INQUIRER Global Nation

The latest Indiana Jones sequel proves that archaeology is alive and well, at least in the way it is imagined by those who trooped to the theaters this week to watch Harrison Ford defy death once more to win against those who seek untold treasures for personal gain. Worldwide, the movie, once again starring the rambunctious but now aging Harrison Ford, has smashed the tills, ranking in over a hundred million dollars in gross receipts.

I admit I enjoyed every bit of the adventure that Jones always goes through in his quest for that one-of-a-kind artifact, a quest that marked much of mid-19th to early 20th century archaeology, when the profession was young and had been the main conduit for filling museums with the unique, the bizarre and the rarest of the rare. Now that museums are full to the brim, the pioneering adventurer epitomized by Indiana Jones – boldly going where no archaeologist has gone before – has receded below the horizon, replaced by the modern archaeologist who excavates almost anything and anywhere without making even a cursory look at the monetary value of the artifacts he or she has uncovered.

The time when the artifact made or unmade careers has left the stage a long time ago, which explains why Indiana Jones is set in either World War II or, as in this latest movie, immediately thereafter. In the 1960s, archaeology took a radical turn towards rigid scientific methodologies that put an end to the search for the ultimate artifact (or treasure, as it were), giving way to the profession that sought meanings behind artifacts in order to better explain how people lived in times long gone. In a sense, the archaeology of Indiana Jones depicted in the series will appear odd, if not totally out of sync, with the monotony, attention to detail, and the almost unbearable heat that often accompanies excavations.

More treasure hunter than archaeologist, Indiana Jones seeks out those objects that make the imagination run wild. With a plot spiced with the much-discredited space archaeology popularized by Erich von Daniken (remember his “Chariots of the Gods”?), who thinks that humans are far too dumb to have ever built the waves of civilization that have come and gone before ours, and – viola! – you have an adventure beyond imagination. Thus, the elongated skulls of the Incas of Peru (made by binding the heads of infants akin to our own pre-colonial practice of cranial deformation of the temporal lobe) is presented in the film as inspired adaptation of the skull of aliens who taught the Incas agriculture and the building of monumental structures, among others, that today stand as mute testimonies to the culture produced by human-alien interaction.

“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” is a good way to calm the senses and let the imagination do the trick. The movie is, in a sense, a neat way of explaining the disconnections in the unfolding story of humankind. Unfortunately, the reality on the ground is that archaeology, whether in some remote or not so remote region, can only give us some insights that build on previous knowledge into how different societies coped with the different demands of the environmental niches they were in. All in the hope that perhaps a grand theory, nay, a law, will eventually explain why humans behave the way they do. But for the moment, there are no more grand theories to explain the rise and fall of great civilizations as there are all-encompassing ways of explaining, for example, why America, with its ultra-modern range of weaponry and high-technology equipment, is moving closer to the Dark Ages. So sit down, relax and watch Indiana Jones knowing that his world is far from what present-day archaeologists do.