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Posted on Oct 30, 2014

8 Real-Life Indiana Jones-es

Move over, Harrison Ford. These eight women are the new faces of archaeology. (But we’ll still use your GIF-worthy face for humor purposes.)

by HarperCollins

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Main Area of Study: Greece and Cyprus from the late Bronze Age to the 5th century C.E.

Notable accomplishment: Recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant

Current gig: Since 1990, she has served as Director at the Yeronisos Island Expedition and Field School off the coast of western Cyprus.

Conelly's Theory: Yeronisos was developed to honor Caesarion, Cleopatra’s child by Caesar—the heir she hoped would unite the empires of Egypt and Rome.

Proceed at your own risk: If you call her “Indiana Joan”

Mind the snakes: The venom of a snake native to Cyprus can kill its victim in twenty-five minutes. Her team works more than thirty minutes from the nearest hospital without an antidote on site.

Catchphrase-in-the-making: When some geocachers interfere with her dig site, an incensed Connelly laments, “We’re not playing.”

Memorable New Year’s Eve: She flew to Cyprus to spend NYE 2000 with monks at the Monastery of St. Neophytos. They watched Star Wars and discussed the enduring wisdom of Yoda.

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Main Area of Study: Chinatown in Deadwood, South Dakota in the late 1800s

Early aspirations: “I told my teacher I wanted to dig up—I didn’t say people, but I wanted to dig up people who were here before the people we give names to.”

Relationship dealbreaker: When she found a rare, decorated pottery rim near the end of her first field school, her (now ex-)husband responded, “Rosie, what are you doing out here in this heat, getting so excited about something broken?” In the immortal words of Liz Lemmon, “THAT’S a dealbreaker, ladies.”

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Main Area of Study: Caral, Peru—the oldest city in the Americas

Major accomplishment: Discovered aforementioned oldest city

You thought your cubicle was bad?: Solís was shot at by masked robbers as she began her work excavating the ancient city.

Shady Americans are the worst: In order to complete the expensive work of carbon dating Caral, she asked Jonathan Haas and Winifred Creamer, an American husband-and-wife team, for help. When it was confirmed that Caral was the oldest city in the Americas (as old at the pyramids!), Haas and Creamer were widely hailed as co-discoverers. Though they later tried to correct this, the misconception was widely reported.

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Main Area of Study: Employed by the Department of Defense to educate American soldiers about avoiding archaeologically significant landmarks

Archaeologists, they’re just like pop stars: Rush needed a police escort at the 2008 World Archaeological Congress (archaeologists have varying degrees of respect for one of their own collaborating with the military).

Learning can be fun, kids: She created sets of playing cards for soldiers in Iraq, Egypt, and Afghanistan with information about archaeological practices, famous cultural sites, and notable artifacts. Reverse sides could be pieced together to form a map of the most iconic site for each country.

When she learned to never trust the Internet: While researching archaeologically significant spots in Iraq, Rush explains, “I found a website and was reading about ziggurats; then I got to the bottom of the page and it said, ‘The platforms are excellent for landing UFOs.’ Noooo! It was a Site sponsored by some crystal skull place.”

Special hobby: Ice dancing—she took it up in order to get over her performance anxiety. Public speaking seems better by comparison. Or, as I imagine, just about everything seems better by comparison.

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Main Area of Study: Revolutionary-Era Warships in Rhode Island

Real Housewives-Worthy-Catchphrase-in-the-making: “I’m the empress here.” (gestures to the grounds of the Newport Naval Complex)

Side job: Worked as a cleaning lady in some of Newport’s historical mansions to support herself while starting out

Notable accomplishments: She’s the first woman in the US to do marine surveying, and she choreographed the excavation of the oldest warship project in North America.

Pet: A Pekinese named Diva

Memorable quote: “Once the mayor has yelled at you at a city council meeting, whatever your professor says at grad school is nothing.”

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Main Area of Study: Forensic archaeology

Did you know?: Human kneecaps look like rocks, burnt bones shrink and twist

New Jersey facts, part 1: New Jersey does not permit burial and excavation of human remains for training forensic professionals. 400-pound pigs act as stand-ins for Moran and her team.

New Jersey facts, part 2: They buried the pigs in parts of the one-million acre Jersey Pine Barrens, which is, according to everyone interviewed, THE place to bury a body in New Jersey (can someone create a BuzzFeed list of the other 9 “Top 10 Places to Bury Someone in New Jersey”?).

Latest experiment: In order to give law enforcement and forensics professionals the chance to conduct a “full-scale post-blast investigation,” Moran dressed up a bunch of dead farm animals in children’s clothing, gave them some personal effects, put ‘em on a bus and simulated a terrorist attack to blow it up. Every animal was recovered and identified.

She's on top of all the Hot Landscaping Trends: “I have forty-five rats buried in my backyard to study.”

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Main Area of Study: The debris from the post-9/11 wreckage of the World Trade Center towers

Call-to-action: The Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York put out a call for archaeologists who had experience working with human remains in 2006, after construction on the memorial site turned them up.

Medical precautions: Erin screened the six feet of topsoil from the area around the towers and debris from nearby sewers—all of which was deemed toxic.

Dress code: A fitted hazmat suit with goggles, boots, and thick rubber gloves