The detective about the archaeologist: ”Professor, you would have been a good detective.” 
Leslie Howard, Pimpernel Smith (1941)
The archaeologist about the detective: “You would have made a good archaeologist, M. Poirot. 
You have the gift of re-creating the past” 
Agatha Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)

As contemporary Western societies are characterized by increasing specialization, professionalization, and scientification, it is not surprising that the past too is expected to be dealt with by experts, in this case historical and archaeological scholars who have the skills to investigate the past. Archaeologists have long been considered – and considered themselves – as professional detectives of the past. They solve profound mysteries and reveal the secrets of the past for us all (Holtorf 2005: chapter 4).

Alluding to this role, Alfred Kidder (1949: XI) described the opposite to the ”hairy-chested” archaeologist in the following terms:

The hairy-chinned archaeologist … is old. He is benevolently absent-minded. His only weapon is a magnifying glass, with which he scrutinizes inscriptions in forgotten languages. Usually his triumphant decipherment coincides, in the last chapter, with the daughter’s rescue from savages by the handsome young assistant.

This Sherlock Holmes type figure has become a common cliché for the archaeologist. Although the detective has been associated with other disciplines too (Haynes 1994: 178-9), the link with archaeology is nevertheless extremely close. As has often been pointed out (e.g. Pallottino 1968: 12; Adams 1973; Gründel and Ziegert 1983; Hunter 1996), both archaeology and (forensic) criminology draw, in parts, on seemingly incontrovertible material evidence, which is carefully documented and taken to provide significant clues as to what really had happened at the site under investigation (see Figure 4.2). Both used advanced technology helping them to come up with reconstructions of the past based on circumstantial evidence. It is not surprising that these convergences have in some cases led to close co-operation between the detectives of the past and the archaeologists of crime, for example when archaeologists have been able to assist the police in their work, producing incontrovertible evidence that would stand up in court (Hunter 1996).

Vice versa, in at least one case, an archaeological mystery was attempted to be solved through a public inquiry that resembled a court trial (Darvill et al 1999). The case was the meaning of the Cerne Giant, the huge figure of a naked man cut into the chalk of a hill in Dorset, U.K. In front of a packed audience the inquiry took place on 23 March 1996 in the local Village Hall at Cerne Abbas. All was filmed by the BBC who were keen to present the debate as a courtroom drama. Three cases were presented: that the Giant is prehistoric/Romano-British in origin; that he is of medieval or post-medieval origin; and lastly, that he is significant irrespective of age. Tim Darvill, Ronald Hutton and Barbara Bender acted as advocates for the three arguments. In addition to their own pleas they had each invited several expert witnesses to strengthen their cases. A panel of assessors steered the inquiry, and co-ordinated cross-examination and third-party questioning of the witnesses. The audience functioned as the jury and finally voted with a large majority in favour of the case for a prehistoric/Romano-British origin.

Figure 5.3: A fun-filled visit to the ARC will turn you and your family or group into archaeological detectives. Get your hands on real history and find out how archaeologists use clues to piece together York's past. You'll be amazed what you can find by digging in the dirt! Invitation to the Archaeological Resource Centre at York, U.K.. Photograph: Cornelius Holtorf 2003.

Many archaeological TV documentaries, for example those on Discovery Channel including Time Team, tend to adopt detective-style narratives to tell their stories (see chapter 3). The same is true for a large number of adventures and computer games such as Riddle of the Sphinx (2000) and The Mystery of the Mummy (2003) (Felder et al 2003: 171-3). Even an entire museum exhibition has now been designed as a detective story. Exhibition maker and archaeologist Heidrun Derks (2003) created the fictitious detective Stahnke who accompanies visitors through the new exhibition about the famous Battle of Varus in Kalkriese in northwest Germany. Based on the notion of a search for clues, Stahnke explains to the visitor the various ”criminalistic” methods by which archaeologists have been investigating the site of the battle. Children literature and cartoons too, play on notion of the archaeologist who, after digging up things, has to reconstruct what they were. The best-known example of this genre are Calvin & Hobbes’ excavations (see Figs 4.3, 5.4). It is also the theme of Carin and Stina Wirsén’s picture book Rut & Knut go digging (Rut & Knut gräver ut, 2000), where the two heroes find all sorts of bones and artifacts, eventually using them all to build a pirate ship.

Figure 5.4 Calvin & Hobbes on an archaeological expedition (1988).

The entire genre of the archaeologist as detective has often been parodied. If, as Warwick Bray (1981: 222) suggested, the intellectual health of a discipline can be measured by the parodies it generates, then archaeology is very healthy indeed. One brilliant example is the German satirist Hans Traxler’s (1983) bestselling story of how the fairy tale archaeologist Georg Ossegg is gradually discovering, through various material clues and excavations, the historical truth behind the Grimm Brother’s story of Hansel and Gretel. No less brilliant is the author and illustrator David Macaulay’s (1979) account of the Motel of the Mysteries, a late twentieth century ruin re-discovered in 4022 by the mediocre amateur archaeologist Howard Carson. The site was to reveal ”wonderful things” indeed about a mysterious lost civilization… Hilarious fun about current variations of the historical detective in TV documentaries specifically was made by Marcus Brigstocke in his own spoof series We are History (2000-1) (see chapter 2).

Arguably, a special case within the detective category is the antiquarian scholar, usually an elderly male professor with glasses and a beard, somewhat dull but not always unattractive, obsessed with his research – which he perceives as a large puzzle, keeping a journal containing his theories, and a little out of this world. This was the role played by archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler on British TV during the 1950s (Jordan 1981; Russell 2002b: 43). Even the very popular figure of the excavating Swedish King Gustav VI Adolf (1882-1973) may fall under this category, although this should by no means be taken to denigrate his genuine interest (see Lagerqvist and Odelberg 1972).

The gentleman-like scholar, like the detective, creates light where there was darkness, solving academic mysteries through the skills of careful observation, enormous knowledge, strict logic, and some intuition when it matters most. In a way this character is thus a hero too, although not in the sense of the classical adventure discussed earlier (which is why some prefer to speak of an anti-hero in this context). The narrative that goes with scholarship, as seen in popular culture, bears nevertheless an astonishing resemblance to that common in adventures: scholars leave behind their own familiar world, fully committed to command other worlds; they work in their fields exploring uncharted territories without fear or hesitation; they make sensational discoveries, and eventually they announce their enlightenment to the world at large, which in turn rewards them with recognition, although their own motivation is entirely selfless. Indiana Jones’s father Professor Henry Jones, who was famously played by Sean Connery in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, is designed precisely in this mould. He does not like being disturbed and never had time for his son since he followed his personal quest of scholarship for all his life. Yet then the scholarly passion of his father suddenly merge with Indy’s adventure and the Professor’s scholarship becomes as important as Indy’s fighting skills for the successful completion of their joint adventure. In this case as well as in The Mummy and Stargate movies, the Relic Hunter films, the Lego Adventurer products and the Doc Savage series, among others, the detective/scholar and the adventurer together form the classic team for solving archaeological mysteries.

An added dimension to the scholarly detective is not seldom that there are two or more of them competing with each other. As Neal Ascherson (2004: 152) put it, when these ”bearded giants of the intellect” meet, the scholar is transformed into an ”academic street fighter” hitting out at the other, so that ”one professor’s victory (becomes) the shattering defeat and discrediting of another.” It may have been that kind of dynamic too that led to the compelling ”fact-based” novels in which Ceram (1980 [1949]) and several others after him told the history of important archaeological discoveries. As the German historian Rolf Schörken (1995: 73-5) argued, there is more to these stories than the heroic adventures they are retelling. Throughout popular culture, archaeology deals with mysteries where many pieces of a puzzle have to be found and then put together. Only at the end, the full picture will be revealed. Every discovery story is thus also a little detective story.

Table 5.1 Similarities between the detective story and the fact-based archaeological novel as represented by Ceram. Source: Schörken (1995: 74). My translation.

These correspondences between criminological and archaeological mysteries are certainly one reason why archaeologists and archaeology occur frequently in detective fiction. Agatha Christie, whose Hercule Poirot is explicitly inspired by archaeological methodology, was also married to the archaeologist Max Mallowan and participated in a series of his excavations herself (Trümpler 2001). She saw archaeology as a puzzle about the past and mentioned in conversations that there were obvious parallels between the work of archaeologists and that of detectives (Joan Oates, pers. comm.). Many other writers have seen these similarities too. The popular Swedish author Jan Mårtenson (Caesars örn, 1996), for instance, described in parallel the investigations of hobby detective Johan Homan and those of a team of archaeologists on Gotland. A British example that comes to mind is Ellis Peters’ (City of Gold and Shadows, 1973) account of a series of mysterious discoveries at the imaginary Roman site of Aurae Phiala. The bestselling author Tony Hillerman (e.g. A Thief of Time, 1989) in turn likes to combine themes about native American archaeology with the work of his police officer Joe Leaphorn.

Vice versa, some archaeologists like Stanley Casson (Murder by Burial, 1938), Glyn Daniel (aka Dilwyn Rees, e.g. The Cambridge Murders, 1945), Barbara Mertz (aka Elizabeth Peters, numerous Amelia Peabody novels), and Gordon Willey (e.g. Selena, 1997) have also written detective novels themselves, usually featuring archaeologists. The American archaeologist and author Beverly Connor maintains a comprehensive website contextualizing her novels about the forensic anthropologist Diane Fallon resp. the Southeastern archaeologist Lindsay Chamberlain, who is ”unfortunately accustomed to murder on archaeological sites” (from her online mystery The Case of the Murdered Archaeologist).

However, in popular culture, not all archaeological scholars are successful detectives, becoming heroes in their own fields. Some seem to be doing little else than conducting arcane research through which they accumulate obscure facts and artifacts. They are from educated middle-class backgrounds and come across as dull and boring people, so that popular culture occasionally makes fun of them (Membury 2002: 11; Russell 2002b: 39). This, for example, is the case with Jean-Luc Picard, Captain of the Enterprise and a dedicated amateur archaeologist. When, in the Startrek episode ”Qpid”, he addressed the Federation’s Archaeology Council, his ”scientific” speech is described (and indeed performed) as ”dull” and ”pedantic”. Another boring archaeologist was depicted in the extremely popular 1980s BBC sitcom Hi-De-Hi, written by David Croft and Jimmy Perry. The series was set in a typical British holiday camp in the 1950s and 1960s. Jeffrey Fairbrother, a former Professor of archaeology, is the awkward and uncomfortable new entertainment manager who introduces himself with the following words :

I left my seat at Cambridge as Professor of Archaeology, essentially, to discover just how to stop being boring. It's no secret that being boring is what led to the end of my marriage, and I found, to my surprise, that many of my students were falling asleep during my lectures too because they were bored as well.

A similar character is Professor Roland Crump, the ”distinguished archaeologist” in the British comedy Carry On Behind (1975). He is an uptight, confused, and wimpish scholar who encounters numerous situations of sexual innuendo while excavating a Roman brothel with a mosaic depicting erotic scenes. Significantly, we meet him first while giving a lecture entitled ”Getting to the bottom of things”.

Detective/scholar archaeologists of popular culture

All in all, scholars, like detectives, are widely considered benevolent and harmless. Indeed, their scholarship is often seen as appealing and enviable, although it may occasionally have its funny aspects too. In the context of the scholars’ own families, however, the complete dedication given to their research can be more sad than funny. This is well illustrated by Henry Jones who, in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, emerges as a father who had been obsessed with scholarship for all his life and never had time for his son. At the end of the film he finally seems to realize his mistake (Son: ”What did you find, Dad?” – Father: ”Me?”). Similarly, when Sir Noel Cunliffe, the famous Oxford archaeologist in Julian Mitchell’s play Half-Life (1977: 53), now retired, comes to reconsider his life he is forced to admit: ”I’ve been buried all my life. I’m trying to scrape my way up to light and air.” He learns (p. 57) that his institution, too, has to carry some of the blame: ”Oxford’s well known to protect people from reality. A great preserver of self-delusions.” In addition, there can be a side to this character yet more worrying. Whether by some historical coincidence or as a result of misguided ambitions, the scholar may end up on the ’wrong’ moral side. Such figures can become potent enemies even to their own colleagues, as demonstrated by the Nazi archaeologist Dr Elsa Schneider in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and the corrupt archaeologist Alex West who works for an auction house, in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001). In another way scholarship can be dangerous too. Referral to scholarship in tricky questions always implies that – provided all the facts are known – there will be a single correct answer. Just as with the jigsaw puzzle, the skilled expert will first assemble all the pieces and then carefully fit them altogether until the complete image becomes visible. This is how archaeologists, so often, are presented in popular culture. Incidentally, this is also how archaeologists themselves like to see themselves, describing the process of their research by using detective metaphors. As reassuring as this view of the archaeologist may be, both for archaeologists and others, it is also misleading. In Rolf Jensen’s terms (see chapter 1), the idea of the gradually being completed puzzle may create ”peace of mind” for everybody involved but the complexities of life are often such that the notion of a single solution to complex issues appears to be naive at best. In puzzle terms, there will be far too more pieces than one can handle, far too few that actually fit to each other and many that will fit into the one and the same places (and nowhere else). Often, a combination of different, partial answers based on local knowledge rather than universal scholarship, can in fact do better justice to competing perspectives.

”All of scientific research into prehistory is a sort of jigsaw-puzzle. Fitting facts to 
theories until the sum of all the facts establishes without doubt a complete and 
irrefutable picture.”
Hammond Innes (1973: 241-2)

Moreover, the notion of the scholar implies that their ”cases” can be, and need to be resolved by referring to outside expertise. Yet in practice it is often less than clear what kind of expertise would actually be required, who may be possessing it, to whom the experts themselves are accountable, and in what way they can be controlled by those using their services. Such concerns have led to calls for a stronger democratization of the sciences (see chapter 6).

An added problem arises when the role of archaeologist is effectively reduced to that of the scholarly expert and a simultaneous role as an independent thinker is made impossible. As the British archaeologist Yannis Hamilakis (2003: 108) reminded us in the aftermath of the war against Iraq:

we should reject the role of the professional specialist who provides expertise in their narrow field but who fails to question the meta-narratives and practices of nationalism, neo-colonialism and imperialism, within which this knowledge is deployed.

Forward to The R theme: the archaeologist making significant revelations

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