Cracked.com features "8 Famous Fictional Archaeologists Who Suck At Their Job".
OK, yes, this is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, what with Lara Croft, Brendan Fraser and the like. The list is so packed that they don't even find space for Allan Quatermain. Or maybe Alan Moore has successfully rehabilitated Quatermain's geek cred.
Anyway, the whole list is a hoot. Here's a snippet from the inevitable Indiana Jones entry:
We have lots of gold, Indy! We have people and machines whose entire job is to make holes in mountains until gold comes out, and you're collapsing a priceless trove of ancient machinery to recover something we could dig up in 10 minutes. Most archaeologists consider themselves lucky to find all the shards of the same destroyed vase, because they'll be able to put it back together in only a few months. That pressure-plate-triggered arrow-launcher? That was worth more than the gold. That shouldn't be that difficult for Indy, an archeologist, to comprehend. Yet he destroys ruins so intact they're actively trying to protect themselves from him. In other words, they weren't ruins until he arrived.
I think that real archaeology has a shortage of suitable MacGuffins. Of course, those silly "power stones" in Temple of Doom set the bar pretty low...
