By Becky O’Sullivan
As a kid growing up in the early 90’s I of course had my favorite animated Disney movie: The Little Mermaid. I could recite the dialogue from the entire film almost verbatim and would often wish for long red hair and a fish tail as I swam around the neighborhood swimming pool. While I still wish I was a redhead, now I think I might understand why I loved the movie so much. Given the right education and training, Ariel (the “little mermaid” of the movie title) would be a killer archaeologist.
Ariel probably fits more in the antiquarian school of Archaeology, but I know she really wants to be a post-processualist.
Ariel loves to study and collect the things that human beings have discarded on the ocean’s floor. Although it doesn’t seem she is so interested in the items’ context, what is clear is that she is very interested in learning more about the people who created these strange (to her) objects. One of the things I love about archaeology is the detective work that goes into figuring out an archaeological site. While it might seem ridiculous to us for someone to misinterpret what a fork is used for, because archaeologists for the most part only have material items to go off when they are trying to understand a past group such misunderstandings are bound to happen.
Remember, taking artifacts from shipwrecks is against the law (and might get you eaten by a giant shark.)
But in the end Ariel isn’t singing about how cool her collection of arrow heads is, or how she just finished developing her own bottle chronology she is singing about her desire for understanding. Artifacts themselves are really just old garbage. Without understanding where they came from and who made them they are just a dusty old collection. The thing that would make Ariel a good archaeologist, and the thing I love most about archaeology, is the desire to learn more about the people behind the artifacts. The stuff that we find as archaeologists can be pretty neat, but ultimately I want to be where the people are!
