ABSTRACT
An archaeological discovery, even a modest one, carries, potentially, an important fi ctional dimension. Indeed, in their eff ort to reverse the course of time, archaeologists explore, uncover, reconstruct and ‘animate’ – as a rule, prudently – locales, objects and other material traces of past lives and actions in which they did not participate. Thus, they inevitably interweave into this complex process their own experiences, perceptions, ideological beliefs and world views. To conform, however, to a scientifi c approach, they have to rein in their imagination, censure their certainties, and control the interplay between the defi cient data and their own interpretative hypotheses. The archaeologist’s responsibility seems to stop where the artist’s creative licence begins. To compose a ‘history of the history’ of a discovery, the scholar needs distance from the archaeological fi nd; but a writer of fi ction is freer to embrace, shape and transform the story following her/his own inspiration, feelings, intellect, education and culture.
