A woman to reboot Indiana Jones? Yes, please.By Brenna R. Hassett

www.washingtonpost.com

6 - 7 minutes

Brenna R. Hassett, a founder of trowelblazers.com, is a bioarchaeologist at the University of Central Lancashire and the author of “Built On Bones” and “Growing Up Human.”

At almost 81, Harrison Ford has been hitting the red carpet to promote “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” In the four decades since Indy first brought archaeology to the big screen, the gruff, Nazi-punching hero has become the face of digging up the past. Behind the adventure, romance and scene-stealing monkeys is this message: The study of biblical ephemera and Egyptian urban planning is a man’s game.

This is what generations of girls — me included — saw when we saw archaeology. And that’s a problem. Because to be it, you need to see it. So I’m rooting for a woman to take up the franchise; if it is to be Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s feisty new sidekick character, that’s a start. Better yet, let’s reboot Indy as a woman of color.

Girls are inspired to dream big when they recognize themselves on-screen as heroes, not helpmates. (Don’t start me on Lara Croft of “Tomb Raider”: She is a mercenary in shapewear.) And representation works. After 20-odd years of female scientists on “CSI,” “Bones” and the like, forensics, the branch of archaeological science that I teach, is dominated by female students.

That’s why, 10 years ago, I and three other women in the digging sciences — archaeology, geology, paleontology — launched the TrowelBlazers Project. In between fieldwork, teaching and kid care, we amass and share examples of people in our fields who are nothing like Indiana Jones. We’ve found hundreds: women, people of color, Indigenous, rich, poor, you name it. They’ve inspired a doll with plenty of pockets and a touring photography exhibition.

Here’s one example: an actual saint. The Empress Helena of Constantinople was one of the first people known to have ordered the past dug up. Around the year 326, she embarked on a campaign to investigate what she reckoned were biblical sites to furnish her son’s new capital with religious relics.

A more recent standout is Jane Dieulafoy. She became renowned for plundering the archaeological site of Susa in modern-day Iran, sporting a severe haircut and men’s clothing. Dieulafoy followed her engineer husband to war and came out a sharpshooter, ready to repel bandits. Her adventures were so popular, the French government gave her the Légion d’Honneur and an official Permission de Travestissement, or permission to cross-dress.

Amelia Edwards, a popular writer of the 19th century, offers more Indy inspiration. Her first novel was researched in the brothels of Paris (also in men’s clothing). She fell for Egyptology while sailing the Nile with her female companion. Edwards’s best-selling books bankrolled the first professorship of Egyptology at University College London.

Or take Margaret Murray, a contemporary of Yale University’s Hiram Bingham, the self-promoting inspiration for Indiana Jones who made grandiose claims about discovering Machu Picchu. Murray worked on Egyptology and prehistoric religion at University College London and staged public mummy unwrappings. Her chum, archaeological illustrator Hilda Petrie, was so enamored of Egyptology that she skipped her wedding breakfast to jump ship for Egypt and scaled the Great Pyramid of Khufu in her bloomers.

There are additional difficult-to-recover stories of women who weren’t rich and well-connected — such as Yusra, the illiterate Palestinian archaeological laborer who in the 1920s recognized a Neanderthal fossil from a baby tooth while on an all-female dig.

Imagine the power of a movie series inspired by women like these.

Diversity matters. Different people are curious about different things. Female archaeologists have been at the forefront of understanding the real lives and experiences of women in the past, from experiments proving that a broken pot was a 7th-century Athenian training potty, to using ancient DNA to prove that warrior graves belonged to women, too. Likewise, as more Black archaeologists take the lead in studying graves and wrecks, they are making new discoveries about slavery, convict-leasing and the Middle Passage.

But people who have never seen others like them working in a profession are discouraged from entering as well as from staying. Decades of research show this “stereotype threat” leaves talented people much more likely to struggle with impostor syndrome, low confidence and worries about failure.

This has consequences. The growing numbers of women and people of color going into archaeology are not getting the opportunities to make it to Indiana Jones’s lofty level of professor. This affects the culture. Forget students swooning over swashbuckling; there is a real danger of harassment during fieldwork.

Nonetheless, contemporary female archaeologists are asking fresh, urgent questions. Haitian American archaeologist Peggy Brunache, for example, traces food through the experience of enslaved people. Ayana Omilade Flewellen, a co-founder of the Society of Black Archaeologists, helps lead the Estate Little Princess project to study a Danish plantation site on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Beyond Waller-Bridge’s screwball antics, these are the sorts of heroes that today’s little girls and boys deserve to see at the movies. Put them on the screen, and whole new adventures in discovery could follow.