A Real Life Relic Hunter?

Question

You know the show with Tia Carrere? The one where she and her parter go and find Relics. Thats what I want to be when I get older. I know there is archeology, but I heard that is a lot of paper work and small work when what I crave is adventure. Now I'm not saying I want to be running from armed gunmen and the parts of the show that are obviously not true to life. But what kind of job would be close to what Sydney does?

Answer 1

agree with aine.

Answer 2

I agree with a smattering of points through your answers so far, let me pull it all together.  

To be a "relic hunter" DON'T go into archaeology.  Archaeology is about classifying artifacts in-situ as has been stated and is by no means being a "Sydney" nor an "Indiana".  Real archaeology is a lot of painstaking work, not just in the field delicately removing the artifacts, but also in the lab piecing your finds back together practically and theoretically (hence the context via in-situ).  You then would have to publish your findings so that they are subject to peer review and criticism.  Frequently when reading journals you can see some nice singing articles that continuously counter attack each other as scientist fight their points via journal publications and can become quite venemous.  Sorry I'm straying from topic and becoming too detailed...

To BE a "relic hunter" DO pursue and become a world renowned scuba diver.  This is the one realm where "relic hunting" is still actually legal because of salvage laws.  To do this job you will have to become an expert at mixed gas diving, deep dives, decompression dives, possibly even an expert at using a rebreather and at using submersibles (small submarines), you will aslo have to become an expert at wreck diving, although I would also suggest cave diving as cave diving emphasizes the use of ropes more and on their proper use and execution as a safety measure.  A lot of wreck diving is done in ships that have been dived many times, but as a "relic hunter" you'll want to be able to implement policies that will increase your safety and survival rate as you trailblaze into newly discovered wrecks.  To locate sunken wrecks you would probably be best off with a history degree that would help you to learn how to pick through archives to find the appropriate ships which are still "lost", where they shipped out of, where they were heading, what they were carrying, etc.  This will help you narrow down you boat based sonar searches considerably by narrowing your search parameters.  A degree in oceanography to understand currents and the science of ocean floor sedimentation better would also help.  Also it would be invaluable to take some sailing courses.  You search boat would undoubtedly be a large engine powered beast, but many of the ships that you might be searching for could be old sailing ships travelling with South American gold back to spain.  To understand how the sail boat would tackle this route could also narrow down your search considerably.

Treasure diving is truly the only realm that exists for legal relic hunting and as my husband is an archaeologist I would not feel comfortable advocating for any theft from such research sites because I'm painfully aware of all the work that goes into a properly run archaeological operation.  Good Luck!

Answer 3

be a navy seal, you will get a  ton of adventure doing that. or a special forces operative.

Answer 4

Suggest that you join that elite crowd of criminals who specialise in stealing artifacts from sites and the people to whom they belong before the archaeologists actually get a chance to document thge finds in situ. The real value of many finds lies not in their physical worth but rather in the context in which they are found. The sort of treasure hunting you envisage went out with schleiman and the victorians thank god. If you want to find artifacts do it properly with permits and document everything, Schleiman dug through and destroyed much of Homeric Troy to get at the treasures he believed to lie in it.

Answer 5

Do what I did, join the Army Airborne and get into the Army Rangers. You'll have all kinds of adventure and fun, free travel to exotic places, things like that.

Answer 6

To become relic hunter you must first work in the field, either paleonthology, anthropology, geology, oceanography or have very special physical skills, like scuba diving, hiking, mountain climbing, pilot (plane or helicopter). But to tell you the truth, the area on earth with the most treasures are the oceans, especially the south east asia ones... But they are a lot  of pirates in those area, which make it dangerous, also, you must be pretty good diplomat and learn many languages, some very old and not talked anymore...

All in all, you must be a very accomplish human beings to do that, or get hired to do that. Like scuba diving, you must be among the best on Earth to get such job as looking for sunken treasures ships.

But the most difficult part, is to find the place where you think you can find a treasure or relics, those places are hard to find in Occident, as they are too many doing this job, so in your place, I would look in Orient, where the WWII have leaved many treasures hidden ever since. Also competition there is less cerebrale and more brutal... This is not always an easy job, so take a few classes of karate on the sideline, it could be useful later.