Fictional archaeologists

[jack]

This came up at the emergency party at the weekend (although I can't remember why now, I think we were talking about why we like Indiana Jones). Casey and Andy comic [1] had one strip where they rated how nerdy various answers to questions was, one being "Name a fictional archaeologist". It was a good concept, although I (and I think others) disagreed with the answers somewhat.

Fortunately we realised the *real* nerd response was to immediately critique the test and start listing fictional archaeologists in order of how nerdy they are to think of first.

1. Indiana Jones. This was given as the normal response, least nerdy. After all, Indiana Jones is a mainstream classic. However, most of the geeks I know agree with that.

2. Lara Croft. This was given as a geekier response, which is probably true. Although most geeks I know think Lara Croft is a bit passe :)

3. Daniel Jackson from stargate. More obscure, and he actually is geeky himself.

4. Henry Jones, Sr. Slightly more specific than Indian.

5. Henry Jones, Jr. Strictly more geeky than "Indiana", as it requires a detailed knowledge of the series.

6. Someone from a good space-opera I hadn't read.

7. The senior Dalrymple, Earl of Scarborough, from Pippa's work in progress, it being even geekier to *write* about a momentous discovery of linguistics/archaeology.

8. Some other fictionalised *actual* archaeologist.

9. Pham Nuwen, from Vernor Vinge's Fire Upon the Deep and Deepness in the Sky, a software archaeologist. I was very proud of this one, I thought it wins.

But does anyone have a 10?

[1] although this strip on a similar theme is a lot more epic.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/vitriol_/]

Mr Snow, from Planetary by Warren Ellis came to mind - it's a series about a group called Planetary dedicated to uncovering 'the secret history of the twentieth century', which gives Ellis a chance to play with different genres as they investigate from pulp to 70s monster movies to John Woo films to 50s B movies.

Sci-fi's also full of them, because when long-dead alien races are careless enough to leave cities filled with magitech littered across the galaxy, archeology suddenly becomes a very exciting profession. Joshua Calvert from Peter F. Hamilton's massive trilogy is a good example, as are quite a few of Andre Norton's characters.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. I was thinking about a similar case elsewhere. I think archaeology of "Ancients" is almost an entry by itself (it cropped up in the Vinge too). In that if there are ancient, advanced civilisations, then all of a sudden archaeology is no longer an irrelevant science devoted to pure knowledge, but military research. And so the idea is very geeky, but each individual ancient-archaeologist probably doesn't add that much *more* geekiness :)