 PM saying there’s still free food in the lounge,
Adam: or people replying I, oh, I’ll join later.
Like, no, we don’t fear if you’re coming at 10 minutes to get, get the free food.
Indiana Jones Trailer: I’m retiring. Well, in that case, what are we drinking? Same for the goddaughter. Dad told me you found something on a train during the [00:16:00] war, a dial that could change the course of history. Why are you chasing the thing that drove your father crazy? Don’t move. Why need to get outta here?
Anya: I feel like this sort is just kind of like plagiarizing the Mummy.
Katie: Yeah, the falling
Adam: The Mummy has made me so paranoid about any library that I been working. Cause I’m convinced that I’m gonna knock down the entire thing.
Anya: Yeah. But like the Phoebe Waller Bridge character feels very modeled off Evelyn. Uh, so I mean, I’m not mad at that. I’m definitely not, not mad
at that.
Indiana Jones Trailer: Stop. Sorry, Hena. Hope Jones. Get him
hit. Hitler made me mistakes and with this I will correct them all that, [00:17:00]
whatever.
Anya: That thing he had reminds me so much of the golden cup.
Katie: Yeah, I was gonna say that too. Yeah.
Adam: Yeah
Anya: yeah,
Indiana Jones Trailer: you stole it then you stole it. And then I stole it. It’s called
capitalism.
Anya: So Marxist archeologist, we got
that
Indiana Jones Trailer: fast. You are seatbelt. There might be some tables. You’ve taken the chances, made your mistakes. And now a final triumph.
Katie: What is his specialty like when you, when you have the, like couple of words about research interests, like what is.
Anya: What are his keywords?
Adam: What’s his, what’s his elevator speech? What’s,
Katie: yeah, exactly.
Indiana Jones Trailer: Give him hell. Indiana goes. Few times in my life I’ve seen things I’ve been tortured with voodoo been shot [00:18:00] nine times, including once by your father. Ah. Sorry.
Adam: I do love that he brings up like field injuries. I mean, hopefully none of us just get shot out in the field, but the number of times that it’s like, yep, we put a pickax through someone’s foot, yay.
Indiana Jones Trailer: But I’ve been looking for this all my life.
Anya: It actually looks kind of fun.
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