Whenever I talk to kids about archaeology, I ask if they know of any fictional archaeologists from movies or TV. Some of them know Indiana Jones, but I like to mention Ariel from The Little Mermaid because she’s actually seen, like… studying artifacts to learn about the people who made them rather than just. Uh. Acquiring them from other people. She also seems to do a damn fine job of conserving them.
Wouldn’t she be an anthropologist?
After she gets legs and starts personally observing living humans, sure. But she starts off only knowing about humans by studying physical artifacts she recovers from shipwrecks, which she collects and conserves from the ravages of nature. I imagine she’d become a cultural anthropologist once she became established as a human… and would probably have a queenly collection of weird shit no one else is impressed by in her royal museum.
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Gay Ryan 