Archaeological Fiction and a Scientist’s Dilemma – SAPIENS

For example, the “Mound Builders myth,” perpetuated by White settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries, asserted that a lost, superior race of people created the ceremonial and burial mounds found across North America. Archaeological hoaxes frequently have their origins in nationalist movements. The “Piltdown Man” hoax, in which an English amateur archaeologist and fossil hunter claimed to have found the “missing link” between apes and humans, was an attempt to demonstrate England’s centrality to evolutionary science. Archaeological data is misused by more recent far-right nationalist movements, too, to promote racist agendas and beliefs. This is a very current problem.

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So, it makes sense that many archaeologists steer clear of any positive discussion of archaeology-informed fiction. To write even the most well-grounded fiction, we have to let go of the guardrails and let our imaginations run; we can’t get hung up on uncertainties or doubts. We have to release concerns about the distinctions between fact and fiction, at least while writing the first draft. For people who have spent a career thinking about data integrity, bias, and the way in which stories about the past can be misused, this is difficult.

I, for one, found writing fiction about the past to be tremendously challenging. My identity as a professional archaeologist gives my words about the past extra weight, and I’m very aware of that. Whether I’m writing for an academic audience or a public one, when I’m speaking publicly, I work hard to make clear what I know about the past, what I don’t, and how I know the difference.

I had to let go of these concerns to write a novel. I relegated my knowledge of the Iberian Mesolithic to the background as I imagined what it would have felt like to be alive in this place and time. This process felt familiar, like the very first stages of a research project, when I’m getting ideas down without worrying about what comes next. But unlike in a research project, in writing a novel, I had to stay in this space. When I became stuck, the temptation was to dive into research to make sure all the archaeological details were correct. But when I did this, I wound up paralyzed. So, I made a rule: No fact-checking until the first draft was complete.

Imaginative play makes the past, in all its complexity, real in a way that data often can’t.

To my surprise, when I went back and read with an eye toward fact-checking, relatively little needed to change—although (as with The Clan of the Cave Bear and other archaeology-informed fiction) there is much that, while plausible enough, we can’t know from the archaeological record.

My experience made me more aware of the dangers of fictionalizing the past, but it also made me realize just how often I use my imagination when doing scientific archaeology. I can’t come up with hypotheses to test without imagining the past. Nor can I interpret findings, or communicate findings to any audience, without imagining the past. Is there a difference between these activities and fabricating data? Absolutely. But it’s a gray area.

Still, there are positives in the gray. In a 2021 article in the academic journal Advances in Archaeological Practice, archaeologist Caroline Arbuckle MacLeod argues that using video games in teaching archaeology can “help them to not only reassess more traditional interpretations but also question the validity of a single, ‘correct,’ historical or archaeological narrative.” I’ve found this to be true with fiction of all sorts.

When I teach “Introduction to Archaeology,” I have students play a game in which they trade replica artifacts, then analyze the distribution patterns; they gain deeper insights this way than they do from a lecture on trade and exchange in the archaeological record. Imaginative play makes the past, in all its complexity, real in a way that data often can’t.

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