As fans eagerly await the arrival of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny at their local multiplex, Cinema Paradiso takes a look at how archaeologists have been depicted on screen.
Archaeologists have a love-hate relationship with Dr Henry Walton Jones, Jr. They're delighted that one of their own is a household name. But it frustrates them that he doesn't behave like a professional archaeologist and has, therefore, given people a false impression of their vocation. Film producers, however, know that blockbuster audiences wouldn't want to sit through two hours of someone hunched over a trench painstakingly removing dirt particles from fragile artefacts with a soft-bristle brush before making copious notes about the excavation and filing classification reports. They want bullwhips and booby traps, hissable villains and marauding monsters.
In movies, archaeological expeditions tend to revolve around either the search for an object of desire or the unleashing of an ancient and often evil entity. Consequently, the stories fall mostly into the adventure or horror genres and film-makers seek to avoid making the core tropes feel overly formulaic by inventing new quandaries and curses to inflict upon a leader who is as much a man of action (and the vast majority of screen archaeologists are male) as he is a respected scholar.
Despite the best efforts of Hollywood scribes, films about archaeology feel a bit samey. The exotic location may change, as might the historical period from which the quested item hails. Accomplices and scoundrels may vary, as may the nature of the problems to be overcome. But the focus inevitably falls on some sort of what Alfed Hitchcock would have called a 'MacGuffin', which is worth expending a degree of risk and effort to secure.
In a seminal article on films about archaeology, Mark A. Hall wrote, 'Archaeology is about people; who they were, what their lives were like...It asks where we have been, where we are going.' Making this feel relevant to moviegoers of different ages and backgrounds is a tricky task and it has recently been made all the more difficult by the ongoing debate about cultural appropriation and the morality of museum collections. Furthermore, it makes for distinctly uncomfortably viewing when outsiders who consider themselves to be culturally and intellectually superior lay claim to the treasures of an indigenous civilisation that is dismissed as primitive and/or dangerous.
In addition to shifts in post-colonial attitudes, advances in field methodology have also changed the way in which archaeology is viewed. In the eyes of many current practitioners, the travails that Indiana Jones had to endure were brought upon himself because they were 'caused in large part by dismal project planning'. But not all archaeologists work in the same way. Some are based in laboratories or museums and most specialise in particular civilisations rather than being generalists. As a result, it's no longer so easy to echo Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) at the start of Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), when she opines, 'I thought archaeologists were always funny little men searching for their mommies.'
Having devoted ourselves to Egyptomania, Agatha Christie, and Indiana Jones in Part One of this overview, let's move on to the lesser spotted female archaeologist, digs around the world, some small-screen favourites, and the best archaeology-related horror movies.
Jolie Good Show
According to Hollywood, archaeology was a man's game, with women being reduced to camp followers who occasionally needed rescuing. If they did stray into a museum, they invariably caused trouble, as with madcap heiress Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) and her bone-loving pup in Howard Hawks's Bringing Up Baby (1938), whose premise was dusted down for Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc? (1972) and Daniel Vigne's One Woman or Two (1985), which respectively starred Barbra Streisand and Sigourney Weaver making life tough for eggheads Ryan O'Neal and Gérard Depardieu.
Every now and then, the focus fell on female anthropologists like Claire Huddesen (Ann Miller) in Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen's On the Town (1949) and Dr Brockton (Joan Crawford) in Freddie Francis's Trog (1970). Alex Johnson (Deborah Kara Unger) also proved key to the plot in Andrew Morahan's Highlander III: The Sorcerer (1999), as the archaeologist from the New York Museum of Ancient History excavating the Japanese cave in which Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert) had trained in the 16th century. But it took the success of a British video game to persuade Hollywood to take female archaeologists seriously.
Six actresses have voiced Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider games, including Shelley Blond, Keeley Hawes, and Camilla Luddington. And the chance to play an action woman with pre-sold appeal meant that stars of the calibre of Sandra Bullock, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Pamela Anderson, Demi Moore, Elizabeth Hurley, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Famke Janssen, Jennifer Lopez, Denise Richards,Ashley Judd, Diane Lane, Jeri Ryan, and Rhona Mitra were linked with the role before Angelina Jolie was cast in Simon West's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), opposite her own father, Jon Voight, as Lord Richard Croft.
The adventure makes few demands on Lara's archaeological skills, as she travels to Cambodia and Siberia in order to prevent the Illuminati from getting their mitts on a time-controlling artefact known as the Triangle of Light. Indeed, her methods can only be considered on the destructive side. But audiences couldn't get enough and Jolie returned in Jan De Bont's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life (2003), which took her from the Luna Temple on the Greek island of Santorini via China to Kenya in order to recover Pandora's Box.
Disappointed by the takings, Paramount opted against a second sequel and Lara remained silent until Minnie Driver voiced her in the 2007 animated series, Revisioned: Tomb Raider. And, speaking of voiceovers, Hayley Atwell is set to play Lara in an upcoming anime version. But it seems unlikely that Alicia Vikander will get to reprise the part after the rights lapsed following Roar Uthaug's reboot, Tomb Raider (2018), in which Laura ditched her bike couriering career to find out what had happened to her father (Dominic West) while he was investigating Himiko, the mythical Queen of Yamatai.
There are still female archaeologists prepared to go above and beyond, as Ridley Scott demonstrated in Prometheus (2012), a prequel to Alien (1979) that begins with Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) finding a star map in Scotland before they join the crew of a spaceship bound for a 2093 landing on Moon LV-223 in order to discover clues about the origins of humankind. And keep an eye out for Coerte Vorhees's Canyon Del Muerto, which has been produced by Draco Malfoy actor Tom Felton and stars Abigail Lawrie as Ann Axtell Morris, the archaeologist who collaborated with the Navajo in the 1920s to uncover evidence of the early North American Anasazi civilisation.
Here, There, Everywhere
Considering the archaeological wonders on its doorstep, Hollywood has been reluctant to visit sites of interest across the United States. A number of B Westerns have included cowpokes who ride alongside archaeologists to keep them out of mischief, including Robert N. Bradbury's Hidden Valley (1932), Mack V. Wright's Riders of the Whistling Skull (1937), Sam Newfield's Death Rides the Range (1939), and Howard Bretherton's Gun Smoke (1945).
Finding himself in Timbuktu, John Wayne's Joe January was enlisted to accompany archaeologist Paul Bonnard (Rossano Brazzi) into the Sahara in Henry Hathaway's Legend of the Lost (1957). But no one was keeping an eye on Dr John Benton (Charles Miller) in Phil Rosen's Phantom of Chinatown (1940). So, Mr Wong has to be called in to find his killer. Keye Luke took the role of pulp writer Hugh Wiley's detective in the last entry in the series after Boris Karloff had regrettably gone yellowface in the first five.
Perhaps it's as well that this sextet isn't available on disc in the UK, but neither is William Grefé's cult curio, Death Curse of Tartu (1966), which centres on some archaeology students disturbing a Native Indian burial site in the Florida Everglades. However, Cinema Paradiso can offer Willard Carroll's The Runestone (1991), which draws on the Ragnarok legend to spread chaos after archaeologist Sam Stewart (Tim Ryan) discovers a Norse artefact in a Pennsylvania coal mine.
While Stewart is out of his depth, Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage) just about manages to keep his head above water in Jon Turteltaub's National Treasure (2004), as he teams with archivist Dr Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger) to prevent treasure hunter Ian Howe (Sean Bean) from purloining the Declaration of Independence and finding a stash linked to the Knights Templar, the Freemasons, and the Founding Fathers. Gates calls on the expertise of archaeo-lexicologist mother Emily Appleton (Helen Mirren) to find a secret presidential diary in National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007), which involves desks in the White House and Buckingham Palace.
The chances of Professor Roland Crump (Kenneth Williams) ever receiving a gong diminish by the second in Gerald Thomas's Carry On Behind (1975), as his dig with Roman specialist Anna Vrooshka (Elke Sommer) has unfortunate consequences for the camp site owned by Major Leap (Kenneth Connor). The digging is more restrained in Pat O'Connor's adaptation of J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country (1987). Set in the aftermath of the Great War, this compelling drama sees archaeologist James Moon (Kenneth Branagh) befriend a fellow veteran while searching for a lost grave in the grounds of same Anglo-Saxon church in the Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where Tom Birkin (Colin Firth) is restoring a medieval fresco of the Last Judgement.
One of the few archaeology films with a gay subtext, this would make a marvellous double bill with Simon Stone's The Dig (2022). However, this account of the 1939 excavation at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, which stars Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan, is not available on disc. Neither is Clio Barnard's take on Sarah Perry's 1890s novel, The Essex Serpent (2022). Strictly, however, Clare Danes's character is a palaeontologist, as is Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) in Francis Lee's Ammonite (2020). Her companion, Charlotte Murchison (Saoirse Ronan), is a geologist. But we're prepared to bend the rules and recommend this Dorset saga as the perfect partner to A Month in the Country.
Surprisingly few renowned European films have dealt with archaeology. The ruins of Pompeii and the museums of Naples provide a backdrop to the marital difficulties faced by Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders in Roberto Rossellini's Journey to Italy (1954), while a Roman villa is demolished by workmen complaining about archaeologists holding up their subway project in Federico Fellini's Roma (1972).
In Alain Resnais's Love Unto Death (1984), archaeologist Simon Roche (Pierre Arditi) dies and comes back to life. He confides to wife Elisabeth (Sabine Azèma) his fear that he will only be remembered for an article about the rubbish dump at the Gallo-Belgic villa he has spent his career excavating. By contrast, student Chloé Severin (Elsa Kikoïne) is just starting out, but the odds against her survival narrow as colleagues are murdered while working on what they hope are the graves of King Arthur and Merlin in Doug Headline's Brocéliande (2002).
The Hundred Years War impinges upon the action in Richard Donner's adaptation of Michael Crichton's Timeline (2003), as archaeologist Edward Johnson (Bill Connolly) is transported back to Castelgard in 1357 and son Chris (Paul Walker) and colleague André Marek (Gerard Butler) agree to travel through time to rescue him. Pondering the topics of preservation and progress and the motives of those who sponsor digs, this makes you think while keeping you on the edge of your seat.
Greek sites are key to a couple of currently unreachable outings, W.S. Van Dyke's I Live My Life (1935), in which Joan Crawford's socialite falls archaeologist Brian Aherne, and James Dearden's Pascali's Island (1988), an adaptation of a Barry Unsworth novel that brings together archaeologist Charles Dance, painter Helen Mirren, and spy Ben Kingsley on the island of Nisi in 1908.
The Holy Land at the time of the First Crusade sparks the action in Sheldon Lettich's The Order (2001), as adventurer Jean-Claude Van Damme goes in search of archaeologist father Vernon Dobtcheff after he is kidnapped by fanatics seeking a scroll containing secrets about a sinister sect. Yale archaeologist Steven Segal barely has time to celebrate winning the Winthrop Award before he stumbles upon a drug-running operation on the China-Kazakhstan border in Michael Oblowitz's Out for a Kill (2003).
The scene switches between Hong Kong and Los Angeles in Brett Ratner's Rush Hour (1998), as antiquities recovered on the eve of the British handover are stolen from an exhibition and Chief Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan) and Detective James Carter (Chris Rock) are teamed to investigate. Chan is also in the thick of things in Stanley Tong's Kung Fu Yoga (2017), as a Terracotta Warrior expert heads to Tibet with Indian archaeologist Disha Patani to find the lost Magadha treasure.
Rival martial arts star Yuen Biao headlines Ricky Lau's Mr Vampire II (1986), as a reporter on the track of some 'geung si' hopping vampires that were accidentally loosed by archaeologist Chung Fat. And a yokai spirit possesses a schoolgirl (Megumi Ueno) during a dig in Shinya Tsukamoto's dazzling horror comedy, Hiruko the Goblin (1990), and it's up to archaeologist Kenji Sawada to restore order.
There's currently no access to Canadian Robert Budreau's That Beautiful Somewhere (2006) or to John Farrow's Plunder of the Sun (1953) and Herschell Gordon Lewis's Daughter of the Sun God (1962), which respectively take place in Mexico and Peru. But we can take you to a pyramid beneath the Antarctic ice, where Italian archaeologist Sebastian De Rose (Raoul Bova) and guide Alexa Woods (Sanaa Latham) discover hieroglyphs explaining the conflict between the Predators and the Xenomorphs in Paul W.S. Anderson's Alien vs Predator (2004), which was followed by Colin and Greg Strause's Alien vs Predator 2: Requiem (2007).
Small Screen Discoveries
Before we get to the gore, we need to draw your attention to such splendid documentaries as Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which covers the 32,000 year-old paintings in Chauvet Cave, and Patricio Guzmán's Nostalgia For the Light, which contains a segment on the mummified traders found in Chile's Atacama Desert. Completing a 2010 triptych is Lost Kingdoms of Africa, which takes British art historian Dr Gus Casely-Hayford to Sudan, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and West Africa.
Archaeological digs were not uncommon in The X-Files (1993-2018) and Millennium (1997-99), while artefacts also proved key to episodes of shows like Alias (2001-05) and Smallville (2001-10). Captain Jean-Luc Picard was a keen amateur archaeologist, as fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-94) and Star Trek: Picard (2020-23) and the features Star Trek Generations (1994), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), Star Trek: Insurrection (1998), and Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) will no doubt know.
Archaeologist Sydney Fox (Tia Carrere) and her British assistant Nigel Bailey (Christian Anholt) scoured the world for treasures in Relic Hunter (1999-2000). But Andy Stone (Mackenzie Crook) and Lance Stater (Toby Jones) tend to confine themselves to the fields around Danebury in north Essex in the sublime BAFTA-winning comedy, Detectorists (2014-).
The Horror
We have already seen how archaeologists have disturbed a number of long-dormant creatures and subjected the world to their vengeance. The majority involved mummies, but all manner of ancient entities have been prodded out of their slumbers by the tip of a trowel.
Archaeologist John Merivale has to face the consequences of a Mayan expedition that upsets a goddess with a penchant for human sacrifices in Riccardo Freda's Caltiki, the Immortal Monster (1959). Alex Cord makes a similar schoolboy error in opening an Etruscan sepulchre in Armando Crispino's creepy giallo, The Dead Are Alive (1972), while Donald Pleasence's professor leads a party into a crater excavated for the Rome Metro in Marcello Avallone's Specters (1987), only to stumble into the tomb of the Emperor Domitian.
A terrifying séance vision prompts archaeology professor Brett Halsey to accompany student Meg Register to the Greek ruins at Santa Rosalia in Sicily in Lucio Fulci's Demonia (1990). But they can't have expected the trip to go smoothly, as five nuns suspected of witchcraft were crucified there in 1498. Fulci also directed Manhattan Baby (1982), in which archaeologist Christopher Connelly is blinded during a dig in Egypt shortly after an old woman gives his nine year-old daughter an amulet. On returning Stateside, strange things start to happen.
Of all the archaeologists in this survey, the most unusual is Dr Cornelius (Roddy McDowall), the chimpanzee who joins animal psychologist Zira (Kim Hunter) in taking pity on astronaut George Taylor (Charlton Heston) in Franklin J. Schaffner's Planet of the Apes (1968). David Watson took over the role, as Cornelius and Zira help another spaceman, Brent (James Franciscus), in Ted Post's Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970). However, McDowall returned for Don Taylor's Escape From the Planet of the Apes (1971), which saw the now married simian couple blast off in Taylor's rocket to go back in time.
Father Lankester Merrin (Max von Sydow) creates problems for himself during an expedition to northern Iraq in the opening scenes of William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973), as he will confront Pazuzu the Assyrian wind demon again when he is summoned to help possessed 12 year-old Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair). Replacing Liam Neeson before shooting started in 2002, Stellan Skarsgård took the role of Fr Merrin in Paul Schrader's Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist (2005), which features the excavation of a Byzantine church in the Derati Valley in Kenya. However, a troubled post-production period resulted in the action being retooled by Renny Harlin as Exorcist: The Beginning (2004). A double bill begging to be ordered, if ever there was one.
Archaeologists Carl Bugenhagen (Leo McKern) and Michael Morgan (Ian Hendry) have key roles to play in seeking to expose the child born to American ambassador Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) and his wife, Katherine (Lee Remick) as the Antichrist in Richard Donner's The Omen (1976) and Don Taylor's Damien: Omen II (1978). Scottish archaeologist Angus Flint (Peter Capaldi) digs up an unusual skull during a field trip to Derbyshire in Ken Russell's Bram Stoker adaptation, The Lair of the White Worm (1988). Local gossip links the find to a legend involving an ancestor of Lord James d'Ampton (Hugh Grant), whose neighbour, Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe), professes to be terrified of serpents. But she's really an immortal priestess of the snake god, Dionin.
An Amazonian lizard-like monster called the Kathoga goes on a brain-slurping spree from Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History in Peter Hyams's The Relic (1997). Lewis Van Bergen and Penelope Ann Miller actually play an anthropologist and an evolutionary biologist, but all's fair in love and horror. We're also cheating by including Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) because The Specialists aren't really archaeologists, even though they do have an interest in Earth's long-deceased human population.
A Richard Sapir novel provides the impetus for Jonas McCord's The Body (2001), which sees the Vatican send Jesuit priest Fr Matt Gutierrez (Antonio Banderas) to Jerusalem when Israeli archaeologist Dr Sharon Golban (Olivia Williams) claims to have found the remains of Jesus Christ. With insights into the Palestinian crisis adding to the intrigue, this would make for troubling viewing alongside Ron Howard's take on Dan Brown's bestseller, The Da Vinci Code (2006).
Some bloodsucking associates of Danica Talos (Parker Posey) find a tomb belonging to Dracula (Dominic Purcell) in the Syrian desert in David S. Goyer's Blade Trinity (2004), which sees Marvel vampire hunter Eric Brooks (Wesley Snipes) join the Nightstalkers led by Abigail Whistler (Jessica Biel). Archaeologists are equally blameworthy for releasing malevolent forces in Carter Smith's The Ruins (2008), as a group of American tourists stray into a Mexican site and get attacked by some flesh-eating vines. Of course, they do!
On a less silly note, Professor David Wallace (Jason Barry) and student Saiorse Reilly (Nora-Jane Noone) have to rely on the straight shooting of The Hunter (Vinnie Jones) after they encounter some bog people during an Irish hill dig in Brendan Foley's Assault of Darkness (aka Legend of the Bog, 2009). Ancient lore also has much to answer for in Paul Ziller's Stonehenge Apocalypse (2010) after archaeologist Hill Harper discovers an Egyptian tomb in Maine (bear with us) that sets off an electromagnetic pulse that has unwarranted effects on Stonehenge and some Aztec pyramids. Better call for conspiracy theorist Misha Collins.
Having warned you about the Chinese mummy and deadly spiders in Kimble Randall's Guardians of the Tomb and pointed you in the direction of James Thomas's The Tomb: Heart of the Dragon (both 2018) and Jared Cohn's The Tomb: Devil's Revenge (2019), may we conclude with an unheralded gem. Vowing to continue the work of her father and find the alchemical philosopher's stone originally discovered by 15th-century scribe, Nicolas Flamel, Scarlett Marlowe (Perdita Weeks) assembles a team of experts and a camera crew to chronicle a descent into the Catacombs beneath Paris. They quickly find the tomb of a Templar Knight. But that's just for starters in John Erick Dowdle's As Above, So Below (2014), a found footage chiller that made $41 million on its $5 million budget, in spite of some dismissive reviews. Give it a go. After all, isn't that what Cinema Paradiso is for?
