Random Indiana Jones Was A Terrible Archaeologist (15 items)

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  (#5) When He Looted the Ark of the Covenant From A Real, Legal Archaeological Site

  When Indiana Jones goes after the Ark of the Covenant, he steals the item away from a real archaeological site that experts are in the process of excavating.

  "True, the Nazis were trying to find the Ark of the Covenant so they could destroy the world," archaeologist Marcello Canuto says. "But methodologically and legally they were in the right."

  The Nazi archaeologists were certainly up to no good, but presumably they had legally obtained permission to excavate. They were properly excavating the site instead of just dropping in, taking the most valuable thing, and running away like Indiana Jones was definitely trying to do.
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  (#15) That Time He Didn't Expect Snakes

  "Why did it have to be snakes?" Indy moans as he faces the veritable pit of snakes that is the Well of Souls in Raiders of the Lost Ark. This whinging about snakes, however, is one of the few semi-accurate representations of archaeology from the film. According to real archaeologists, it's always snakes.

  Archaeologist Fred Hiebert says, “I’ve worked on five different continents, and every place I’ve worked—whether it’s underwater, in the sands of Turkmenistan, or in the jungles of Honduras—I always find dens of snakes. Always.”

  Realistically, Indy should have expected snakes by this point.
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  (#7) That Time He Used Child Labor During A Child Kidnapping Crisis

  While Indiana Jones has his share of unconventional field assistants on his adventures, they usually have some background in archaeology. The notable exception is in Temple of Doom, where he not only takes along the fairly useless showgirl Willie, but also a minor.

  Throughout Temple of Doom, Jones used 11-year-old Short Round as an assistant, constantly endangering the child's life. It's already an ethically dicey area to employ a child as an assistant at all, let alone taking him to a place where the villagers are reasonably sure people are kidnapping children.

  While Jones might get a pass on the lack of child labor laws at the time, no ethics code would allow that kind of child endangerment.
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  (#12) When He Didn't Get Permission From Local Authorities

  Walter Donovan in The Last Crusade was thoroughly evil in his quest for the grail, willing to kill countless people to get his hands on it. However, when it came to archaeological ethics, he was surprisingly concerned with doing things the right way. He went to the local authority, the Sultan, and obtained permission to seek the Grail and remove it from the country.

  Indiana Jones never does any such thing, never seeks permission from any authority connected to the artifacts he is after, which may explain why he has such a difficult time in comparison to other characters like Donovan and Belloq. Jones is far more of a looter than any of them.

  Archaeologist William Parkinson explains:

  "Nobody is going to condone looting archaeological sites, which is really what we're talking about in the case of just going in and hiring local people to show you where something is so you can grab it for a museum. But in the '30s? I don't know that it occurred. Even at the turn of the (last) century with the excavation of things like King Tut's tomb, it was still done under the premise that you're trying to learn about the past."
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  (#6) When He Went Scorched Earth On The Ark Of The Covenant Archaeological Site

  After losing the Ark of the Covenant to the Nazis, Indiana Jones gets trapped in the Well of Souls (where he whines about snakes). In his attempt to escape, he topples an Anubis statue and takes out an entire wall of the site.

  This is another example of Indiana Jones's scorched earth approach to archaeology, where everything in the site becomes expendable as soon as the valuable is removed. Who knows what secrets about the Ark could have been gleaned from the parts of the site that are now rubble?

  In support of the characters trying to do at least semi-ethical archaeology, archaeologist Marcello Canuto explains, "If someone was to come into my camp and dig up the site with some knowledge I didn't have, and I was to catch them in the middle of the night, yeah, I might throw him in a snake pit too."
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  (#4) When He Completely Failed To Work With The Locals

  As Indiana Jones pursues the golden idol in Raiders of the Lost Ark, he's being followed by the local Hovitos tribe. When he finally acquires the idol, he's captured by the Hovitos, along with French archaeologist Dr. René Belloq. Belloq speaks their language and develops a relationship with them.

  Archaeologists are commonly concerned with creating a considerate and mutually beneficial relationship with the local people whose cultural site they are working on.

  Most archaeologists, at least. Not Indiana Jones, who breaks into their temple, steals their idol, and apparently never bothers to learn some of the local language to try to speak with them. In the end, he loses the idol to Belloq, who doesn't make these same mistakes.

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