Moshenska, Gabriel;
(2025)
‘Keep that which is committed to thy trust’: Buried Treasure and Supernatural Guardians in Three Archaeological Ghost Stories.
Public Archaeology
10.1080/14655187.2025.2475727.
(In press).
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Abstract
This paper explores a specific motif in archaeological ghost stories: the search for hidden treasure, and encounters with ghostly or demonic treasure guardians. It traces the deep-rooted connections between treasure and the supernatural in European folklore, and attempts to distinguish the archaeological ghost story from the better-known but broader ‘antiquarian’ category. The paper takes three early twentieth-century ghost stories as examples to illustrate the diversity within the category of treasure guardian stories, as well as the notable degree of structural similarity. The stories in question are by famed horror author M. R. James and his friends E. G. Swain and A. C. Benson. The analysis of these stories highlights a number of common narrative elements, structures, and themes. These include the popular perception of archaeologists as disturbers of the dead, and the common trope of a rationalist scholar scorning a supernatural warning. The final part of the paper considers how ghosts are portrayed as anti-archaeologists or guardians of ancient sites and artefacts, and considers the value of ghost stories in crafting public archaeological narratives of objects, time, and place.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | ‘Keep that which is committed to thy trust’: Buried Treasure and Supernatural Guardians in Three Archaeological Ghost Stories |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/14655187.2025.2475727 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/14655187.2025.2475727 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Keywords: | Antiquarians, folklore, M. R. James, supernatural fiction, uncanny, underground, weird |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Institute of Archaeology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Institute of Archaeology > Institute of Archaeology Gordon Square |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10208033 |
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