Daniël van Helden is a doctoral student at the University of Leicester, UK. His research focuses on the theory, method and nature of archaeological thinking, specifically the concept of identity, as well as the potential of Fuzzy Set Theory and ontological database approaches for archaeology.

Robert Witcher is Associate Professor of Archaeology at Durham University, UK, and the editor of the world archaeology journal Antiquity. His research interests include landscape archaeology with a particular focus on the pre-Roman and Roman periods in Italy and the Mediterranean, where he has explored aspects of ancient settlement, agriculture and demography.

1. Historical fiction and archaeological interpretation: introduction

Daniël van Helden and Robert Witcher

2. The cornflakes of prehistory: fact, fiction and imagination in archaeology

Caroline Wickham-Jones

3. Voices from the silence

Margaret Elphinstone

4. Beyond archaeological narrative: imagined worlds of Neolithic Europe

Mark Patton

5. Imagined realities in academic and fictional accounts of the British Mesolithic

Donald Henson

6. Walking in someone else's shoes: archaeology, empathy and fiction

Daniël van Helden and Robert Witcher

7. The multiverse of fiction: exploring interpretation through community archaeology

Francesco Ripanti and Giulia Osti

8. Entering undocumented pasts through playwriting

James G. Gibb

9. Encountering the past through slag and storytelling

Michael Given

10. Writing wonders: poetry as archaeological method?

Erin Kavanagh

11. Ambiguity and omission: creative mediation of the unknowable past

Giacomo Savani and Victoria Thompson

12. Spartacus: Blood and Sand (STARZ, 2010): a necessary fiction?

Fiona Hobden

13. Archaeology, historical fiction and Classical Reception Studies

Joanna Paul

14. Imagining the past through Film and Cultural Studies

Andrew B.R. Elliott

15. Archaeological narrative and humour in a post-truth world: the obligatory sum-up article

Adrian Praetzellis