Archaeologists are using Indiana Jones to their advantage

Last week’s news that “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” had won one of Hollywood’s most coveted prizes—the Memorial Day-weekend box-office—sent shivers through the offices of Archaeology, a magazine of the Archaeological Institute of America. (The organization recently elected Harrison Ford to its board of directors.) “O.K., fine, the movie romanticizes what we do,” Eric Powell, one of the magazine’s editors, said recently. “Indy may be a horrible archeologist, but he’s a great diplomat for archeology. I think we’ll see a spike in kids who want to become archeologists.”

The magazine had recently published its May/June issue, which includes the “Indy Spirit Awards,” a catalogue of those archeologists who best exemplify Dr. Jones’s spirit (e.g., Nels Nelson, 1875-1964: “When beset by outlaws in Mongolia, he brandished his glass eye at the brigands, who quickly fled”). Last Tuesday, Powell organized an expedition: a matinée in Long Island City, followed by lunch, where the archeologists would do what archeologists do best—scrutinize their findings.

The group sat in the fourth row of the theatre. They passed around a tub of popcorn, snickering at Indy’s bravado (“If you want to be a good archeologist, you’ve got to get out of the library”) and recoiling at his crude excavation techniques. Later, over dolmades and Mythos beer at S’Agapo Taverna, they elaborated. “Those tombs!” Samir Patel, an associate editor, began. “That’s an awfully exposed site not to have been hit by looters.”