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‘The Past Is Below Us’: Urban fantasy, urban archaeology, and the recovery of suppressed history

Elber-Aviram, H; (2013) ‘The Past Is Below Us’: Urban fantasy, urban archaeology, and the recovery of suppressed history. Papers from the Institute of Archaeology , 23 (1) 10.5334/pia.426. Green open access

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Abstract

Few literary genres have been as intimately connected with the field of archaeology as the genre of urban fantasy, which correlates with urban archaeology through a shared concern with the material history of the city. The palimpsestic model of the city discovered by urban archaeologists such as Schliemann and Evans has inspired the multilayered cityscapes of many urban fantasy narratives. These narratives cast their protagonists into the symbolic role of archaeologists who descend into the urban underworld to recover the city’s forgotten past. Important work has been done on the representation of archaeology in popular culture, but scholars have yet to comprehensively discuss the thematic links between urban archaeology and urban fantasy. The following paper offers a preliminary exploration of this issue, by focusing on the ways in which urban fantasy negotiates contending histories of the city. The research centres upon two British urban fantasy novels, Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere (1996) and Tim Lebbon’s Echo City (2010).

Type: Article
Title: ‘The Past Is Below Us’: Urban fantasy, urban archaeology, and the recovery of suppressed history
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.5334/pia.426
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/pia.426
Language: English
Additional information: This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright is retained by the author(s).
UCL classification: UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1430176
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