Abstract

In the last 30 years, but at an accelerating rate throughout the 90s, a new genre of literature –archaeological fiction– has become prevalent in bookstores across North America. In these books, authors attempt to reconstruct the lives of past peoples through a fictional narrative, but use an essential base of archaeological data to accomplish this task. However, very few of these authors are archaeologists. This has important ramifications in terms of the accuracy of the material presented, since for a large segment of the general public, these novels and certain sensationalistic TV documentaries are the only contact these people will ever have with archaeology. Questions to be addressed will include: (1) How much archaeological fiction is actually being read by the general public; and (2) How do different groups of people (i.e. literary critics, professional archaeologists, the reading public, ect.) feel about archaeological fiction in general? By answering these questions, and by doing a breif survey of the overall factual accuracy of the literature, I will address the third, and most important question: How well is archaeological fiction actually educating the public about archaeology, and what can be done to increase this level of information?