Adventurer Archaeologist - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Lara Croft - world's worst archaeologist. When she's not putting her foot through inestimably valuable samples of ancient pottery, she's stealing every slightly shiny thing that was ever buried with some royal dead guy and hoarding them in her basement."

—Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, Zero Punctuation: Tomb Raider Underworld.

If adventure has a name, it has to be Indiana Jones"

—tagline for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

"Moreover, no one on the committee can identify who or what instilled Dr. Jones with the belief that an archaeologist's tool kit should consist solely of a bullwhip and a revolver."

—Andy F. Bryan, "Back From Yet Another Globetrotting Adventure, Indiana Jones Checks His Mail and Discovers His Bid for Tenure Has Been Denied," McSweeney's

In Real Life, archeology is not the most fast paced of careers. It can involve a lot of research, dirt, and going over small details like diet and theorizing on them. A real archaeologist can make his career by the meticulous analysis of the contents of a garbage dump—and indeed, they would prefer to find the dump rather than a king's tomb, since the dump can tell them far more about the way ordinary people lived.

Not so in fiction-land. Since most of the world has the ruins of ancient and powerful civilizations littered under the surface, archeology is a career that brings one constantly face to face with Lost Technology, imprisoned evils, and MacGuffins. Lots of MacGuffins. If it takes place on Earth and the writers don't make one up, it'll usually be something like an Egyptian tomb (expect a mummy to haunt our hero) or the Holy Grail.

Adventurer Archaeologists are capable of dressing up very well for more intellectual appearances, but forays into studying usually occur off-screen, and it's never implied to take very long. (Compare Badass Bookworm.)

An Adventurer Archaeologist has an interesting morality. Ruins are rarely really "abandoned" as the descendants of the Precursors, or their ghosts, or even their mystically preserved selves are very upset when outsiders intrude, and especially when they take the focal points of their culture with them.

Most people call this "theft," and in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, it's noted that the title character has been called a "grave robber." However, to an Adventurer Archaeologist, it's okay as long as it goes into a museum. To keep the audience rooting for the Adventurer Archaeologist, he or she is often pitted against an Evil Counterpart who wants the same treasure for themselves, or to give it to the bad guys/sell to the highest bidder, use it to Take Over The World, etc.

Some of this may be a remnant of the early days of archeology, when archaeologists tended to be more concerned about their own glory and getting museum trinkets that looked good for their Trophy Room than actually discovering things about old civilizations. As a result, no one knows how much historical evidence will never be known to us through the carelessness of 19th and early 20th century archaeologists.

This trope is Older Than Radio, an accomplishment when considering that archeology is a profession less than two centuries old. Antiquarians, historians, and intellectual grave robbers were a staple of 19th Century gothic horror and ghost stories. They appeared regularly in film adventures dating back to the dawn of talking pictures, including the universal mummy movies and the Johnny Weismuller Tarzan films.

It should be noted, however, that this Trope and its origins arguably do come from Truth in err.... Literature. Early archaeology was often simply done for profit or glory and was often as horribly done by modern standards as the examples below.