Not Actually Archaeology

The BBC had a short-lived show called Bonekickers. It also hosts a long collection of comments/reviews by BBC subscribers. Most of them were not happy.

I have come to realize that all these shows and franchises; Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, Relic Hunter, The Librarian and The Librarians, National History -- and a whole lot of book series as well -- are really offering history. Calling their heroes archaeologists, historians, iconologist/symbologists or even librarians is misleading because these stories are in no way about these academic disciplines.

These characters are instead guides, viewpoints, story tools; doorways to enter a plot that engages with history (and, more often than not, its artifacts).

So I'm with those BBC reviewers who commented they didn't expect to see good field practice going on. They had come for the fun of exploring history. The trowel is just a slightly more real-world version of a TARDIS. Just as whatever wacky interpretations Dan Brown's characters want to make about Renaissance art are merely an excuse to delve into that history.

There is reason why any show with a budget will dramatize a few minutes in that past time. In books of a certain kind, this is the "Diego Velasquez the Reluctant Conquistador" prologue, where we are briefly on the Yucatan Peninsula in 1525 before our POV character dies in the jungle, leaving only some tantalizing clue for our modern-day cast.

The thing of it is...

H.G. Wells has a quote about getting the audience to accept one impossible thing then getting on with the story. The readers and watchers are willing to accept our unlikely heroes and their terrible working methods as the premise that makes the story possible.

But what I seem to be finding more and more is people, who go on to dislike whatever franchise it is, for making such a muck of the history they promised. That's the follow-up, that's the part where Wells said you need to play fair.

And to be fair, much of this churn may be because the interwebs are crawling with amateur historians and amateur historians (especially military historians) rate high on the crank-o-meter.

History, though. Real history is messy. I understand the urge towards simplifying, cleaning up. I am willing to argue that most academic presentations of history are forced to simplify, clean up, and make unsupported leaps in order to make the material more comprehensible. Every historian has their own lens, their own spin (which is why the good ones are using so many citations; that way, you can at least check to see if what they have decided to tell you about a certain source is what you, personally, think of that source when you read it.)

It gets worse when you are trying to dramatize. I'm trying to write as true to the real world as I can, myself, but I am selecting, curating, committing huge sins of omission, and sometimes outright changing something to make for a better story. I scaled up Notre Dame de Paris by about 25% -- unless you want to assume my protagonist stands five-foot-two with boots on, some of her climbing stunts just don't work on the real building.

For most writers, visual media or no, the real world isn't as spectacular or as convenient as they'd like. That lovely castle ruin in Germany is at least decently big, but it is dressed in wire fencing, fronted by ticket booth and snack stands, and crawling with tourists. Any convenient secret passage will have been discovered long ago by the cleaning crew (if not the restorers!) and any lovely gold crown you find down there is going to interest Customs and a whole batch of other people very much.

Besides, of course, not glowing. Hell, if you find an ancient sword, you are lucky if you can even recognize it was a sword. You aren't going to be swinging it over your head any time soon. Not unless you like rust in your hair.

So does it help that the professional practices of our heroes might get a free pass? I mean, even without having them being under the pressure of a zombie apocalypse? Or without there being actual, you know, world destroying magic buried under that step pyramid in the Yucatan.

Yeah, I think we can all accept that our heroes might not have time for the camel-hair brushes, just like the heroes of another franchise can't always make time to rouse a judge and get a warrant signed.

But the thing of it is...I don't think the free pass lasts for garbage history. Even secret world, conspiracy, alternate history has to play by the rules. Wells' dictum is still there. The presence and nature of zombies is free, and Cleopatra XVIII Philpator's real reason to ally with Marc Anthony (to fight off the zombies, of course!) can be whatever the writer needs and the reader is fine with that.

But Alexandria had better be correct (and the Romans had better be wearing the correct armor!)