06 August 2010

Monty Python's Flying Circus: Archaeology Today!

4 comments:

  1. Wow, your timing is great. I was just thinking I wanted to play this in my intro course in a couple of weeks, and wondering if it was available online.

    Here is an oldie and a challenge for you guys - archaeologist Stuart Struiver was a guest on the quiz show, "To tell the truth," many years ago (the show where there is one person who really fits the category, and 2 impostors). I wonder if that show is available anywhere.

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  2. Oldie but goody! Thanks! Being a 6-foot-tall archaeologist myself, I especially appreciate this one.

    "Well this is hardly archaeology.."

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  3. I keep challenging my students to pick out fact from fiction in this video - so far nobody has really taken it on seriously. Has anybody seen an article that actually does analyze Monty Python's archaeological savvy? Somebody in that crew must have at least taken a class in anthropology!

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  4. They're all obviously big history dorks, though as far as I can tell Michael Palin was the only one who took a degree in History (at Brasenose, Oxford). On the other hand five of the six Pythons went to Cambridge or Oxford at a time when you couldn't even apply there unless you had quite decent Latin, Greek, and Classical history - so it's a safe bet to say they had it drilled into them at a young age. (Terry Gilliam, the token American, went to Occidental.)

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