ABSTRACT
Archaeological interpretation in any genre is a constructed narrative and as such it reflects its contemporary context as much as it elucidates the past. Once this is understood, creating narratives is the closest we can come to knowing what it was like to live in another time. The chain of evolving narrative connecting us to our prehistoric past cannot be tracked, so that the essential components of fiction—narrator, character, plot and image—must be reforged from other relevant sources: material evidence, ethnographic parallels and enduring human experience. Such sources are compromised by their contemporary context and must be used with discrimination and yet, paradoxically, modern genres such as film and fiction offer modes of expression that enhance readings of our prehistoric past. Fiction requires specific, unambiguous details and events, so that the novelist has to assess probabilities and present them as facts within the narrative, relying on the generic convention of suspension of disbelief. Credible fiction about prehistory is therefore grounded in the material evidence of landscape, archaeology and relevant skills.
