Every weekend when I was young, while my parents worked late nights at the family restaurant, Aaron and I went to my grandparents’ house on a hilly, tree-lined street in Orono, Maine. Why I do what I do all goes back to my grandfather, Harold Young, who was a professor of forestry at the University of Maine.

It’s a pretty cool job, but wasn’t an obvious career option when I started taking undergraduate archaeology classes. It means I analyze different satellite data sets-Google Earth is one you’re probably familiar with-to find and map otherwise hidden archaeological sites and features. I’m part of a relatively new specialism called space archaeology. Related Segment Searching For The Secrets Of Ancient Cultures-From Space We specialize in diverse subfields: aside from a particular time period or regional focus, an archaeologist might study pottery, art, bones, ancient architecture, dating techniques, or even recording and illustration. I can’t tell you if it was Egypt, the sheer adventure, or just Harrison Ford, but that movie called out to me.Īt that age, I didn’t know that no one-size-fits-all fedora exists for archaeologists. If we chose Raiders, I would sit, rapt, memorizing every scene, every bit of dialogue, every gesture. (Now that I have a child of my own, who wants nothing more than to watch Minions on repeat, I appreciate my mom’s purgatory. Much to the chagrin of my mom, we invariably chose one of three movies: The Princess Bride, The Never Ending Story, or Raiders of the Lost Ark. After school, my mom would take my brother, Aaron, and me up the street to a creaky old house that had been repurposed to hold thousands of tapes, categorized by theme and age appropriateness. Wow, even writing that makes me feel old.

If you are a child of the 1980s like me, your Friday night routine might have included getting pizza and picking up a VHS cassette from your local movie rental place. Buy Pizza, Videos, And My Path To Becoming An Archaeologist

Space archaeologist sarah parcak