Archaeologist Quotes & Sayings

Approximately eight hundred skeletons from the Dickson Mounds in the lower Illinois Valley have been analyzed. They reveal a clear picture of the health changes that accompanied the shift from foraging to corn farming around 1200 AD. Archaeologist George Armelagos and his colleagues reported that the farmers' remains show a 50 percent increase in chronic malnutrition, and three times the incidence of infectious diseases (indicated by bone lesions) compared with the foragers who preceded them. Furthermore, they found evidence of increased infant mortality, delayed skeletal growth in adults, and a fourfold increase in porotic hyperostosis, indicating iron-deficiency anemia in more than half the population. — Christopher Ryan

Future civilizations - better civilizations than this one - are going to judge all men by the extent to which they've been artists. You and I, if some future archaeologist finds our works miraculously preserved in some city dump, will be judged by the quality of our creations. Nothing else about us will matter. — Kurt Vonnegut

What satellites help to show us is we've actually only found a fraction of a percent of ancient settlements and sites all over the world ... It's the most exciting time in history to be an archaeologist. — Sarah Parcak

One graduate student told me, "When the Apocalypse comes, you want to know an archaeologist, because we know how to make fire, catch food, and create hill forts," and I promptly added her to my address book. Knows how to make hill forts - who can say when that will come in handy? — Marilyn Johnson

When the Apocalypse comes, you want to know an archaeologist, because we know how to make fire, catch food, and create hill forts, — Marilyn Johnson

It's interesting to see that people had so much clutter even thousands of years ago. The only way to get rid of it all was to bury it, and then some archaeologist went and dug it all up. — Karl Pilkington

I married an archaeologist because the older I grow, the more he appreciates me. — Agatha Christie

He was not trained in conservation - he was, after all, no more than an archaeologist - a digger! — Penelope Fitzgerald

an Afghan archaeologist followed the Taliban through the museum, "pleading for mercy as if begging for the lives of [his] own children."14 Such pleas were meaningless to those who felt their axes swung with God's weight behind them. — Karima Bennoune

The lure of the past came up to grab me. To see a dagger slowly appearing, with its gold glint, through the sand was romantic. The carefulness of lifting pots and objects from the soil filled me with a longing to be an archaeologist myself. — Agatha Christie

Calm down please, sir, if you will,' said the bobby, still retaining a firm hold upon the horse's reins. ' "Stolen" is such an ugly word. It is not technically stealing if you are a British archaeologist and you acquire items of historical significance in the savage realms and liberate them to civilisation. — Robert Rankin

I wanted to be an archaeologist. But in school you have to take a tremendous amount of statistics for that, and I am not good at statistics. So I hit a real wall with archaeology. It's probably like wanting to be an architect - you think it's all fun and games, and then you have to get out a calculator and you're done. — Sloane Crosley

Papa, do you believe there is any meaning to life?" I blurted out. "I don't not believe" he said sternly. "I know. The meaning of life - the meaning of a single, individual human life, since I assume that is what you are asking - consists of figuring out the one thing you are great stand then pushing mankind's mastery of that one thing as far as you are able, be it an inch or a mile. If you are a carpenter, be a carpenter with every ounce of your being and invent a new type of saw. If you are an archaeologist, find the tomb of Alexander the Great. If you are Alexander the Great, conquer the world. And never to anything by half — Olga Grushin

Do you realize that a middle-class couple, one archaeologist, one dolls' expert, can't move from their house because ancient spirits are blocking them in? It's a reasonable sort of day's experience, isn't it? — Robert Holdstock

I go back and research, say, every reference to the Gorgons, and I find what the classical writers said about them and it's so much richer than you might get in an average Greek mythology text. I feel like an archaeologist - I'm dusting off these things that people have not seen for thousands of years and bringing them into the modern world. — Rick Riordan

While growing up in Baltimore, Maryland, I dreamed of becoming many things: an archaeologist, an ambassador, an actor, an author. — Karen Hesse

[Agatha Christie] is fond of quoting the witty wife who once said, 'an archaeologist is the best husband any woman can have; the older she gets, the more interested he is in her.
Christie's husband, Max Mallowan, was an archaeologist. — Nigel Dennis

I am an archaeologist of mature vintage. Rapid descents are not my specialty. I am the plodding type."
~ Grace Madison, PhD. — N.L.B. Horton

After I graduated from the University of Glasgow, I was a self-employed archaeologist going from dig to dig around Scotland, and it was not well-paid. I was an excavator, not a lecturer as well, so paying rent on a flat was tricky. In the end I decided to retrain as a journalist as I couldn't see a future in it. — Neil Oliver

If you really want to be a good archaeologist, you have to understand ancient DNA; you have to understand chemical analysis to figure out the composition of ancient pots. You have to be able to study human remains. You need to be able to do computer processing and, in some cases, computer programming. — Sarah Parcak

When people initially think of the term 'space archaeologist,' they think, 'Oh, it's someone who uses satellites to look for alien settlements on Mars or in outer space,' but the opposite is true - we're actually looking for evidence of past human life on planet earth. — Sarah Parcak

I knew I never wanted to become an archaeologist. But at school I became intrigued by what people were doing on an everyday basis in the past. — Juliet Aubrey

To excavate a pyramid is the dream of every archaeologist. — Sarah Parcak

Science is just as important as magic. — Donna Grant

An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her. — Agatha Christie

Whether we are reading the Bible for the first time or standing in a field in Israel next to a historian and an archaeologist and a scholar, the Bible meets us where we are. That is what truth does — Rob Bell

I originally worked as an archaeologist in North Carolina, and when bones were found police would take them out to the bones lady at the university, and that was me. — Kathy Reichs

As an archaeologist, I've often wondered how we as a race keep going through all the misery. The answer is revealed: the potential for closeness with strangers. Floating — Simon Van Booy

I must be an emotional archaeologist because I keep looking for the roots of things, particularly the roots of behavior and why I feel certain ways about certain things. — Fred Rogers

You're kind of a psycho. I get that."
"I might be," Monica agreed, and gave her a slow, strange smile. "You're one smart little freak. Now run away, smart little freak, before I change my mind and stick you in one of these old suitcases for some architect to find a hundred years from now."
Claire blinked. "Archaeologist."
Monica's eyes turned winter cold. "Oh, you'd better start running away now. — Rachel Caine

On the Italian side, we can trace the family back 2,000 years. I have a cousin in Rome, a famous archaeologist, Count Andrea Carandini, who was in Lombardy and came across some pottery with the original name of the family, Carandinus, painted on it. — Christopher Lee

Archaeologist, adventurer - I saw the Indiana Jones movies. They are the same. — Christina Dodd

Meteorology ... is quite as "scientific" as geology and far more so than archaeology - it actually makes more use of scientific instruments, computers, and higher mathematics ... Yet we laugh at the weatherman every other day; we are not overawed by his impressive paraphernalia, because we can check up on him any time we feel like it: he makes his learned pronouncements - and then it rains or it doesn't rain.
No scientific conclusion is to be trusted without testing - to the extent to which exact sciences are exact they are also experimental sciences; it is in the laboratory that the oracle must be consulted. But the archaeologist is denied access to the oracle. For him there is no neat and definitive demonstration; he is doomed to plod along, everlastingly protesting and fumbling through a laborious, often rancorous running debate that never ends. — Hugh Nibley

I'm an Egyptologist. I'm a remote sensing specialist, and I'm a space archaeologist. — Sarah Parcak

The moreness of him was beginning to show. The way ruins were excavated by an archaeologist. Brushstroke by brushstroke. Bit by bit. — Ryan Graudin

You couldn't get more original than Laura. Laura. Yes, she was an original, all right. One of a kind. Did they break her mold or what, pal? Or ... or did it self-destruct? Still, Laura. The one and the only. Such a plain name for a unique cutie. But perhaps my acuity is not without its problems. I ruin everything: a stupid story to be tapped out on my tomb's stone. I ruined even Laura. And an original ruin is rare. Just ask the archaeologist, "Egypt, again?" Just ask me, "Laura, again?" and we'll both respond: "Yes, again and again. And again. — Vladimir Nabokov

Strike was used to playing archaeologist among the ruins of people's traumatised memories; — Robert Galbraith

Before I settled on music, I wanted to be an archaeologist, an astronaut, all sorts of really diverse things. — Joan Jett

Doctor Jones, we're all vulnerable to vicious rumors. I seem to remember that in Honduras you were accused of being a grave robber rather than an archaeologist. Indy: Well, the newspapers greatly exaggerated the incident. — James Kahn

You should always carry string, according to my archaeologist father, because then you could at least make a trap to catch animals to survive. According to my grandmother, it was clean underwear. — Ted Danson

I wondered if I would appear on a temple wall painting someday. A blonde Egyptian girl with purple highlights running sideways through the palm trees, screaming "Yikes!" in hieroglyphics as Neith chased after me. The thought of some poor archaeologist trying to figure that out almost lifted my spirits. — Rick Riordan

Here the artist is, as it were, an archaeologist, uncovering deeper and deeper strata as he works, recovering not an ancient civilization, but something as yet unborn, unseen, unheard, except by the inner eye, the inner ear. He is not just removing apparent surfaces from some external object, he is removing apparent surface from the Self, revealing his original nature. — Stephen Nachmanovitch

When I was doing preliminary research on this case, I remembered the story about Tlazolteotl.' [Mulder] glanced at the old archaeologist. 'Am I pronouncing it correctly? It sounds like I'm swallowing a turtle. — Kevin J. Anderson

It isn't just you. It's the whole Galaxy. Pirenne heard Lord Dorwin's idea of scientific research. Lord Dorwin thought the way to be a good archaeologist was to read all the books on the subject - written by men who were dead for centuries. He thought that the way to solve archaeological puzzles was to weigh the opposing authorities. And Pirenne listened and made no objections. Don't you see that there's something wrong with that? — Isaac Asimov

I would have been an archaeologist or something, maybe a historian. There are a lot of things I would have liked to have done differently, but everything that happened to me made me the person I am today. No matter how negative it seemed at the time or whatever hardship it seemed to have been at that time, Im just the sum of all those amazing experiences. — Chaka Khan

The geologist takes up the history of the earth at the point where the archaeologist leaves it, and carries it further back into remote antiquity. — Bal Gangadhar Tilak

An archaeologist is a ghoul with credentials. — Robert Shea

What kind of archaeologist carries a weapon? — Jack O'Neill

Gunner Ainslie made a face at his sister-in-law. "'Amateur' is a bit rough, Alice. I took a degree in archaeology, after all."
She looked even more confused. "Then why are you a photographer now instead of an archaeologist?"
"Because he didn't want to be a burden to the estate like all my other siblings," his brother Elliott, the current Baron Ainslie, answered, giving his wife a squeeze. "Or so he said. Frankly, I think it was a cover so he could take pictures of unclothed women. — Katie MacAlister

It would be ironic for an archaeologist to catch something nasty from the past, perhaps the ultimate in experimental archaeology! — Paul G. Bahn

I was a bad student. I liked archaeology actually, I was interested in maybe becoming an archaeologist but I was such a bad student and had such bad grades that I wasn't going to get into any really good college so I fell back on acting. — Ben Stiller

I've never seen novels as built things. I have a tendency to see them as found things so that I always feel a little bit like an archaeologist who's working to get some fragile fossil out of the ground. And the more you get out unbroken, the better you succeed. — Stephen King

I'm not an academic; I'm not an archaeologist. I'm a writer, communicating ideas to the public. There is a model of how the past is, and a lot of academic archaeology is about refining the model. It's not about changing the model radically. I'm not aware of any current which is about radically changing the model. It's just me, really. — Graham Hancock

What is amazing to me as an archaeologist is that the more and more I study, I realize we are resilient, we are creative, we are brilliant, and this is what makes us human, and that hasn't changed since we've been human. — Sarah Parcak

If you get a chance you should marry an archaeologist. I don't suppose there are too many to go around, but it's the best sort of husband to have. The older a woman gets, the more he's interested in her. — Menna Van Praag

The novelty and excitement of my new ideas have passed but my need to keep writing the story is still great. I imagine it similar to how an archaeologist must feel when his tool first strikes an ancient set of bones. Exhilaration comes first, having found something rare, but that is short lived. The real work still needs to be done. — Matt Wilven

On the whole ... archaeological work has unquestionably strengthened confidence in the reliability of the Scriptural record. More than one archaeologist has found his respect for the Bible increased by the experience of excavation in Palestine. Archaeology has in many cases refuted the views of modern critics. — Millar Burrows

I've lived here ... my whole life. It's where I lost all my baby teeth. Where tiny hamster, gerbil, and bird skeletons lie in rotted-out cardboard coffins beneath the oak tree in our backyard. Also where, if some future archaeologist goes digging, they'll find the remains of a plush toy: a gray terrier named Toto I buried after the accident. — Jennifer McMahon

Place is not the background of archaeology - it's the point. As any archaeologist will tell you, context is everything. — Marilyn Johnson

I've got to get the ultimate in composition today. or I've got to get the ultimate in light, I'll stay here until it appears. I was not making any demands. I went purely to see what would come, what might be there. I didn't have to be archaeologist or historian or tourist, I just needed to be available. — Paul Caponigro

I write - poignantly, in the most heartfelt way - about how I miss her and how I detest my life in this school and she responds with detailed plans for her future life as an archaeologist or philosopher or - new, this - a veterinary surgeon. — William Boyd

The most exciting moment as an archaeologist happened when I was looking at the great archaeology site of Tannis, which of course we all know from 'Indiana Jones.' We got satellite imagery of the city of Tannis, we processed it, and literally from thousands of miles away from my lab in Alabama, we were able to map the entire city. — Sarah Parcak

One of the most important finds within the land of Egypt occurred when the Egyptologist and archaeologist Professor Walter B. Emery (1903-1971) was excavating tombs at the necropolis of Saqqara, one of the oldest cities in the land. There Professor Emery discovered men with blond hair and fair complexions. These individuals were revered and honored by the Egyptians as specially endowed elite. — Michael Tsarion

There were details like clothing, hair styles and the fragile objects that hardly ever survive for the archaeologist - musical instruments, bows and arrows, and body ornaments depicted as they were worn. ... No amounts of stone and bone could yield the kinds of information that the paintings gave so freely. — Mary Leakey