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Indiana Jones is bad for Archaeology like Braveheart is bad for history. It generates additional interest in a subject that many of our youth have little or no interest in. This interest then sparks research into the subject which these youths would not normally undertake. The only bad thing is that the fiction of the movies has given them preconceived notions of what to expect. However, once someone with these ideas is confronted with the cold hard facts of the science, the fiction quickly slips away and is replaced with the genuine facts that spur the fascination on to greater things.

The Indiana Jones movies are without a doubt an entertaining bunch of fantasy with a little bit of historical fact mixed in for legitimacy. It was never the intent of the writers, actors, directors or producers to portray the characters and events in the movies as anything but fantasy. While the stories do draw on actual historical places and objects, they do so with a totally fictitious cast and storyline. At no point in the movie series has there been any allusion that the events are attempting to depict actual archaeology or any cold hard scientific principles.

One of the advantages of having a major motion picture centered around a particular field of science is the good press that field of science receives which it would not have otherwise seen. For instance, the television series CSI does far more to depict itself as scientifically legitimate than the Indian Jones movies do for archaeology. Yet the "science" depicted in CSI for the most part is exaggerated at best. Much like any other fictional entertainment ventures they take a script and use the perception of scientific data to further that script, all the while using only a sprinkling of scientific facts and procedures in order to lend the appearance of credibility to the show. However, the number of college students who took up the sciences associated with Crime Scene Investigation has skyrocketed since the shows inception.

While the number of Archaeology students hasn't hit an all time high in the wake of the Indiana Jones movies, the interest in history in general has. Since Raiders of the Lost Ark has been released we've seen scores of television shows based on archaeology and history created, several actual television networks created that are centered around history, and numerous other academic projects take off that would never have held the same appeal to the American public had the Indiana

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