Archaeology is important to me. I just love it when it permeates everyday culture. It is a justification in my mind of its significance as an artefact, itself contributing to the way we live now.

I am always happy to come across novels that use archaeology as a cornerstone of their narrative, and I have read some good ones recently. I find that popular fiction provides a great mirror through which to view contemporary lives. So finding archaeology as a motif, is (to me) a signal that it counts. I am even happier to see that the individual authors I have been reading each have their own, very different, ways of using archaeology. I’m not talking about depictions of history or prehistory here, there are plenty of those, rather I am talking about work that makes use of the practice of archaeology.

Not surprisingly, the representation of our profession and its concerns varies considerably across the genre. Two books, in particular, stand out for their contrasting views. One account is positively dystopian, a consideration of the imagined conflict that could result when the outcome of archaeological endeavour has been to question the given wisdom of political and religious authority. It is a bleak prospect. The other muses on the world of those who interpret the past (in this case the Iron Age), to inspire reflections on life as lived today. It is not exactly utopian, there are thoughts on violence, hunger, cold, and loneliness, but it is certainly a much gentler narrative.

It would be hard to find such good examples of polar opposites and I am cheered to see that our discipline can be perceived as so well rounded. Indeed, my experience continues. In addition to some well-research police procedural series, there are novels that revolve around research design and academic teams, novels that use an excavation as their backdrop, and novels inspired by experimental recreation. Of course, they are not always perfect in the fictitious details that they set out, and the quality of the plot can vary (though I have enjoyed all I list here). But, in a way, these flaws merely provide a useful signpost to gaps in the information that we put out. If an author has not picked up on the vagaries of treasure trove regulations or finds reporting, when Iron Age farmers are called hunter-gatherers, surely those provide a reflection of inherent weaknesses in the material people have to hand. It is up to us to make sure that we spread accurate information about our profession as far and wide as we can. And make it as accessible and as wide ranging as possible. Regular readers of this blog will know that I am as passionate about popular dissemination as I am about academic publication.

I do get asked for help with fiction. And, where possible, I try to give it, or at least suggest alternative sources of information. It is easy to be snobbish about some of the projects that others embark upon. But if we don’t help out then we have no right to criticise when we don’t like the final version or find that an author has incorporated inaccuracy. Of course, assistance does not always guarantee the final outcome, but at least we can say that we have tried.

There are, I know, many examples of authors who have played with the ideas that we call archaeology – I’ve listed below some that I find readable and fun. They make you think. If you are interested, I recommend that you hunt them out. Enjoy!

Booklist (I’m not going to tell you which is which from my text above – I will leave you to judge them for yourself).

Robert Harris: The Second Sleep

Sarah Maine: Women of the Dunes

Anne Youngson: Meet Me at the Museum

Penelope Lively: Treasures of Time

SarahMoss: Ghost Wall

Barry Unsworth: Land of Marvels

Elly Griffiths: The Ruth Galloway series (read them in order)

Kate Ellis: the Wesley Peterson series (read in order)

Rob Swigart: Stone Mirror

Anne Cleeves: Shetland detective Jimmy Perez is no stranger to local archaeology

Ian Rankin: Inspector Rebus has occasionally encountered archaeologists in Edinburgh

John Preston: The Dig

Enjoy!

I much enjoyed the recent session on Archaeology and Fiction at TAG (the Theoretical Archaeology Group conference). Discussion was stimulated by a variety of papers from archaeological authors, illustrators, playwrights and poets – among others.

I attempted to look at the nature of truth in archaeological writing. I’m not the first to do this, it is an old conundrum that we rarely appreciate just how much imagination we use when we interpret the data that we are so highly trained to collect. And, of course, we can also question the objective nature of that data: the eye of the beholder and all that! I don’t think it does any harm to revisit this debate; it helps us to remain humble about the so-called academic wisdom that we all wish to produce.

It struck me how much our values have changed. As a profession I think we can be quite snobby about the ‘value’ of archaeological novels as opposed to archaeological textbooks. Yet I’d lay a wager that the novels reach a larger audience. One of the things I do for a living is to read the works of aspiring novelists and provide guidance on the archaeological settings and data that they use. Occasionally fellow archaeologists have been quite surprised at this, and yet, if we do not take the time to work with those who popularize the results of archaeology, then we certainly have no right to question their final output. Not everyone writes novels that I’d read out of choice, but everyone has an audience and everyone has the right to publish. The past is not for archaeologists to guard. If our academic texts are not immediately user friendly then we have a duty to help out.

It is interesting that in the past we gave status to storytellers, those who constructed stories to inform us about the world around us. In recent centuries this has lessened. We have diminished the didactic power of fiction and increased the distance between fiction and fact (look at the relative values of ‘academic’ papers and ‘popular’ writings in the recent REF evaluation of universities). It is salutary to realise that they used to be one and the same.

Academic narrative is no more factual just because it is academic than popular narrative is fictional just because it is popular. Archaeological fact is indeed the foundation of all interpretation whether academic or popular but it is what we do with it that matters. It is just the springboard for what must follow and without interpretation it is sterile. That interpretation is the job of the storyteller (for which read illustrator, game-maker, film producer and so on).

Excavation can give us a bowl. It can even give us traces of cornflakes. But it requires interpretation (and imagination) to combine them into breakfast. And even more imagination to communicate to others the significance of that breakfast to the people who ate it.

Whatever breakfasts your Yuletide rituals demand – I hope you have a merry time and a well-earned break over the next couple of weeks.

First of all there is the depiction of two competing groups living in a single landscape. How do you tell people apart? How do they use the landscape? How do different languages and religions work? How do groups view one another? Secondly there is the depiction of the Christian church struggling to establish and maintain its place within Saxon society. This raises all sorts of questions relating to new influences and new ways: the role of women; education; medicine; food; religion and politics; and religion and language – all of these come into the story. Thirdly, there is the sheer level of violence in the world: how did one maintain economic stability when passing horsemen might burn your farmstead and kill your folks on a frequent basis; how does it affect people to live in a world where extreme violence is commonplace?

Obviously, this is a period about which I know very little – certainly not enough to pronounce on the accuracy of the depiction. But for me the interest lies not so much in the details as in the questions. You could regard it as science fiction, although the details are subtler than in Star Wars many of the questions are the same. It has got me thinking. For me it is a reminder that the stability and unity that we seek so urgently today have always been elusive. It turns my mind to the end of Mesolithic Britain, another great time of clashing cultures. What was it like to live then? Was it violent as some people suggest? There have been so many periods when the landscape of Britain was home to differing and distinctive peoples. Are we unique today in seeking a cosy homeland where all agree?

Finally, I do return to the detail. How on earth did the programme makers manage to find an actor who looked so like the Alfred Jewell?

Is anyone else looking forward to the BBC Two series: The Last Kingdom? I am. Not just because it is a cracking story, but also because of the way in which visual media can be used to interpret the past.

One problem with archaeology is that it tends to be monochrome: the colour and noise of the past are often missing. This applies especially to the Mesolithic. Fiction, through the written word and other media, can help to remedy this. It is not without drawbacks though. How much research should authors do? What is the place of ‘truth’. How, exactly, should we use it? Is it ‘academic’ – we can spark public discussion, but does it have a role as an undergraduate exercise?  This is something that is to be explored at TAG in Bradford this December and I am very much looking forward to taking part in that session.

Given certain caveats regarding the accuracy of the portrayal I’m all for the use of fiction in archaeology.  In fact I’d argue that most archaeological publication is fiction anyway: we can never know precisely what went on in the past. Indeed, approaching the past as fiction in the sense of the written word forces archaeologists to confront some of the gaps that they prefer to gloss over. Excavation of a prehistoric site will rarely tell us what people had for breakfast, yet if we are to interpret the past fully we need to think about things like that.

Of course, with The Last Kingdom we move into the realm of history and you could argue that we have no need to resort to recent fiction here because the Vikings produced their own stories, the Sagas, which provide a detailed and colourful portrayal of their times (setting aside debates over the veracity of the Sagas). I know that ITV are to present the Old English poem Beowulf in the Spring, but I’d like to suggest the Orkneyinga Saga for future consideration. It is an action-packed story with some feisty characters (women and men) and the locations would be magnificent.