|
OMANCING THE
STONES: ARCHAEOLOGY IN POPULAR CINEMA
Mark A. Hall
Perth
Museum and Art Gallery, Scotland, UK
Abstract: This article looks at the depiction of archaeology and archaeologists in popular cinema.
A number of key films are discussed
to address the article’s main themes
of cultural appropriation and contested ground (encompassing treasure, the public,
politics and gender).
Archaeology in film cannot be divorced from
the wider cultural contexts in which it operates and, though portrayals of archaeology and archaeologists are frequently unsatisfactory, a positive conclusion is attempted which seeks to understand the
narrative drive of popular fiction and a long history of public exclusion from archaeology. Most of the films considered do not warrant labelling as great works of art, but they are part of a cultural form with perceptions to offer, able to
stimulate debate within a vital framework of cultural practices by which
identity – individual and social – is constructed
and evolved.
Keywords: cinema, Eurocentrism, film studies, popular culture, treasure
Archaeology is about people;
who they were, what their lives were like, ... it
asks where we have been, where we are
going.
Timeline (2003)
Archaeology is the search for facts, not truth. If you want truth, philosophy class is right down the hall
... X never marks the spot.
Indiana Jones and the Last
Crusade (1989)
INTRODUCTION
This
article explores the portrayal of archaeology and archaeologists in popular film.
A detailed discussion
of
the complexities of popular culture
and
film
is
precluded; suffice it to say that
the term popular is here taken as
reflecting mass- consumption, based on active choices
by audience members, each bringing their own
knowledge and judgement to bear (following Bourdieu 1984;
see also Gramsci
1998;
Hall 1998; Jones 1987; Willis 1995).
Popular film then is a dialogue, a contest between commercial producers and viewers, each with their own agenda and
social values, each with their
own susceptibility
of influence.
The focus
of the
article is on the archaeological element within popular films
but it
does recognize that such
films mediate other cultural issues, including sexuality and fantasy
(Petrie 1993).
European Journal of Archaeology Vol. 7(2): 159–176
Copyright © 2004 SAGE Publications
(www.sagepublications.com) and the European Association of Archaeologists (www.e-a-a.org) ISSN 1461–9571 DOI:10.1177/1461957104053713
Popular film has always had an uneasy
relationship with the past and so
with archaeology. It inherited this relationship from pre-cinematic
popular culture particularly
painting, drama and narrative fictions in magazines, newspapers and cheaply produced books
(see for example
Shohat and Stam 1994:114–121;
Tatum
1988:109–111 for the dime novel’s
influence on the western; Wyke 1997:10–46 for the influence of the 1895 novel Quo Vadis? and
the 1872 painting
Pollice Verso on the
Roman epic – the latter holds for the most recent Roman epic, Gladiator, see Landau
2000:24–25). Books
and prints are popular
cinema’s cultural precursors from at least the fifteenth-century expansion
in book printing and artists’ prints (see for example Koerner 2002:18). These
have a shared concern with the mass
production and circulation of copies to reach a widespread audience. Books, prints and film
are then resolutely concerned with mass-produced culture
accessed by multiple audiences in different places, though each is ultimately
based on a single, original work of art: the author ’s text, the artist’s picture
and the film-maker ’s negative.
These
precursors influenced cinema from its earliest days and consequently the
cinema experience has always been a means by which individuals have been led to
think about the past, particularly in terms of what it means to be human. Such
films focus not on material, factual accuracy but on making the past familiar, particularly in terms of human behaviour. The past is fictionalized and that
fiction is reciprocally made ‘real’. This links film to the debate that sees art and archaeology (as a representative of science) at odds because
the latter searches for a
single, objective, empirical truth
whereas the former seeks imaginative
responses (Woodward 2001:30–31).
Film historian Edward Buscombe
(1988:14) has observed that it is not enough to separate fact from fiction, ‘we need to trace the process whereby reality imparts
credibility to myth and myth charges reality
with imaginative power ’. Often then ‘truth’ becomes subordinate to narrative drive and
a presumption of audience knowledge
and understanding.
Even
the most authentic of films can have their authenticity vitiated by the political
context in which they are made
(Haslam 2002:104), by the costs of production
(money and time), and by the need for a commercial
or propaganda return. Similar constraints also affect the public presentation of archaeology
and it is also true that film-makers
are often aware of the deliberateness of any distortion for the sake of narrative drama (Cadigan 1999; Landau 2000; Singer 1997). It is only in
recent years that archaeology has tackled notions of a
non-narrative constructed past, in
both longer, historical perspectives
of the discipline (e.g. Trigger
1989) and in particular case studies such as that of the Cerne
Abbas Giant, Dorset, England
(Darvill et al. 1999).
The
general theme of the article, the conjunction (for some a disjunction) between
archaeology and cinema is an increasingly analysed aspect of social/ public archaeology on which there are a variety of perspectives (Day 1997; Russell
2002a).
There is also a broad area
of common ground that focuses on the
exaggerated portrayals of archaeology. Though these criticisms are often valid the overall effect is to make a crisis out of a drama
with a tendency to ignore deeper and
more perceptive concerns about archaeology, its practice and development. This article seeks to review and focus on some of those deeper concerns within the
wider
context of narrative consumption, hopefully striking a balance between avoiding
an apologia for some decidedly ‘ropey’
films but recognizing the right of
those outside archaeology to comment
upon archaeology.
CULTURAL APPROPRIATION AND CONTESTED GROUND
What’s yours is mine
The filmic portraits of Egypt form the classic and well-known arena for depictions
of cultural appropriation and of controlling dangerous non-European cultures.
Many of the films
are well recognized
as
part
of
a
wider
phenomenon
of
‘Egyptomania’ (Curl 1994; Daly 1994; Frayling 1992; Hamer
1993;
Lant
1992;
Meskell 1998a; Shohat and Stam 1994).
The profusion of films that deal with archaeology and archaeologists in Egypt
cannot be reconsidered here. A few words are in order, however, to set the scene for
a wider analysis of archaeology as cultural appropriation. Since the 1920s not a
decade has passed without at least one film dealing with the horror possibilities of
Egyptian archaeology.
Usually
this
takes
the
form
of
a
mummy
story
and
invariably with the same basic title from The Mummy (1932) through to The Mummy
(1999) and its
sequel
The Mummy Returns (2001). Sometimes
in
these
films
archaeologists do get to espouse archaeological wisdom (in the 1932
film
The
Mummy, the archaeologist Sir Joseph Whemple states: ‘much more is learned from
studying bits of broken pottery
than from all the sensational finds.
Our job is to
increase the sum of human knowledge of the past’),
but it is often as a foil for the
supernatural elements to come.
However, even into the twenty-first century, what these mummy films retain is
a depiction of archaeology as a colonial
imposition by which cultural inheritance is
appropriated (see Fig. 1). Ultimately they feed off a nineteenth-century western,
colonial agenda, mixing Egypt’s Pharaonic, Ptolomaic,
Coptic and Islamic heritage
to create an amorphous, imaginary past. During the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries western archaeologists were
more than willing to emphasize
the
spectacular, the treasure and the arcane aspects of their discoveries and so readily
added to the mix. Some films
do permit Egyptians an interest in their
past but
usually this is through the veil of legend and superstition. In The Mummy (1999)
the archaeological curator
of the Cairo Antiquities Museum leads a secret sect –
descended from the bodyguard of Ramses
– pledged to defend the world from
Imhotep (the Mummy). In The Mummy Returns
one of the henchmen of Imhotep is
the curator of Egyptian
antiquities at the British Museum.
Both these curators
are
depicted as Egyptians engaged in arcane activities, confirming their subservience
to the western, colonial
myth about Egypt
and suggesting that only Europeans/
Americans can truly understand the Egyptian past, through its appropriation and
redefinition,
often through the practice
of archaeology. The
persistence of this
western cultural imperialism in popular culture has been usefully
characterized by
Shohat and Stam (1994) as ‘unthinking Eurocentrism’. As they demonstrate, it is a
concept equally applicable beyond the context of Egypt to the whole post-colonial
cultural landscape.
Figure 1. The western appropriation of the Egyptian dead – the
moment of discovery of the sarcophagus
of Princess Ananka in The
Mummy (UK 1959). As a consequence of this
discovery the English archaeologist
on the right will become the first victim of the Mummy. The fibreglass sarcophagus is now in the collections of
Perth Museum and Art Gallery,
Scotland, UK. Image supplied by the British Film Institute.1
Egyptian archaeology fares
little better in non-horror films. In the science-fiction adventures, Stargate (1994) and The Fifth Element (1997) otherwise plausible, historically-set archaeological investigations in Egypt are linked
to visits by aliens and in the former, the Rosetta Stone proves to be a gateway to another universe. In The
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) we see large-scale
excavations under way at the City of Tanis,
in the Egyptian desert. Often, but not exclusively, such forays are
set in the 1920s or 1930s and so often display hundreds of Egyptians as the labouring force under foreign, imperial
archaeological control (see Fig.
2). Things may be less overtly supernatural in these films
but Egypt is still commodified and
closely bound as a representation of the Oriental
‘Other ’. As Meskell (1998a:73) observed of the film Stargate: ‘Egypt represents
everything Other, everything we cannot fathom or explain, all things ritualized, sacrificed and
sexual’ and summed up in the film as the queered,
extra-terrestrial Ra, like Egypt
identified as inexplicable, unnatural and evil.
The English
Patient (1997, adapted
from the 1992 novel by Michael Ondjate) powerfully evokes the spirit of archaeological enquiry between the two World
Wars of the first half of the twentieth
century. Partly set in Egypt it suggests that
Figure 2. A
scene from The Mummy (UK 1959) in which the ‘natives’ labour in ignorance
while the English archaeologist claims the knowledge/treasure. The excavation amounts
to little more
than sifting through sand and the archaeologist employs a magnifying glass to
make the detective analogy clear.
Image supplied by the British Film Institute.
knowledge
has no bounds but that its exploration, recording and understanding does, often
leading to contested ownership and conflict. It is a story that is historically
situated at the close of Egypt’s direct
European colonial experience and
so emphasizes the European
appropriation and
exploration of African
culture through both cartography and archaeology.
The map and the museum, along with the census,
were the three key mechanisms of the grammar of
colonial power, with archaeological
pasts
embedded
in all of
them
(Meskell
1998b:3, following Anderson 1991:163). Eurocentric
cinema uses the stock character of the ‘discoverer ’ (of which the archaeologist is a sub-type) to tell narratives of Third World/colonial penetration. Central to these
are the drawing or deciphering of
maps (Shohat and Stam 1994:145–148). Although
The English Patient shares with Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) the metaphors and instruments of archaeology and maps, the former creates around them a
space for questioning the colonial narrative it evokes.
The
treatment of Egypt and its archaeology is symptomatic of wider
imperial, Eurocentric attitudes to the whole of the eastern Mediterranean/Near East
region. A significant slice of the twentieth-century narratives
set in this part of the world
was penned by
Agatha Christie (Guglielmi
2001:351–389). The filmed versions of her Oriental detective stories with archaeological content
are Death on the Nile (1978) and, set in Petra, Appointment with Death (1984). In terms
of historical archaeological
practice they are accurate (not
least because Christie worked on a number of archaeological
sites and was married to archaeologist
Max Mallowan) but they are not the
neutral narratives they portray themselves to be. They uncritically demonstrate
the European attitude to the Orient
as an inheritance due to Europe
because of the natural progress of
civilization away from the East and to the West. Mesopotamia is a created, western archaeological narrative wherein
the central theme is progressing civilization, ‘[a] way of constructing history in its own image and
claiming precedence for a Western culture’ (Bahrani 1998:171). Christie, like her husband Mallowan,
and the archaeology that they practised, was complicit in this
Eurocentrism (Chaldis 2001;
Guglielmi 2001; Schiffer 2001).
In A
Month in the Country (1988
and see later in this article), the grave-digging
archaeologist – Moon – has no sooner found his grave (in Yorkshire, England) than he is off to Basra and further excavation work there. It is worth noting that popular
fiction rarely, if ever, allows
non-Europeans the freedom and stimulation of self- directed archaeology. Europeans
can engage in archaeology anywhere for any reason, others cannot and must endure colonial and class impositions. For a contemporary twist see Blade Trinity
(2004) in which Iraq is archaeologically identified (by a computer-generated
Aztec-like temple situated
in the Syrian Desert) as both the cradle of civilization and the
birthplace of evil, here taking the
form of the Ur-vampire, Dracula (very much a metaphor for a biological weapon of mass-destruction).
Treasured objects
The quest for treasure as an archaeological motivation is common in films, and is a
central strand of cultural appropriations. It is a cultural concept with deep routes
springing from European
mythology and story telling as evidenced in tales such as
Beowulf, the Volsung Saga and the Mabinogion (Pearce and Bounia 2000:48–59).
Filmically it is a theme most familiar from the Indiana Jones trilogy: Raiders of the
Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
and Indiana Jones and the
Last Crusade (1989). All fuse notions of the mythic object (the Ark of the Covenant,
the Shiva Stones and the Holy Grail, respectively) as both existing and having real
supernatural power. The stories are placed within a recognizably real, pre-Second
World War archaeological framework. Dr Jones teaches archaeology at an American
university and also collects objects for the university
museum. In Indiana Jones and
the Last Crusade we are
explicitly
told
that
archaeology is not the search for
treasure, nor for philosophical truth, but for fact. All three films, however, allow
their hero
to
indulge
in
what
is
effectively the looting
of
indigenous
cultural
heritage, portrayed as the legitimate collecting of antiquities. All three films reflect
western cultural imperialism (Shohat and Stam,
1994:125–126, 145–147) but also
make the occasional nod to indigenous rights. In Indiana Jones
and the Temple of
Doom, Dr Jones returns one of the Shiva Stones
to the village from which it was
stolen,
on the basis that if he did not do so it would only sit in a museum gathering
dust with other rocks.
Allowing that this is a veiled admission
that the items should not go to a foreign museum, nevertheless this support
for culture in the community is,
in effect, misleadingly set
against the alternative
of museum storage. This does
accurately reflect a perception in the popular consciousness that
objects in storage are being deliberately
concealed from view, and also raises the question of museums
as dead places, where treasures
are merely hoarded.
Indiana
Jones’s position is only marginally
better than the approach of his
opposition, usually archaeologists
working for the Third Reich. Their
desire in collecting such objects is
to boost their own power. Such archaeological work was carried out under the Third Reich and a detailed
examination of it has been written
by Henning Haßmann (2000:65–139). There
were two key, mutually antagonistic, organizations: the Amt Rosenberg, founded in 1934, and the only slightly less sinister SS-Ahnenerbe, founded
in
1935
(Haßmann
2000:76–86;
Nicholas
1994:
72–75,
197–200 gives a summary). By the close of the 1930s the SS-Ahnenerbe largely controlled serious – and often still respected – archaeological
research. But during the war years this was carried out in tandem
with the looting of museum collections, the
falsification and destruction of archaeological evidence and the collecting of
Jewish skulls from
concentration camps; all to support
and demonstrate Germanic racial superiority from the days of prehistory
(Haßmann 2000:96–108,
125–130).
If the Indiana Jones movies are one of the clearest demonstrations of these issues
they are also the most recent in a long line of films concerned with archaeology as a
treasure hunt. Earlier examples
include Secret of the Incas (1954; see Hall 2000) and
many of the Egypt-based films discussed earlier, along
with a host of films
that
deal with shipwrecks as sources
of
salvageable
treasure
including
The Golden
Mistress (1954), Sharks (1969), Shark Treasure (1974) and Titanic (1999). More recent
additions to the cycle
include Lara Croft Tomb Raider (2001), its sequel, Lara Croft
Tomb Raider: the Cradle of Life (2003), and Welcome to the Jungle (2003). In the Lara
Croft films archaeology is graphically equated
with looting and site destruction
(notably the temples of Angkor Wat, Cambodia) and a very
ready client
relationship with auction
houses. Given that these films have a contemporary
rather than an historical setting they cannot
be understood in the way that the
Indiana Jones trilogy can. There is a barely discernible difference in the way both
Lara Croft and her opposition loot archaeological sites. In part this is because it
reflects its computer-game origin and the pared-down
dynamics of Eurocentric
treasure hunting which the film-makers perceived were required to make the film
work effectively,
and
in
part
because
archaeology has
largely failed
to
communicate the complexities
and
distinctions
of
archaeological method at a
popular level.
In Welcome to the Jungle the
treasure is a golden idol retrieved
from a hidden,
booby-trapped cave in a remote South American
jungle. Possession of the idol is
contested by the indigenous
people, not because of its historical worth but because
it is worth millions
of dollars and when sold (to a western collector) will give the
community the economic
independence
they
need
from American capitalist
exploitation
of the area’s gold mines. It is a reworking of the Secret of the Incas, which deploys archaeology not for its own sake but to support the fight against
the social and economic exploitation of indigenous peoples. It turns
superstitious prophecy about the
loss of the idol into a canny financial exploitation of it, but the drawback is
that the cultural heritage of an indigenous people is sold off, unrecognized.
The narrative drive of this story and its resolution
is to persuade us that this is the right solution but it is really the dressing up of an established stereotype in some new clothes.
The Golden
Salamander (1951, from Victor Canning’s
1949 novel) centres on archaeologist David Redfearn. In the film
he is a museum curator from
(implicitly) the British Museum,
sent to north Africa to retrieve a collection of Etruscan antiquities acquired by the museum after their recovery from a shipwreck.
Redfearn has to check the inventory and then catalogue and repack the collection; simultaneously he
becomes embroiled in an arms-dealing
drama. The leader of the arms dealers owns the
villa where the antiquities are temporarily stored and is a
collector, one who cannot abide museums
and glass cases full of objects he cannot possess. He sets fire to
the antiquities and Redfearn shoots him and manages to save most of the objects from the flames. Redfearn and his near-nemesis are two sides of the same coin and conjure a number of oppositions: professional
versus amateur, colonial
versus indigenous, knowledge
versus capitalism (the collector ’s passion is linked to greed and financial gain). Essentially it
is an imperial narrative in which the West, through the British
Museum, is shown as the natural inheritor of Mediterranean civilization – by extension
something North Africans can only
ignore or appreciate for its financial value alone.
Perhaps the
most explicit rejection of treasure hunting is the Egyptian film, Al Mummia (1969; also known as The Night of Counting the Years). Set around Thebes at the end of the nineteenth century it tells of a
Horrabat tribesman who rejects his
tribe’s practice of looting Egyptian tombs for the antiquities market. He
alerts the authorities in Cairo so
that the tombs can be excavated rather than looted. It thus recognizes the legitimate role of archaeologists
accountable to the state and to the public (Schnapp 1996:12) and distinguishes
between archaeology and the seeking
for treasure. It also asks why so many archaeologists
in Egypt are Europeans/
Americans and what the relationship
of Islam is to Egypt’s pre-Islamic
past, both Pharaonic and Coptic (an issue discussed in Hassan 1998). Of all the Egypt-based films Al Mummia is the only one to offer a public archaeology dimension, in recognizing
that the protection and
understanding of a nation’s cultural heritage requires the consent and involvement of that
nation’s people. That said, as Shohat and Stam (1994:153–156) point out in
their discussion of the film, the final beneficiaries of the archaeological intervention are not
Egyptians but their French colonial
masters. The loss, whether to the black market or to a European museum, is still painful: ‘[t]he
film ends, then, with the emptiness left in the wake of the European intrusion’ (Shohat and Stam 1994:152).
Al Mummia is
the most accomplished of a small group
of films that question the archaeological
appropriation
(through archaeology) of Third World
material culture into western museums
(Shohat and Stam 1994:153). It can be found though
in more mainstream fare. In the film Rush Hour (1998), the Hong Kong Police retrieve
stolen Chinese antiquities on the eve of the British return of Hong Kong to China. These later go on display in Los
Angeles at a cultural and trade fair. The Hong
Kong setting permits an astute, anti-colonial sub-text, with the original loss
of independence equated with the loss of antiquities and their recovery symbolizing the restoration of independence from British rule. The master criminal at the centre of the film is a senior figure
in the British administration of Hong Kong, who has long since turned to crime
to maintain his collection of Chinese antiquities. Super- villains and their henchmen similarly engage in black market
antiquities dealing in Never Say Never Again (1983) and True
Lies (1994). The collecting of archaeology indulged in by the privileged aristocrats of knowledge and money in these works is in direct descent from
Renaissance collectors and their cabinets of curiosity.
European politics
European cinema has generally been less concerned
with Hollywood-style genres.
French and Italian
films in particular have interesting
reflections on archaeology. In
L’Amour et Mort (1984) one of the main characters is an archaeologist whose life’s
work has been the excavation of a Gallo-Belgic villa site (almost
single-handed it
has to be said, a common myth of archaeological
fictions, see Thomas 1976:314). As
his sense of approaching
death intensifies he feels that the only thing he will be
remembered for is a paper on Gallo-Belgic rubbish dumps.
There is a refreshing
ambivalence here that questions the value of archaeology as obsession while
recognizing the dedication of a life’s work.
Italy has given us Fellini’s Roma (1972) and Viaggio in Italia (1953). The former is
director Federico Fellini’s personal look at the history
of Rome and includes a
section showing a subway under construction. We see workmen crash through the
remains of a buried Roman house.
There is a brief glimpse of beautiful wall
frescoes before the fresh air let in by the workmen destroys them. We also hear the
workmen grumble about the continual delays caused to the engineering project by
the need for archaeologists to record each new bit of archaeology. It is a vivid
record of the days of rescue archaeology and of the constant struggle between
archaeology and development pressure. Viaggio in Italia tells
of the personal inner
journeys of a married couple against the backdrop of the ruins of Pompeii and the
museums of Naples. It clearly attests
the importance of historical and continuing
regional identity, something that is brought out by the recurring
emphasis on the
archaeology to be seen in Pompeii and Naples. This same archaeology is shown to
be personally rewarding for the couple as they contemplate their future together
(Mulvey 2000). Viaggio in Italia is
also part of a long line of films dealing
with
human dramas set against
the backdrop of archaeological discovery
(for others see
Membury 2002:8–18) but in its lack of histrionics and in its more refined
aesthetic it
does – rather like L’Amour
a Mort – show that archaeology
can be a well-researched
supporting player in film.
French cinema has also given us the 1985 film Une
Femme ou Deux. The principal
character is a palaeontologist/archaeologist who discovers the fossil remains of a
Homo habilis skeleton.
He labels the remains ‘41B Laura’,
and interprets her as the first European woman. Advice on the making of the film came from Yves Coppens and the French
Institute of Palaeontology, which
presumably accounts
for the realistic-seeming depiction of French archaeology. We
see a dedicated (not to say obsessive) archaeologist
at work, struggling with
fund-raising and politics. We see
glimpses of the museum context in which he operates and we see disputes with
colleagues and employers (notably when he unveils
his reconstruction of ‘Laura’
as a black woman, raising the ire of
his colleagues who condemn him as a leftist). The film does not naïvely set out to paint archaeology as a positive social force but does
recognize its importance, its potential to be positive
and that it is contested. In Une Femme ou Deux there is no sign of the public, even in the
museum where the archaeologist is based. There is, though, a vocal public; the local
community in the area where the fossils were found perceives
archaeology very negatively
and protests against further archaeological work because an influx of visitors is unwanted. This may be a particularly Gallic nuance –
certainly in the United Kingdom archaeological discoveries in rural hinterlands are often seen as matters
of great local pride and as economic
stimuli for the tourism-led economy.
More positive protest however
crops up in the James Bond adventure, The World is
Not Enough (2000), which includes a scene set in Azerbaijan dealing with a strong protest
against the route of an oil-pipeline
going through a rock-cut medieval chapel. The protest is successful and the pipeline
diverted. In the Russian film, прощбние [Proscanie]
(1983) a small island community has to be relocated
because the construction
of a dam will flood
their island. The Academy of Sciences and Arts sends its archaeologists to collect two of the
peasant houses as a record. The community, however, does not
want to move and the film – the title translates as Farewell – asks if the
saving of a couple of houses is really any recompense for the
loss of a community, the destruction of a way of life. It is a point
tellingly made because the film so skilfully imbues every inch of the island
with cultural significance.
A Month in The Country (1988, adapted
from J.L. Carr ’s 1980 novel) is set in a Yorkshire village two years after the First World War and
concerns the attempts of two
survivors of that war to rebuild
their fractured lives. One is
engaged in the restoration of a Last Judgement wall-painting in a church of Anglo-Saxon origin. The other is carrying out small-scale excavations close
beside the church in search of a lost grave. It is through the archaeological work that they carry out that they begin to mend
their lives and develop a sense of landscape and a sense of history.
Gender and practice
A Month in the Country
also raises questions of gender and sexual orientation in
relation to archaeology through making the excavator
homosexual, which leads
him into
military misconduct and
then archaeology as an
escape. Queer
archaeology gets little airing then beyond a metaphor for anti-social strangeness or
safely remote historical
attitude. Women fare a little better, but not hugely. In Une
Femme ou Deux
the strength
of
the
female
characters that
surround the
archaeologist serve to point up the absence
of female archaeologists in the
world portrayed – an absence made more
pointed by the film’s key archaeological
discovery being the fossilized remains
of a female hominid. The archaeologist
describes her as the first French woman, which
is acceptable to all concerned. What is not
acceptable to the establishment is that
she is interpreted as a black woman. The overall impression given by the films studied is of a
male-dominated archaeological profession.
However, the trajectory of social change with respect to women in society does seem to have a corresponding arc within film; into the 1980s there were virtually
no portrayals of women as archaeologists
and the few that were can safely be
characterized as inadequate and typified by Joan Crawford’s mad scientist in Trog
(1970). There was though an interesting strand of female characters of a
strong disposition able to take on
and win against male characters in a competitive environment: we might call them aspirational archaeologists. The key examples would be Anne Miller, who
plays a singing
and dancing archaeological PhD student whose main dance number redefines (i.e. leaves in turmoil, a
‘Revisionist’ metaphor) the Museum of Anthropological History
in On the Town
(1949). In Bringing Up Baby
(1938), Katherine Hepburn plays a somewhat
disorganized socialite who,
within the conventions of screwball
comedy, redefines her palaeontologist partner and his museum of dinosaurs;
she normalizes him away from being a
cloistered curator, concluding in her destruction of the dinosaur skeleton he has
been reconstructing – his body of knowledge – which he cheerfully accepts. Thirdly we have the female support
leads of Karen
Allen and Kate Capshaw in Raiders of the Lost Ark and
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, both of whom are
correctives to the male archaeological obsession. These have given
way to portrayals of women as archaeologists;
though to date I have only encountered
nine leading character female notional-archaeologists
(i.e. broadly encompassing archaeologist, anthropologist, palaeontologist, historian and museum
curator as the same basic character
brand, usually a sub-type
of the ‘scientist’) in popular film.
Whether
on the side of good – as in
The Relic (1997), The Mummy (1999) and its sequel, Tomb Raider (2001)
and its sequel, The Body (2000), Jurassic
Park (1993) and Jurassic
Park III (2001), Lake Placid (1999)
and Highlander III The Sorcerer (1999) – or bad – as in Trog (1970) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) – in the dramas being
enacted these female ‘archaeologists’
are all portrayed as determined,
independent and intelligent (stock heroic
requirements it has to be admitted). They variously combine realistic elements of archaeological work – coping with
fieldwork, with the demands of financial sponsorship and academic integrity, and with the politics of identity –
with wider narrative concerns. In
part their strong portrayals recognize the real-world social recognition
of equality for women. But several of
the films go beyond this and suggest that women professionals are
human too and subject to the foibles of greed,
professional rivalry and psychotic,
mad-scientist obsession (as in Trog),
and may also use female archaeologists
as examples of specialists in cutting edge, interdisciplinary study.
In Highlander III the female archaeologist works for the New York Museum of
Ancient History. She carries out her
fieldwork
in
Japan
specializing
in
the
boundary
between
archaeology and folklore (though this is rather simplistically
portrayed as archaeology proving the literal truth of folklore) which can be read
as a plea for finding drama and human stories in the past.
The Relic tells
of a wayward anthropologist who is transformed into a
brain- sucking genetic mutation,
the Kathoga. During fieldwork in the
Amazon, he takes one of the ritual drugs of the ethnic grouping
he is studying but without
having the antidote handy.
By the time he gets back to the office
– the Field Museum, Chicago – he has become a horrific, murderous
beast who needs the hyperthalmus in the human brain to survive. He establishes
a lair in the sewers beneath the museum and begins to work his way through the brains of the staff (all former colleagues) and also the
guests who arrive for the exclusive opening of the museum’s new
blockbuster exhibition on
world myths and
superstitions. The film’s several
sub-texts hinge on
its monster metaphor. Thus
we have a
clear explication of the destructive
professional rivalries and gender
politics at play in the museum but we are also reminded
of the inherited Eurocentrism of American culture through its own colonial activities. Amerindian culture is somewhat tritely exploited for its shock-horror potential
and, although the Amerindians are tacitly recognized as
in control
of their
own environment,
still the Kathoga metaphorically stands for that culture, collected into a western museum and
ultimately destroyed. The Field Museum’s display
of world myths and superstitions is implicitly a lesson
in western cultural superiority through rational, scientific, collecting endeavour; the superstitions all appear to
come from Third World cultures.
Trog
(1970)
is a film in which a power-mad anthropologist/archaeologist discovers an ape-man or troglodyte, living in a cave in Wiltshire, England, and bends it to do her will.
All
these films demonstrate a wider narrative convention, concerned with broadly-defined scientists meddling with
what they do not understand or are
not meant to know (Hall 2000:97–98; Thomas 1976). Such films reinforce
the popular notion that archaeologists
form an élite, with access to privileged knowledge used for their own ends. The
archaeologist-priest of The Exorcist
(1973) comes into this category and a more recent and
eccentric example of a Catholic priest-archaeologist
can be found in The Body (2000).
Working in Jerusalem and confronted
with the prospect of a recently discovered body being that of Christ (thus proving there was no
Resurrection), he commits suicide.
Faith and science (here again represented
by archaeology) are clearly
not reconcilable and their relationship is one of conflict
and violence, thereby touching
on a widespread belief
or cultural norm
that science is the embodiment of rational enquiry and that it arose out of a struggle with superstition. This has been challenged recently by philosopher John Gray
(2002:21–23), who observed that science actually originated in faith, magic and
trickery and is in part built upon prejudice,
conceit, passion, opposition to reason
and social acceptance. Science is sometimes regarded as a supremely rational activity,
yet its history shows scientists
flouting the rules of scientific
method. Not only the origins but also the progress of science come from acting against reason.
In this light the metaphorical quality
of the films under discussion in
questioning the official narrative of
archaeology can only be welcomed as
a point of debate.
Timeline
(2003) is adapted from the novel by Michael Crichton,
for whom the dangers of science-out-of-control in the service of capitalist
imperatives is a constant thread.
Filmically it can be seen in Westworld (1973), the Jurassic Park franchise and now in Timeline. This fuses time-travel back to the fourteenth century AD with the exploration of the
same piece of the past by a group of
archaeologists, financed by a secretive capitalist corporation. Although it portrays
archaeology as very much the handmaiden of history it
nevertheless recognizes that the
driving motivation for many archaeologists is to understand people – who they were, what they did and how both influence who
we are and what we do. However the
film also allies this with a comfortable conservatism that sees constancy, caring and honour as the
distinguishing features of the past
as against machines, gadgets and the sameness
of the present and
the future. The film does retain a degree
of ambiguity and never quite decides (should it?) whether the common
man’s contribution to history is as important as that of the noble
élites. It does argue that archaeology is for all and that it is a social good but at the
same time and in the interests of
dramatic narrative adds some of its own myths about how archaeology is practised.
DISCUSSION :
MAKING A CRISIS OUT OF A DRAMA ?
It
is easy to have an entirely
pessimistic view about archaeology
in film, but recognizing the nature of cinema and its predilection for narrative (which is
historically dominated by a concern with myth rather than reality) allows for more optimism. The cinematic image of archaeology fluctuates between the poles of
the positive pursuit of hidden knowledge (thus dispelling ignorance) and the
negative rape of the sacred and
indigenous. This is healthy and reinforces the reality
of cinema as something made by diverse makers and audiences and reflecting wider political debates, not
just what we might call the mechanics of
the discipline. Archaeology is not an exclusive entry into the truth (or a version of it); another way in is fiction which often
seeks to make meaning, through
narrative and metaphor. At
a basic level
fictional archaeological narratives
do recognize the whole process of archaeology, from fieldwork to museum curation, though
admittedly this is often on a speeded-up narrative-driven time-scale. As a depicted profession archaeology is no worse off than other professions: scientists, psychiatrists,
doctors, teachers, architects
and the police are equally misrepresented.
A recent analysis
of archaeologists in popular
culture (Russell
2002b:53) suggested that 98 per cent of the British population had no regular contact with a real archaeologist,
seen as a factor contributing to the haziness of the boundary between fiction
and reality.
The solutions
offered were to
use cinema’s
‘stereotypes’ against themselves; to completely reject the fictional images, or simply to
continue to ignore popular culture. There
is another alternative. It is true
that cinema’s stock characterizations and plots (the ‘stereotypes’) are exaggerations, but exaggerations of a reality, the
underlying issues of which (and their historical antecedents) these films capture quite well. The so-called ‘stereotyping’ is also due to a somewhat
playful, myth-making, narrative
tradition which has a streak of anti-establishment
ethos.
Such narratives satisfy for many a sense of exclusion from archaeology and
museums, giving an alternative, accessible entry into hidden knowledge through the consumption of narrative. This exclusion manifests itself in the portrayal of archaeologists/curators as holders
of privileged knowledge (in Doc Savage
Man of Bronze (1975), set in the 1930s, the archaeologist is a genius of both archaeology and geology, his
‘-ologies’ emphasizing his high
intelligence and élite status). Into the mix are
thrown notions of supernatural power, colonial nostalgia, greed and treasure, in a
male-dominated world.
There are
of course drawbacks to a popular perception of archaeology refracted
by narrative conventions including
a widespread dim awareness of how the past
can be legitimately acquired and protected.
Archaeology deems unethical the flouting of indigenous rights and the
trade in illicitly acquired
antiquities but the thriving black market in antiquities and the complacency of
auction houses in their circulation are elided in the popular, public consciousness and seem to be
seen as equivalents to archaeology.
Archaeology is also much more multivocal and multicultural in the wake of post-processual and social archaeology.
Narratives of popular culture have
not really adapted to this, though
there are glimmerings. A.I. (2001) includes a deep-future postscript in which alien or highly
evolved human- robot creatures
can recreate the past through
memory recovery. This is an eloquent metaphor for the agenda of social archaeology in wanting to recover past human
complexity – recognizing that people
in the past constructed their own
identities through bounded
interactions with each other, with
élite power structures, and with their environment in its physical and temporal
manifestations.
It follows that the making of personal and social/community identities is a constant on-going process. In our own contemporary world this
also includes looking back at the past, to challenge its guardianship and explore fictionalized variables. In the same way that archaeology is in fact full of cultural
biographies – of objects, of
sites, and of
landscapes – that
constantly have their
meanings changed through time
and space so the process of our
understanding of these changes – archaeology
– has a cultural biography of which popular film and its narratives are but one reflex. I am not arguing that those who see these films simply accept them and perceive archaeology
accordingly (just as people can
choose a fringe archaeological text
over a specialized report without
automatically accepting the fringe discourse, see Mathews 2002:158–159), though
there are those who undoubtedly
do. Rather, I have tried to elucidate what sort of messages
– deliberate or unintentional – are
being put out by popular cinema and so are
available to believe
in or not,
consciously or subconsciously by
individuals. Cinema in particular has yet to catch up with displaying a real public face to archaeology (though historically some of these
films can be seen as critiquing a lack
of public archaeology). The more that the public is included in archaeology the greater the
chances are of this changing.
The
other major drawback is cinema’s sense of authenticity. Most of the films in question are not concerned with giving precise
lessons in historical, archaeological
or scientific fact. It is certainly true
though that many of them claim to achieve a look that is authentic
but this is a narrow meaning
of authenticity, one essentially
to do with persuaded believability. It is the creation
of a believable context in which
the examination of human behaviour, fears
and anxieties, of possibilities
and pleas for knowledge can take place
(and again there is an element
of deliberate and delighted-in provocation, a common trait within popular
culture). Viewed
from the position of circles of consumption and production such films can work as
metaphorical dialogues on cultural exclusion, Eurocentric and professional
superiority, political and bodily
identity and an abiding desire for stimulating
stories – a key pressure valve of popular culture, if you like, a self-administered sugar-coated
pill.
If
the films often seem repetitive this
is due to the persistence of some archaeological
practices, the stubbornness of inherited perceptions
held by audiences and the narrative conventions of cinema (its semiotic
language relies on such conventions to help tell a story in a concise, understandable and inclusive way). If we read such films in an overly literal way we will miss their
(sometimes unintended) point. If
we allow them
to stand as
colourful, narrative-driven
popular metaphors questioning received wisdom then they form
a valid, more
coherent debating position in a
social dialogue. With archaeology,
as with other bodies of knowledge, if people are
not engaged by or clear about what the discipline is saying (and sometimes in
spite of this) then they will tell their own stories of exploitation, adventure and criticism. These stories may be
fantastic and unbelievable but they also inspire
wonder at human drama in the past and ask archaeology
and archaeologists to do the same.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Sue Pearce and Nick Merriman for their encouragement and discussion,
and to the Society of Museum
Archaeologists which gave me the opportunity to present an earlier, briefer version of this article at its
Reading Conference in 2000 (subsequently published in the conference proceedings: Hall 2002). Neal
Ascherson provided much needed detailed comment and drew my attention to the full complexity of
the practice of archaeology under
the Third Reich. Finally thanks to
the helpful comments of two anonymous referees and to Alan
Saville’s judicious editorial hand. Any remaining errors and unthinking Eurocentrism are entirely the responsibility
of the author.
NOTE
1.
Copyright note concerning
Figures 1 and 2. The author of this article made extensive
searches in both the UK and the US
to find the current copyright owner
of the 1959 Hammer version of The Mummy but
was unable to identify anyone holding the UK/European licensing rights.
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Mark A.
Hall is a
graduate of the
Universities of Sheffield (ancient
and medieval history) and
Leicester (museum studies) and has worked in museums in England and Scotland. He is currently Human History Officer at Perth Museum and
Art Gallery, where his chief responsibility is the curation of the archaeology collection. His main interest is medieval material culture (particularly gaming, early medieval
sculpture and the cult of saints). An interest in cinema led naturally to an interest in the way archaeology
and museums are portrayed by that
medium.
Address:
Perth Museum and Art Gallery, 78 George Street, Perth, PH1 5LB, Scotland, UK. [email:
mahall@pkc.gov.uk]
ABSTRACTS
Romancing the
stones : L’archéologie dans le cinéma populaire
Mark A. Hall
Cet article
traite de la représentation de l’archéologie
et des archéologues dans
le cinéma populaire. De nombreux films clés sont analysés afin d’aborder les sujets principaux de l’article : l’appropriation culturelle et des éléments contestés comme les trésors, le public, la
politique et le sexe. La représentation
de l’archéologie dans un film ne
peut être séparée des contextes
culturels généraux dans lesquels
elle évolue et, bien que les évocations de l’archéologie
et des archéologues ne soient
souvent pas satisfaisantes, l’auteur cherche
à arriver à une conclusion favorable en essayant de comprendre le dynamisme
narratif de la fiction populaire et
la longue histoire d’exclusion du public des domaines de l’archéologie. La plupart des films considérés
n’aspirent pas à être classés comme chefs d’œuvres, mais font part d’une forme culturelle parfois perspicace et capable d’inciter le débat dans le cadre essentiel
de pratiques culturelles qui construisent
et développent l’identité
individuelle et sociale.
Mots clés: cinéma, eurocentrisme, étude de films, culture populaire, trésor
Romancing the
stones - Archäologie im
Spiegel des Kinofilms
Mark A. Hall
Dieser Beitrag
beschäftigt sich mit der Darstellung von Archäologie und Archäologen im Kinofilm. Eine Reihe von Schlüsselfilmen werden diskutiert, die die Hauptthemen des Artikels, nämlich
kulturelle Aneignung und umstrittenen Bereiche (einschließlich Schatz, der Öffentlichkeit, Politik und Geschlechterfragen), ansprechen.
Die Darstellung der Archäologie im Film lässt sich nicht von
den weiteren kulturellen Kontexten trennen, in denen sie wirken, und es kann – wenngleich auch die Abbildung von Archäologie und Archäologen häufig unbefriedigend ist – ein positiver Schluss gezogen werden, anhand dessen versucht
wird, den erzählerischen
Antrieb der öffentlichen Fiktion und die lange Geschichte des Ausschlusses der Öffentlichkeit von der Archäologie zu verstehen. Die meisten der einbezogenen Filme können zwar
nicht als große Kunstwerke gelten,
aber sie sind Teil einer Kulturform,
die Ansichten anbietet, die eine
Debatte innerhalb eines vitalen
Kontextes kultureller Praktiken
ermöglichen, durch die Identität –
sei es die des Individuums oder der Gruppe
– geschaffen wird und sich entwickelt.
Schlüsselbegriffe: Kino, Eurozentrismus, Filmstudien, Populärkultur, Schatz
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