Elber-Aviram, H 2013 ‘The Past Is Below Us’: Urban Fantasy, Urban Archaeology, and the Recovery of Suppressed History. Papers from pia the Institute of Archaeology, 23(1): 7, pp. 1-10, DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.5334/pia.426

ARTICLE ‘The Past Is Below Us’: Urban Fantasy, Urban Archaeology, and the Recovery of Suppressed History Hadas Elber-Aviram*

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 discov- ered 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 con- tending 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).

Introduction John Clute in his Encyclopedia of Fantasy There is something intrinsically archaeologi- (1997): ‘UFs [urban fantasies] are normally cal about urban fantasy, but the exploration texts where fantasy and the mundane world of this kinship has as much to do with the intersect and interweave throughout a tale need to redefine the genre as it does with which is significantly about a real city.’ Thus, the desire to trace its hidden affiliations. urban fantasy integrates supernatural forces Although its roots go back to the Victo- into a familiar metropolitan milieu to pro- rian age, urban fantasy cohered into a dis- duce a heightened portrait of the metropolis. tinct genre only recently, in the late 1970s Where an urban fantasy narrative ‘is set in a to mid-1980s, with the work of Michael de fantasy city’, Clute (1997: 975) adds, ‘it has Larrabeiti, Charles de Lint, and Emma Bull. been created not just as a backdrop but as an As such, its boundaries have yet to solidify, environment.’ Clute (2012) recently added a rendering it particularly open to interdisci- codicil, however, pointing out that: plinary influences, but also demanding its constant reassessment. ‘As a publishing category which has The most commonly used definition of risen to enormous popularity in the urban fantasy hitherto was formulated by twenty-first century, urban fantasy has come to denote the subgenre of stories set in an alternate version of * Department of English Language and Literature, UCL, United Kingdom our modern world where humans [email protected] (often with special talents) and super- Art. 7, page 2 of 10 Elber-Aviram: ‘The Past Is Below Us’

natural beings […] interact via adven- city whose flights of fancy find anchor in ture, melodrama, intrigue and sex.’ scrupulous details of material urban history. Richard Lehan (1998: 111) has pointed Contemporary scholars of urban fantasy have out the impact of urban archaeology’s ‘dis- thus found themselves increasingly obliged covery of layered cities’ - notably Heinrich to redefine the parameters of their field, to Schliemann’s discoveries in Troy (1871) and distinguish the fantastic narratives genuinely Arthur Evans’ in Crete (Knossos, 1876) - upon concerned with the metropolis ‘as an envi- modernist urban literature. Urban fantasy ronment’ from those that use the city merely has been particularly influenced by this as ‘a backdrop’ to sensationalist adventures. archaeological find, often adopting the pal- This article argues that the yardstick for impsestic model of the city as a paradigm for redefining urban fantasy against the prolif- its fictional cityscapes. The genre frequently eration of related narratives can be found in creates a fantastic metropolis whose history the genre’s concern with the material history is inscribed in successive layers beneath the of the metropolis. A work of urban fantasy present-day veneer of routine city life. In would thus be defined by its predominant these narratives, the fantastic city’s subterra- interest in the concrete, tangible details of nean history poses a constant danger to the the city, and the way in which these details integrity of the present, as its underground cohere to form a larger narrative of the city’s layers harbour supernatural forces threaten- past. Therefore the core trait that marks ing to erupt onto the surface. The protago- urban fantasy out from similar genres also nists of these works accordingly take on the strongly links it with urban archaeology, as symbolic role of archaeologists, descending both the literary genre and the archaeologi- into the urban underworld to recover the cal field share an intense concern with the city’s hidden past and contend with its for- city’s material history. Accordingly, whether gotten monsters. set in a real city made fantastic, or in a fan- Important studies have been written on tastic city that alludes to a real one, urban the representation of archaeology in popular fantasy almost invariably follows an archaeo- culture (e.g. Russell 2002), but scholars have logical pattern of revelation whereby sup- yet to comprehensively discuss the thematic pressed material evidence from the past links between urban archaeology and urban opens up a portal into the secret history of fantasy. This paper offers a preliminary explo- the metropolis. ration of this issue by focusing on the ways M. Christine Boyer has observed that the in which urban fantasy negotiates contend- fantastic imagination and the archaeological ing histories of the city. The research centres frame of mind come together in the crea- upon two British urban fantasy novels, Neil tion of urban fantasy. Her remarks refer to Gaiman’s Neverwhere (1996) and Tim Leb- visual art rather than literature, but they bon’s Echo City (2010). apply equally to the latter. ‘Fantasy holds an A word on the choice of novels is in order. essential role in any “analogous city” view’, There is always an element of disingenuous- Boyer (1994: 178) observes, ‘for fantasy is the ness in the choice of case studies, for one mediator between an archaeologist’s mind seeks out the narratives that best showcase bent on exploring the roots and remnants one’s argument. Certainly, Neverwhere and of antiquity and a creative imagination that Echo City are overtly and deeply concerned quotes and remembers only arbitrary and with the material history of the city, and unrelated fragments and traces.’ In other would not have been chosen otherwise. But words, imaginative creativity and archaeo- other urban fantasy novels share this concern logical methodology are both needed to con- with equal or near-equal explicitness, such as struct a convincing portrait of the fantastic Jeff VanderMeer’s Veniss Underground (2003) Elber-Aviram: ‘The Past Is Below Us’ Art. 7, page 3 of 10 and China Miéville’s The City & The City power is exercised and preserved through its (2009). I have therefore chosen Neverwhere regulation of history has become a staple in and Echo City for their differences as much as virtually all the fantastic cities of contempo- for their similarities, for it is by their dissimi- rary Western literature. larity that they demonstrate the applicability Raphael Greenberg has argued that of this article’s arguments to a broad range of archaeology frequently performs a vital role urban fantasy novels. in hegemonic efforts to dominate contem- Each of these two works belongs to a dif- porary interpretations of the past. Draw- ferent sub-class of urban fantasy, as theorised ing on Paul Ricoeur, Greenberg points out by Alexander C. Irvine. Neverwhere belongs to that every stratified society marshals rituals the sub-class that is set in ‘a more or less rec- of memory and forgetfulness to justify its ognizable city’, as it takes place in a fiction- power structure. Archaeologists play a cru- alised version of 1990s London (Irvine 2012: cial part in this co-optation of history for the 200). Echo City belongs to the other class ad hoc needs of the present, creating the past of ‘stories of the fantastic city’, which take as surely as they recover it, most evidently by place in a patently unreal metropolis that deciphering their own findings. More subtly, ‘creates its own rules’ (Irvine 2012: 201). The the very decisions involved in archaeological eponymous Echo City is accordingly haunted practice embed both the process itself and by ghosts, invaded by winged humanoids, the consequent discoveries within national, and underpinned by the secret workings of cultural, and political matrices of meaning. pseudo-scientific witchcraft. In fact, Lebbon Thus archaeologists often function as agents is perhaps more at home with urban fantasy of political and economic powers that have of the first kind, of which his Hidden Cities a vested interest in shaping our understand- series is a prime example, but Echo City was ing of the past to promote specific configura- chosen precisely due to its unusual place in tions of the present and the future (Green- the second category. The contrasts between berg 2012). Neverwhere and Echo City are thus meant to Indeed, archaeology by its very nature highlight the importance of their similarities seems to be linked to the Gramscian notion of and broaden the implications of the follow- hegemony, broadly defined as the elite stra- ing comparative analysis towards a re-evalu- tum of a given society that exercises power ation of the urban fantasy genre as a whole.1 through forceful ‘domination’ and subtler ‘intellectual and moral leadership’ (Gramsci Who Controls the Past? 1996: 57). Gramsci suggests that the hegem- In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four ony gestates within a ‘historical bloc in which (1949), arguably the model for all subsequent precisely material forces are the content and urban dystopias, London is ruled by a ruth- ideologies are the form’ (Gramsci 1996: less and virtually omnipotent Party whose 377). Archaeology seems to hold a natural slogan runs thus: ‘Who controls the past affinity with this formation, because it too controls the future: who controls the present enacts dialectic between material force and controls the past’ (Orwell 2000 [1949]: 260). ideology, excavating material traces of his- The Party understands that authentic histori- tory and endowing them with ideologically cal evidence poses the greatest threat to its informed meaning. rule, as proof that the past had been differ- Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere engages with ent from the present and therefore that the these complexities, imagining hegemony not future could also herald change. Notwith- so much in terms of a privileged group, but standing that Nineteen Eighty-Four is a work as an aggressively dominant representation of urban science-fiction rather than urban of London that expresses the power of such a fantasy, Orwell’s insight that metropolitan group. This is a view of London that we have Art. 7, page 4 of 10 Elber-Aviram: ‘The Past Is Below Us’ all come to know from advertisements in the has been stretched to the breaking point’ Tube and shopping centre pamphlets – the (Lebbon 2010: 136). richly leisured and culturally vibrant city, in which the good life and intellectual pursuits Subversive Archaeology set the tone of every street corner, whilst ‘There was a time when archaeology, as a dis- poverty, misery, and injustice are meticu- cipline devoted to silent monuments, inert lously swept out of sight and mind. In Nev- traces, objects without context, and things erwhere, this sanitised image of London is left by the past, aspired to the condition of inscribed topographically onto the city’s vast history, and attained meaning only through array of museums, in the National Gallery, the restitution of a historical discourse’, the Tate Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, Michel Foucault argues in The Archaeology and most importantly, the British Museum of Knowledge (Foucault 2005: 8). Yet the true (Gaiman 2005: 11, 15, 183). Accordingly, it ‘horizon of archaeology’, according to Fou- finds its human votary in the overbearing cault (2005: 177), consists of ‘a comparative character of Jessica, a marketing executive analysis’ that ‘does not have a unifying, but a for a company that sponsors art exhibitions diversifying, effect.’ and fiancée of protagonist Richard Mayhew. Granted, Foucault treats archaeology as Jessica’s worldview reduces the entire city, a metaphor for his investigations into the including Richard himself, into an enormous nature of discourse rather than as a special- museum exhibition that has been dusted off ised discipline and praxis, but his remarks and encased in glass. The epitome of metro- can also be read as a call for a subversive, politan history, for her, is ‘an extremely large anti-hegemonic turn in the field itself, and historically important diamond’, an icon through a methodology that favours discon- of wealth and flawless beauty (Gaiman 2005: tinuities and counter-histories over cohesive 11). Much like the diamond, Jessica’s glit- historical metanarratives. In this sense, when tery exterior refracts an empty soullessness, the protagonists of Neverwhere and Echo City as she brackets out of her consciousness the embark upon journeys that lead them deep on-going history of London’s dispossessed to into the bowels of their respective cities, reaffirm her own economic security and cul- their narrative trajectories arguably drama- tural refinement. tise the Foucauldian concept of archaeologi- Tim Lebbon’s Echo City concretises the cal diversification. In keeping with Foucault’s hegemonic representation of its eponymous paradigm, the protagonists unlock histories metropolis in a single historical monument that the hegemony has endeavoured to sup- that validates the power of the ruling class. press, concomitantly challenging the hegem- Echo City has been ruled for generations by onic interpretation of the past. the cruel theocracy of the Marcellan family, In Neverwhere, the hegemonic representa- whose claim to power rests on the divine tion of London involves turning a blind eye right of ‘Hanharan’, a messiah who allegedly to the city’s downtrodden; allowing them sprung into existence out of a desert rock to plunge into an under-city termed ‘Lon- and founded Echo City from sand and spittle. don Below’ that lies beneath the surface of This mythical genesis story has been valor- the middle and upper-class ‘London Above’. ised in a statue of Hanharan’s hand grasping London Below contains pockets of London the ‘stone birthshard’, an ‘eternal symbol of history in its raw form; ‘tiny spurs of old- Hanharan’s birth and continuing love for the time’ that have escaped the sterilisation of city’ (Lebbon 2010: 135). The statue accrues London Above to assume concrete dimen- such profound mythical significance that it sions on the underside (Gaiman 2005: 79). becomes a yardstick for temporality. When London Below is replete with the dangers of it is vandalised by a courageous dissenter, a displaced history reconstituted as fantastical horror-stricken audience feels ‘as if time itself myth, featuring hungry vampires, genocidal Elber-Aviram: ‘The Past Is Below Us’ Art. 7, page 5 of 10 angels, and deadly pea-soupers. But it is also As the Lady Door of London Below explains: a place where history diversifies and comes ‘There are little bubbles of old time in Lon- alive, vibrantly contrasting with the ossified don, where things and places stay the same, exhibitions above it. As Richard descends like bubbles in amber’ (Gaiman 2005: 229). into the under-city, he discovers a cityscape These bubbles of displaced time safeguard of medieval marketplaces, feudal courts, ‘Things lost. Things forgotten’ (Gaiman ancient paintings, primordial labyrinths, and 2005: 160). The Echoes likewise constitute Victorian-mannered gentleman with a taste ‘places of darkness and forgotten things’, for torture. Hence, for all his mounting terror enclosing ‘old histories built upon, pressed of this strange and menacing underworld, down, hidden away for many eons’ (Lebbon Richard still concedes that walking through 2010: 204, 203). London Below ‘was like walking through his- Conspicuous among the ‘things forgotten’ tory’ (Gaiman 2005: 169). in London Below are the histories of Lon- ‘The past is below us’, the saying goes in don’s failure to care for its people. One such Echo City, ‘a statement of attitude as well as example is the history of Anaesthesia, whom geography’ (Lebbon 2010: 78). The Marcel- Richard meets at the outset of his travels in lans safeguard their religious genesis nar- the under-city. Anaesthesia found herself in rative by layered construction – each new London Below after the social services sent development is built over an existing urban her to live with an abusive aunt and the lat- cluster, pushing material evidence of the ter’s boyfriend. The boyfriend regularly beat city’s past below the new ground level. What Anaesthesia and sexually abused her; appeals results is a quite literal urban palimpsest, to her aunt only incensed the latter to strike with subterranean caverns accumulating her as well. Finally, the girl ended up on the under Echo City in incessant transforma- streets, malnourished and seriously ill, until tions of the fading present into forgotten she was magically transported to London history. As the brilliant scientist Nadielle, Below. For all the dangers that lurk within it, heir to the line of Echo City’s ‘Bakers’ who the under-city takes care of its own in a way specialise in forbidden knowledge, explains that London Above manifestly does not, and to the protagonist Gorham: ‘The deeper you Anaesthesia soon becomes a respected envoy go, the further into history you travel. The of the local talking rats. city doesn’t deal with history. It builds over London Below also absorbs abandoned its past, encloses it, shuts it off, and while buildings that represent a broader strain of tradition might persist, the real histories are London history. The malevolent Croup and soon forgotten’ (Lebbon 2010: 243). Aptly Vandemar, immortal terrors that assume named ‘Echoes’ for their residues of linger- peculiar airs of Victorian gentility, choose to ing history, the city’s underground layers are base their operations ‘in the cellar of a Victo- extremely hazardous, being almost impossi- rian hospital, closed ten years earlier because ble to navigate and harbouring melancholy of National Health Service budget cutbacks’ spectres and ferocious cannibals. But they (Gaiman 2005: 71). The boarded-up win- possess a grim majesty emanating from their dows, the rotten roof, the empty hospital material preservation of suppressed histo- wards, and the abandoned hospital supplies ries in a medley of ‘tumbled ruins of homes’, all testify to the city’s history of conservative ‘slanted ceilings’, and ‘debris-filled base- fiscal policies that have prevented the sick ments’ (Lebbon 2010: 270). from receiving proper medical treatment (Gaiman 2005: 71). It is highly fitting that Things Lost, Things Forgotten this monument to the legacy of Thatcher- London Below and the Echoes each preserve ism becomes a locus of evil in London Below, a past that has been lost to the surface city, where Croup and Vandemar hatch their wilfully forgotten by its upper-class people. wicked schemes. Art. 7, page 6 of 10 Elber-Aviram: ‘The Past Is Below Us’

The Echoes preserve not so much histories established spatio-political hierarchies, as of failure as histories of grief. Gorham finds it gives nearly equal regard to the station, among these underground layers material a dysfunctional ingress and discontinuous evidence of an entire society, the ‘Thulians’, space that no longer facilitates travel and who ‘were slaughtered, and all traces of their exists in a temporal limbo, as it does to the history wiped away’. The story of the Thulian museum, the major cultural institution to massacre has been preserved in buried struc- which the station is ostensibly subordinated. tures and artefacts, in ‘the burned remains Furthermore, the museum itself is exposed of ancient buildings’, ‘charred timbers’, and as culturally hollow, displaying an exhibition more gruesomely, ‘the pale shapes of bones’ of angels that is ‘indiscriminate to the point (Lebbon 2010: 253, 251, 252). Gorham’s dis- of trashiness’ (Gaiman 2005: 188). The only covery of this evidence acknowledges the significant item in the exhibition consists disavowed tragedy and provides a redeem- of the ‘Angelus’; an archaic cathedral door ing heritage to the Thulians’ descendants, revered in London Below as a magical portal, the cannibalistic Garthans; this kindles in but emptied of meaning in London Above. Gorham a sudden ‘affinity with those strange This vestige of the past has been denatured subterranean dwellers’ (Lebbon 2010: 255). by the exhibition into a fetishised object, as Gorham also uncovers a history of individ- conceptualised by Jean Baudrillard (1981: ual grief, in the form of a spectral creature 93): ‘the object eviscerated of its substance called the Lost Man. As his moniker suggests, and history, and reduced to the state of mark- the Lost Man was an explorer who went ing a difference.’ In this case, the Angelus astray in the Echoes and has been wandering marks the difference between the exhibition through them for countless ages. Unfounded sponsor’s wealth and the rest of humanity’s rumours across the surface city claim that lesser fortune. Richard and Door successfully the Lost Man has become a predatory mon- redeem the Angelus from this ahistorical fet- ster who ‘was happy to live here’, but Gorham ishism by restoring its historical function as a discovers in him a lost soul not unlike him- threshold, using it as a gateway into a secret self, prompting him to reflect: ‘How often enclave in London Below. The door is utterly could history trap souls such as this?’ (Leb- transfigured, affecting the triumph of Lon- bon 2010: 204, 334). don Below’s fantastical renewal of the past over London Above’s ossifying and capitalist- Challenging Hegemonic History driven practices. In addition to preserving suppressed histo- An analogous scene occurs in the Echoes, ries, the novels’ under-cities also destabilise when Gorham discovers ‘the forms of old the bastions of hegemonic history in their statues’ that commemorate ‘old city rulers respective metropolises. Neverwhere locates before the Marcellans’ (Lebbon 2010: 274). the focal point of London’s hegemony in These statues constitute a form of what Karin the British Museum, reimagined as a cita- Sanders has termed sculptural ‘bog bodies’ del of upper-class pretentiousness. Accord- that suggest both the proximity and the ingly, Richard and Door’s adventures deflate inaccessibility of corporeal human life in the the pomposity of this symbolic edifice. This past (Sanders 2009). They gesture simultane- subversion begins with their point of access ously towards the presence and the absence, into the British Museum, namely the British the life and the death, of the people after Museum tube station, ‘a forgotten place’ that whom they are modelled: ‘They were per- ‘was closed down in about 1933, and sealed haps the only surviving likenesses of many off’, thereby becoming part of London Below of these people, all part of the city’s story and (Gaiman 2005: 169). The narrative dynamic staring now into an eternal night’ (Lebbon between the museum and its station inverts 2010: 275). Elber-Aviram: ‘The Past Is Below Us’ Art. 7, page 7 of 10

Furthermore, these statues stress the inad- thetic character named Nophel, who uncov- equacy, if not downright falseness, of the ers the histories of the metropolis’ ‘Unseen’; Marcellans’ official history, as Gorham halts abandoned people who have been literally in front of a statue with the realisation that rendered invisible by being forced to drink he did not ‘recognize the face from one of enchanted ‘Blue Water’ (Lebbon 2010: 126, the many history books he’d read’ (Lebbon 131). On a mission to save the city, Nophel 2010: 274). These sculptures of former rulers is compelled to drink the Blue Water himself also harken back to the statue of Hanharan and not only disappears from sight, but also grasping the birthshard, the emblem of Mar- fades out of memory. ‘We’re removed from cellan religious history, and contextualise it the world’, the Unseen Alexia explains, and in within a tradition that dates back long before a particularly eerie moment: ‘She looked at the Marcellans. Hanharan’s statue becomes Nophel as if she had never seen him before, symbolically concatenated with the rulers’ […] and perhaps he was nothing in her mem- self-indulgent custom of erecting statues in ory at all’ (Lebbon 2010: 156, 160). their own honour and ‘As older ones died, The worst part of the protagonists’ eras- they’d erect new statues to those who took ure from collective history and individual their place’ (Lebbon 2010: 274). ‘Politicians memory is that they too begin to doubt the have always liked attention’, Nadielle pithily validity of their existence. Richard undergoes concludes (Lebbon 2010: 274). a trial where he suffers from visions of peo- ple from London Above who claim that he Erased from History has hallucinated all his experiences in Lon- In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the punishment for don Below and urge him to take his own life, resisting the Party’s control of the past is to ‘END IT ALL’ and ‘PUT YOURSELF OUT OF nothing short of your erasure from history: YOUR MISERY’ (Gaiman 2005: 251). Signifi- ‘Your name was removed from the registers, cantly, he is saved from self-destruction by every record of everything you had ever done the touch of a bead from Anaesthesia’s neck- was wiped out, your one-time existence was lace. Material evidence of the history of this denied and then forgotten’ (Orwell 2000: forgotten girl revives his sense of his own 21[1949]). This is also the price that the pro- reality and self-worth. tagonists of Neverwhere and Echo City pay Nophel suddenly finds himself in a ghost for their excavation of the forgotten urban city ‘that held no life at all, not even his past. They are banished into the same collec- own’. He feels himself becoming a non- tive mental oblivion that had absorbed the entity in this colourless shadow-metropolis, under-city. egged on by Alexia who describes it as: ‘The From the moment he comes into contact final existence of the Unseen’ (Lebbon 2010: with the people of London Below, Richard 166). He regains purchase on life, however, disappears from the sight and memory of by grasping that his own materiality exists London Above. Jessica does not recognise outside of people’s warped perception. him, and forgets she ever had a fiancé. Rich- Shortly before meeting Alexia, he realises ard’s best friend Gary treats him as a stran- that: ‘The Blue Water acted on the minds of ger, and even trains, taxis, and ATM machines those around him, rather than on his own fail to register his existence. ‘You can’t go physiology’, and this realisation allows him back to your old home or your old job or your ‘to control its effects upon his own mind’ old life’, London Below’s Marquis de Carabas (Lebbon 2010: 126). explains, ‘None of those things exist. Up Richard and Nophel overcome the impulse there, you don’t exist’ (Gaiman 2005: 126). towards self-annihilation, but they can never In Echo City, the punishment of oblivion is truly reclaim their former lives. Once erased transferred from Gorham to a more sympa- from history, they must continue to live Art. 7, page 8 of 10 Elber-Aviram: ‘The Past Is Below Us’ on the margins, in the realm of the forgot- bristles with swords and spears and knives ten. Richard temporarily returns to London stuck in him by those who have tried and Above, only to discover that his bourgeoi- failed’ (Gaiman 2005: 228). sie life has become as colourless to him as The lowest level of the Echoes harbours Nophel’s spectral city: ‘I thought I wanted a the terrifying ‘Vex’, a nightmarish monster nice normal life. I mean, maybe I am crazy. created by the first Baker. Ironically, it was […] But if this is all there is, then I don’t want originally purposed to ‘watch over the city, to be sane’ (Gaiman 2005: 371). Nophel be its heart and mind, its health and con- fully realises that ‘I’m never going back’ and science’, but it soon becomes a hideous ends up dying with the destruction of ‘the embodiment of the city’s diseased orthodoxy city he both loved and hated’ (Lebbon 2010: of tyrannical oppression and merciless self- 342, 167). interest (Lebbon 2010: 357). The Vex began to violently misbehave soon after its crea- The Monster under the City’s tion, and the Baker decided to correct her Bed(rock) mistake by casting it down into the Echoes. Sigmund Freud has argued for a return of Her disavowal of responsibility for this living the repressed, whereby ‘something which is being to which she had given life becomes secretly familiar […] has undergone repres- emblematic of Echo City’s broader repres- sion and then returned from it’ to become sion of mistakes, tragedy, injustice, and atroc- a distorted symptom that obsessively recurs ity. The Vex has accordingly ‘been growing’ in the individual’s psychic life (Freud 1955: much like the Beast of London, and even 245). Moreover, Freud drew upon urban more explicitly than the Beast, it forms a archaeology to describe these psychic mech- signifier of repressed urban history. True to anisms of memory and repression, likening Freud’s model of dark return, ‘it’s climbing the psyche to a city (Freud 2002[1930]). back up’ (Lebbon 2010: 357). Neverwhere and Echo City are thus in line Richard defeats the Beast of London in a with Freud’s teachings when they evoke the climactic scene where he goes beyond wit- return of the repressed on a mega-metropol- nessing history to become an integral part of itan scale, as repressed urban history takes it. Richard sheds the vestiges of his old life on the form of an immense monster arising and remakes himself into a medieval knight from the deepest pits of the under-city. as he raises a legendary hunting spear and In the nadir of London Below lurks ‘the stabs the Beast. This atavistic and yet his- Great Beast of London’, an ancient creature torically resonant act rids the under-city of that has become ‘extinct in the world above’, the monster even as it transfigures Richard but like other forgotten London histories, into ‘the greatest hunter of London Below’ maintains a fantastical existence in Lon- (Gaiman 2005: 318). Richard is thus fully ini- don Below (Gaiman 2005: 213–4). During tiated into the under-city, as symbolically fig- the reign of King Charles I, the Beast was a ured in his newfound ability to navigate the domestic animal that a local butcher ‘was most ancient section of its preserved histo- going to fatten up for Christmas’ (Gaiman ries, the pre-Roman labyrinth, as if ‘he knew 2005: 168). Escaping imminent slaughter, every twist, every path, every alley and lane the Beast ‘vanished into the sewers’ where ‘it and tunnel of it’ (Gaiman 2005: 320). fed on the sewage, and it grew, and it grew. Echo City is not so lucky. With the rise And it got meaner, and nastier’ (Gaiman of the Vex, the city’s repressed past finally 2005: 168). Subsisting upon the waste of catches up with it: ‘It’s history exploding. It’s London Below, it imbibes discarded traces been under pressure for so long, and now it’s of the city’s layered past, and its own body all coming back’ (Lebbon 2010: 495). Gor- appropriately becomes a tapestry depicting ham’s journey and Nophel’s investigations the Beast’s history of strife: ‘They say his hide are not entirely in vain, however, for their Elber-Aviram: ‘The Past Is Below Us’ Art. 7, page 9 of 10 discoveries enable the last-minute creation further study. For example, urban fantasy’s and distribution of an inoculation that allows occasional use of professional archaeolo- some of the city’s residents to escape into gists as characters who investigate their cit- the surrounding desert and survive its oth- ies’ histories, rather than the more common erwise lethal radiation. Hence, Gorham and use of amateurs, is well worth examining Nophel’s excavation of their city’s forgotten (e.g. China Miéville’s The City & The City and histories affords them the chance to partially Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines quartet). The mitigate the horrible consequences of histori- depictions of history in rural fantasy, and cal repression, granting their fellow urbanites the extent to which they similarly partake an opportunity to begin life anew elsewhere. of archaeological paradigms, form another worthy topic of investigation. Whatever our Conclusion interest, there can be little doubt that the This article has suggested that the juxtaposi- nexus between the fantastic imagination and tion between urban archaeology and urban the archaeological discipline opens up fertile fantasy can help redefine the boundaries grounds for deep on-going excavation. of the latter genre, by highlighting its core interest in the material history of the city. We Acknowledgements can now speculate that urban fantasy may The author would like to thank Hana Koriech have something to offer urban archaeology for kindly granting her the opportunity to as well. Keith Matthews has lamented the write this article, the peer-reviewers for their current state of affairs in which the general excellent feedback, Gregory Dart for his won- public seems keener to accept the conspiracy derful supervision, Gil Breger for his invalu- theories of fringe archaeology than to pon- able assistance, Elana Gomel for her eternal der the nuanced analyses of professional guidance, and Eran Aviram for his everlasting archaeologists (Matthews 2002). Urban fan- support. This research is generously funded tasy could help address this problem, by serv- by UCL’s Overseas Research Scholarship. ing as a mediator between the archaeologist and his or her broader audience. Notes As an accessible genre that clearly labels 1 I am not the first to compare Neverwhere itself as fiction, and yet forcefully reminds and Echo City. Elana Gomel has presented us of the significance of our urban history, such a comparison in her excellent study, urban fantasy may provide a bridge between Impossible Spaces (Routledge, to be pub- the avid fantasy reader and the specialised lished 2014/5). For further reading on ur- knowledge and practice of the urban archae- ban fantasy, this study is warmly recom- ologist. Urban fantasy could also offer new mended. perspectives for archaeologists themselves, as it celebrates a subversive archaeology References that opposes hegemonic practices of histori- Baudrillard, J. 1981 For a Critique of the Po- cal exclusion and self-aggrandisement. The litical Economy of the Sign. St Louis: Telos archaeologist of urban fantasy is the ethi- Press. cal excavator, the hero who digs in precisely Boyer, M. 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How to cite this article: 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): 7, pp. 1-10, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/pia.426

Published: 23 August 2013

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