Stupid ideas
Tex's Archaeology Cheatsheet
You know all about archaeology. That's because you sat through an entire special on the topic on the Discovery Channel. Well, you didn't entirely sit through all of it. Watched it intermitantly during commercials of a Cowboys' game would be would be more accurate. But what you did watch you know, and you remember because you're smart like that.
The first important rule about archaeology is that it's pronounced are - kee - all - oh - gee. That ch in the beginning is tricky, but you know better. Archaeologists really like digging things. Kinda like pirates. But unlike pirates, when archaeologists dig holes they pull treasure out of them and give the treasure to a museum. Pirates only steal from museums. That's what makes them rat bastards and crooks. But this is all stuff you knew before watching the Discovery Channel.
What you did learn on the show was interesting. Archaeologists dig for all sorts of things like treasure, bones, really big bones (those are called fossils), and sometimes pitchers and pots. Archaeologists always know what they're trying to dig for and they'll always tell you what they're about to dig up before they find it. Usually an intern or a minority does the digging and the archaeologist watches, then takes the loot when its all cleaned up. They don't call it loot though. They call it a find. Archaeologists always make sure to get their fingerprints all over everything they find. That's how museums can tell who found it. Sometimes treasure hunters try to steal from archaeologists and sell to museums, claiming the find as their own. Treasure hunters are kind of like pirates like that. Archaeologists hate pirates (that's why they're always digging up the pirates' treasure). But treasure hunters are pirates pretending to hate pirates so they can steal other pirates' treasure. This is where the show got a little confusing and you flipped back to the football.
When the game went back to a commercial and you came back to the Discovery Channel, they were done talking about pirates. Odd. Instead they were talking about how to clean and handle finds. Cleaning things is a woman's job, but it's okay when the find is gold or other treasure. Archaeologists like to use brushes to move dirt off of things. Haven't they ever heard of a shovel? With a good shovel you could pull several bones and coins out of the ground all at once and then toss 'em in the back of your pickup and bring 'em back to civilization to clean up. Seriously, why would you want to brush off some old bones with your own toothbrush when you could just stick them in the dishwasher?
Some archaeologists are really smart. They break things and look inside and can tell you what the broken thing was made of. This is really important to archaeology. Maybe bones have rings inside like a tree that tell you how old the bones are. If you show the archaeologists how to look inside things and figure out what they're made of they'll know how smart you are.
At this point in the show, on the other channel the Cowboys won. You stopped watching the Discovery Channel since the game was over, but you still know plenty of stuff about archaeology (the thing that archaeologists do). First of all, when you find a human skeleton, you should always check and see if it was killed by Indians. If it was there will be a bunch of arrowheads near the body. These are as collectible as they are valuable. If you just so happen to get stranded in the wilderness without guns, your collection of arrowheads will allow you to survive against the carnivorous cougars, tigers, and even, chupacabras.
All archaeologists love Indiana Jones movies. These movies popularized archaeology and made it into a real profession. Before then everybody though archaeologists just dug through garbage dumpsters (not true!). But Indiana Jones (which was a documentary, filmed in realtime (except for Temple of Doom)) changed all that and legitimized archaeology.
One final thing you should know about archaeology is that you should never EVER write down where you find finds. If the treasure hunters found that out, they'd steal everything or they'd just kill you and take everything you already dug up. Finds are secrets. Hell, even other archaeologists shouldn't know where you found things. They can go dig everything up and leave you without a job. Some archaeologists like to write fake journals of their finds and leave them about to sabotage other archaeologists into digging where there's no finds. But all the smart archaeologists know that the journals are fake since no skilled archaeologist records anything, ever. It's a vicious cycle.
