The Good, the Bad, and the Bearded

Popular Images of archaeologists and how we see ourselves

Larry J. Zimmerman

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

It takes very special qualities to devote one's life to

problems with no attainable solutions and to poking around in dead people's

garbage: Words like 'masochistic', 'nosy,' and

'completely batty' spring to mind.

Paul Bahn. 1989. Bluff Your Way in Archaeology. Ravette Books, West Sussex.

On Being an Archaeologist

Some thoughts about archaeology…

Anonymous

…and a variety of opinions.

Archaeologists have the most mind-numbing job on the planet.

Bill Watterson, 1988

Archaeology is one of most exciting things you

can do outside of bed!

Just about every archaeologist you talk to

Still…

It seems as if everyone either wants to be an archaeologist or

hates us!

I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.

Garrison Keillor

Just what are the images of archaeologists?

Sketches by 12-year-old students

How the Public sees Archaeologists

Sketches by 20 –something

university students

From kids to adults, things don’t seem to change

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

John Lennon

In the MoviesHow the public sees us…..

Neither man nor woman can be worth anything until they have

discovered that they are fools.

Lord Melbourne

Archaeology ain’t just for Indy anymore

Reality is what won't go away when you stop

believing in it.

Phillip K Dick

How we’d like to see ourselves (men)

Yes, this is a painting a real archaeologist had done of himself!

The reality (men)

Yes, these are real archaeologists, albeit Europeans

Larry Z’s archaeologist self-image

Paul Walker, a Paul Walker, a buff young buff young archaeologist in archaeologist in Michael Michael Crichton’s Crichton’s “Timeline” “Timeline” (November 2003)(November 2003)

How we’d like to see ourselves (women)

The reality (women)

Sometimes, archaeologists are just cartoons

…or caricatures

You idiots! No, we don’t do dinosaurs!

An image is not simply a trademark, a design, a slogan or an easily remembered picture. It is a studiously crafted personality profile of an individual, institution, corporation, product or service. Daniel J. Boorstin

Sir M. W. F. Petrie

Gerard Fowke

A.V. Kidder

Notice anything similar about these famous archaeologists?

At the age of sixteen I went to evening classes in the local museum at Nuneaton…. Firstly I was struck by the number of beards in the audience.

David Miles, Chief Archaeologist at English Heritage

What’s this thing with beards?

And I thought you all had long

beards with bits of detritus to be

excavated at the end of each

month.

Petethedig, online at British

Archaeological Jobs Resources

Message Board

I was working as an archaeologist and we all had beards, even the women. Steven Erikson, 2002

You think it’s a joke?

Yes, these are all real archaeologists!

Scientology founder and science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard on an expedition in the Mediterranean

Graham Hancock

Anybody can be an archaeologist, no training necessary!

Even a high school kid thrown into the past…

The lucky devil…. Why don’t I ever find anything like this?

Even Captain Jean-Luc “Make it so!” Picard•near-professional pursuit of archeology

•studied the Iconian culture since his cadet days.

•addressed the Federation Archeological Council as keynote speaker on his oft-studied Tagus III ruins in 2367

With his striking resemblance to that Kennewick guy…

…studied by that archaeologist, Jim Chatters, with a profound resemblance to Indiana Jones…

…but with a beard!

Role-playing games too?

To take by the beard; to seize, pluck, or pull the beard of (a man), in anger or contempt. 2. To oppose to the gills; to set at defiance.

To be bearded has another meaning…

On the serious side…

Some images of us aren’t so good.

But the faces of archaeology are changing, and they might even be less bearded.

Yes, these are all real archaeologists!

The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the

subject filters his own changing self-image.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

One last bit of archaeological wisdom…

Don’t lean on the transit!