Box Office Archaeology

Julie M. Schablitsky's academic and research pursuits are launched from the University of Oregon, Museum of Natural and Cultural History where she holds an adjunct professorship and directs excavations on American pioneer sites and Oregon Chinatowns.

"Discerning audiences can tell the difference between Victorian and Edwardian dress, Viking longboats and Greek fishing boats. Archaeology has helped with the verisimilitude of sets and the background for the action; however, the tale drives the characters and the action, whether strictly true or mythic, and these are in the hands of script and director. Strong chapters by archaeologists look at the movies [...].The authors are master archaeologists and fans of the cinema-a fine combination. Summing Up: Highly recommended." -C.S. Peebles, CHOICE Magazine "Box Office Archaeology offers a thought-provoking look at what history and archaeology have to tell us in a dozen different areas." - Myron Beckenstein, Newsletter of the Archeological Society of Maryland, Inc. "This curious book will appeal to archaeologists who are annoyed when Hollywood constructs fi lm plots that do not conform to their understanding of the evidences and, far more importantly, to teachers who intend to teach history through a commentary on filmic representations.Of course we can all be fascinated by film representations of our discipline, but ultimately technical critiques such as those found throughout Box Office Archaeology must been seen as statements about archaeology rather than about cinema." - Peter Hiscock, Australian Archaeology "Mummies, pirates, and cowboys are just a few popular historical subjects that have been made into good, bad, and really bad movies and television shows.all represent some aspect of the past, do they represent a true past? Do movies mislead the public into believing that what they see actually occurred? Box Office Archaeology tries to answer some of these questions.in a series of essays by leading archaeologies, who discuss what actually happened. This collection is highly recommended for archaeology, history, film, and popular culture classes, as well as for those people sitting in the audience wanting to know a little more about their favorite movie or television show." -Melissa Aho, Anthropology Review Database

• Chapter 1 The Way of the Archaeologist, Julie M. Schablitsky; Chapter 2 Unwrapping the Mummy, Stuart Tyson Smith; Chapter 3 Vikings, Vixens, and Valhalla, Mark Axel Tveskov, Jon M. Erlandson; Chapter 4 A Pirate's Life for Me!; Chapter 5 Titanic, James P. Delgado; Chapter 6 Voyage from Myth, Robert S. Neyland; Chapter 7 Pocahontas Unanimated, Randy Amici; Chapter 8 The Life and Times of the Ever-Changing Hollywood Indian, Charles M. Haecker; Chapter 9 Imagining Blackness, Paul R. Mullins; Chapter 10 Five Points on Film, Rebecca Yamin, Lauren J. Cook; Chapter 11 Western Boomtowns, Julie M. Schablitsky; Chapter 12 Contesting Hollywood's Chinatowns, Bryn Williams, Stacey Camp; Chapter 13 When the Legend Becomes Fact, Vergil E. Noble;