TUM Library

Historical fiction and archaeological interpretation : introduction / Daniël van Helden & Robert Witcher -- The cornflakes of prehistory : fact, fiction and imagination in archaeology / Caroline Wickham-Jones -- Voices from the silence / Margaret Elphinstone -- Beyond archaeological narrative : imagined worlds of Neolithic Europe / Mark Patton -- Imagined realities in academic and fictional accounts of the British Mesolithic / Donald Henson -- Walking in someone else's shoes : archaeology, empathy and fiction / Daniël van Helden & Robert Witcher -- The multiverse of fiction : exploring interpretation through community archaeology / Francesco Ripanti & Giulia Osti -- Entering undocumented pasts through playwriting / James G. Gibb -- Encountering the past through slag and storytelling / Michael Given -- Writing wonders : poetry as archaeological method? / Erin Kavanagh -- Ambiguity and omission : creative mediation of the unknowable past / Giacomo Savani & Victoria Thompson -- Spartacus: Blood and Sand (STARZ, 2010) : a necessary fiction? / Fiona Hobden -- Archaeology, historical fiction and Classical Reception Studies / Joanna Paul -- Imagining the past through Film and Cultural Studies / Andrew B.R. Elliott -- Archaeological narrative and humour in a post-truth world: the obligatory sum-up article / Adrian Praetzellis.

"Archaeological interpretation is an imaginative act. Stratigraphy and artefacts do not tell us what the past was like; that is the task of the archaeologist. The diverse group of contributors to this volume address the relationship between archaeology and imagination through the medium of historical fiction and fictive techniques, both as consumers and as producers. The fictionalisation of archaeological research is often used to disseminate the results of scholarly or commercial archaeology projects for wider public outreach. Here, instead, the authors focus on the question of what benefits fiction and fictive techniques, as both inspiration and method, can bring to the practice of archaeology itself. The contributors, a mix of archaeologists, novelists and other artists, advance a variety of theoretical arguments and examples to advance the case for the value of a reflexive engagement between archaeology and fiction. Themes include the similarities and differences in the motives and methods of archaeologists and novelists, translation, empathy and the need to humanise the past and diversify archaeological narratives. The authors are sensitive to the epistemological and ethical issues surrounding the influence of fiction on researchers and the incorporation of fictive technique in their work. Sometimes dismissed as distracting just-so stories, or even as dangerously relativistic narratives, the use of fictive techniques has a long history in archaeological research and examples can be found from many varied periods and regions. The volume sets out to bring together examples of these disparate applications and to focus attention on the need for explicit recognition of the problems and possibilities of such approaches and for further research about them"-- Provided by publisher.

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.