{"id":1041,"date":"2018-10-28T14:02:17","date_gmt":"2018-10-28T21:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rhiannonheld.com\/?p=1041"},"modified":"2022-06-03T07:25:21","modified_gmt":"2022-06-03T14:25:21","slug":"archaeology-in-seven-kinds-of-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rhiannonheld.com\/?p=1041","title":{"rendered":"Archaeology in Seven Kinds of Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019ve been asked at cons, more than once, to recommend authors who do archaeology right. A good rule of thumb is that you can rarely go wrong when the authors are actually archaeologists themselves. Then, recently, in honor of the impending release of LADY\u2019S CHILDREN<\/a> (#werewolfarchaeology!), I\u2019ve been looking around for other urban fantasy authors who are archaeologists. Gail Carriger is one, and so is Dana Cameron. In fact, Cameron not only is an archaeologist who writes about werewolves, she also writes about werewolf archaeologists!<\/p>\n

So I thought I\u2019d use Cameron\u2019s series to illustrate some of the things that make good<\/em> fictional archaeology.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The first book in Cameron\u2019s Fangborn series is called SEVEN KINDS OF HELL<\/a>. In it, Zoe Miller, our werewolf archaeologist, goes on a fast-paced international tour of Europe, searching for artifacts that shed light on her people\u2019s past while trying to keep her friends safe. It\u2019s got a bit of a spy thriller vibe to it, in addition to the urban fantasy.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The book fundamentally illustrates an archaeological worldview that\u2019s difficult to put my finger on, except by specific examples. Before that, though, of course all the jargon is correct\u2014starting with the surprisingly simple yet apparently quite difficult for non-archaeologists to remember fact that she spells it \u201carchaeology.\u201d No archaeologist of my acquaintance ever<\/em> drops the second \u201ca\u201d except if they\u2019re writing a report for the National Park Service. The origins of \u201carcheology\u201d is that it was an attempted American simplified spelling that never took off except for a few situations in the government (see: NPS). There is no earthly<\/em> really for a historical romance set in Britain to spell it that way, you know who you are, random romance paperback I picked up from the library\u2026<\/p>\n

Also in the realm of the concrete, rather than abstract, the characters in SEVEN KINDS OF HELL do have backgrounds in contract archaeology that ring absolutely true: living out of a suitcase to bounce around to different field tech jobs, coming home filthy, strategies to avoid trashing your home or the hotel when cleaning up after work\u2026As I’m a lab archaeologist, Cameron also gets my appreciation for showing Zoe dealing with the lab side of things, looking at how artifacts are cataloged.<\/p>\n

In the abstract realm, then, archaeology permeated the cultural world-building: the Fangborn really feel like they have a history<\/em>\u2014imperfectly passed down, written by the victors, and skewed by whoever was telling it. Some of it was preserved in documents, some orally, but the most important thing is that the reader gets to develop a fuller picture of it along with the protagonist, making it feel real.<\/p>\n

I also really felt the archaeological worldview when the characters were at Old World archaeological sites. It was more than just the fact that none of the characters, white- or black-hatted, wantonly knocked down or carved holes in things in service of the action, which is something most laypeople can predict for archaeologists, I suspect. It was the fact that I felt the sites\u2019 antiquity not because some hidden passage of them was miraculously preserved, just as it once stood (which so often seems to be the case, when even werewolf-brand magic meets antiquities) but because the locations weren\u2019t<\/em> preserved perfectly. We see the scars of their journey through time to reach us, which gave them more weight for me. As well, we saw how they fit into the modern world. Many Action Movie Ancient Ruins have a few tourists scattered around early in the movie for flavor, but very few have guards, as they did here. And I can\u2019t think of any that take into account the previous, layered archaeological excavations, many now historic themselves in New World terms, which form another aspect of the places the characters visit in this novel. Action Movie Ancient Ruins archaeological excavations are all currently going on\u2014with carbon dates on the plot McGuffin they can run twice to check in the tent next door. (Carbon dates don\u2019t work that way.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll wrap this up with just one more thing that I loved: the way the protagonist used archaeological problem-solving strategies. In way, that\u2019s the culmination of all the abstract stuff I\u2019ve been talking about, with doing more than treating a crown that\u2019s thousands of years old the same way you\u2019d treat a diamond necklace made last year: who has it now? Who stole it from someone else? Who maybe buried it in the ground or maybe put it in a safety-deposit box? The thousands of years aren\u2019t really adding anything to the plot in those cases, except sometimes more digits to the value of the piece. But when Zoe has to find a last piece to the puzzle, she thinks like an archaeologist, looking at ancient maps and modern excavation records, recalling articles on documentary evidence, and using her general knowledge to try to trace a possible path for the artifact in the past. I really enjoyed watching it happen (and then there was still plenty of scope for the climactic action scene once she\u2019d discovered it!).<\/p>\n

If all that sounds like your jam, pick up SEVEN KINDS OF HELL<\/a> and\/or (and!) pre-order LADY\u2019S CHILDREN<\/a>, out November 6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been asked at cons, more than once, to recommend authors who do archaeology right. A good rule of thumb is that you can rarely go wrong when the authors are actually archaeologists themselves. Then, recently, in honor of the impending release of LADY\u2019S CHILDREN (#werewolfarchaeology!), I\u2019ve been looking around for other urban fantasy authors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,1],"tags":[73,74],"class_list":["post-1041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-novels","category-uncategorized","tag-ladys-children","tag-seven-kinds-of-hell"],"yoast_head":"\nArchaeology in Seven Kinds of Hell - Rhiannon Held \/ R. 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