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Horror Part 2 - Ep 32
414 Plays3 years ago
The long arm of the prehistoric past reaches through the millennia to grab our attention, and, in this episode, to grab us by the throat. Yes, we’re talking folk horror in this episode, and trying not to shiver as we discuss how the past intrudes in uncanny ways on the present in films, plays and books. We have a full cast of characters in this spine-tingler, including Dr Lauren McIntyre, Rebecca Lambert (or Lady Liminal), David Southwell of the Hookland Guide, Dr Simon Underwood and Drone Lord.
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- Twitter: @prehistpod
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 32
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to episode 32 of the Prehistories podcast.
Portrayal of Prehistory in Modern Times
00:00:15
Speaker
Can't believe we've got this far. We explore in this podcast how prehistory is portrayed in the present day. Last episode we talked about the role of prehistoric themes in folk horror, and we talk for so long that it's not only become a double episode, it's a triple episode. I don't really mind because it gives me longer to organise the next story.
00:00:38
Speaker
If you have any ideas for what that could be, whether it's a book or a film or a TV show or anything else, then let me know. You'll find me on Twitter at prehistpod, or you can find me on the Archaeology Podcast Network and send us a message.
Introduction of Guests: Beck Lambert and David Southwell
00:00:58
Speaker
Today, I continue talking with Beck Lambert, who is a postgraduate archaeology researcher on the Underpasses Our Liminal Places project.
00:01:07
Speaker
and David Southwell, who's the creator of Hockland, an author, and he also created folklore against fascism. They're all big horror fans as well. We take in a few other old and more recent folk horror films and TV shows. Enjoy.
Technical Difficulties and Supernatural Speculations
00:01:30
Speaker
Sorry, everyone. We have had such difficulty with recording for some reason, and I think it's just everybody's Wi-Fi and trying to be all unsafe. You'll be very positive. I think there's some teens out there that don't want this going out. I think you might be right. I'm trying to be positive, but you know that behind the scenes...
00:01:51
Speaker
I've been cursing and we've lost, sorry I should have said many minutes ago that we've lost Lauren and I hope to speak to Lauren again and now we seem to have lost Simon.
00:02:07
Speaker
So, yeah, they are an angry spirit. This is when you survive your horror, one by one of my friends. Battle Royale goes... oh gosh. Yeah, one of my friends made me watch Battle Royale. That was traumatic. Wow. It's a guidebook, it's a handbook. You see, I can't even watch Short of the Dead again.
00:02:29
Speaker
I can't. And such a wimp.
Christmas Ghost Stories and M.R. James
00:02:32
Speaker
Anyway, but we're, I'm, you know, I never caught these Christmas, they were radio shows, weren't they? The MR James BBC at Christmas. They were brought back by more ages. But there was a tradition of doing the sort of ghost story at Christmas. A lot of the most fondly remembered ones are the MR James adaptions that they did.
00:02:53
Speaker
And it kind of goes back, it's a very old tradition, isn't it? I mean, that's what you get in Dickens, is that tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas with Christmas Carol and stuff. Yeah, it's very much that sense of, you know, the Christmas ghost story and, you know, the BBC adaptions are very much loved. And I think for many people, it's their first experience of M.R. James. Excuse me. So they are loved.
00:03:20
Speaker
But the original James stories are deeply loved and you'll find fans of them everywhere because it really is quite often a wonderful sense of, as I've been saying, of the past infecting them for now. That sense that places are infected by the past, people are infected by the past. There's a wonderful sense of doom echoing across temporal distance in James.
00:03:50
Speaker
and his use of antiquarian characters, the people who are unearthing and digging up and digging what they shouldn't be and researching into the past and bringing this brings them into a horror and into a sense of doom and of being pursued by the past, infected by the past and the past not being a safe place, even if you are an academic, even if you are somebody from that antiquarian background.
Influence of M.R. James on Folk Horror
00:04:18
Speaker
They're very powerful stories and they've lost none of their ability to convey a sense of place, a sense of past, and a deep haunting since they were first written. They are as good today as they were when he first penned them. Absolutely. And the BBC adaptions have been, you know, loved by many, but the actual M.R. James, I think he's probably now almost as popular as he was in his heyday.
00:04:47
Speaker
And he's certainly one of the classic writers. I think we took quite often the folk horror as being something, you know, only of cinema, but it certainly goes back much further. And it does involve writers like Macon, James, Aikman, Algernon Blackwood, who I think probably wrote the best folk horror story of all time with the Willows. But James is a wonderful, wonderful writer.
Storytelling and Archaeology: A Kinship
00:05:10
Speaker
And I think, you know, I'm quite often I've sat in pubs
00:05:15
Speaker
with people saying, I know he probably wouldn't have liked me very much, but I can still love and appreciate his work at a very deep level. And I think he's a huge influence on, if it wasn't for Macken and for James, and if you could sort of have a literary DNA paternity testing, you would find that they had fathered so many of us and so many of our works, you know, across so many different genres of horror.
00:05:43
Speaker
and of course with the Erie and uncanny, they are very powerful figures. And certainly with James, you absolutely get that sense of the transgressive nature of the act of digging and disinterring and of physically going into the past via the ghost soil is really powerful. And I think it's sort of set the tone for a lot of the use of archeology in a lot of films and an awful lot of stories that have come after him.
00:06:12
Speaker
Yeah, as an archaeologist, you kind of, you're trained to forget those more supernatural ways of viewing the past, I guess, and the idea of
Supernatural Ideas in Archaeology
00:06:26
Speaker
ghosts. But as I mentioned before about the
00:06:29
Speaker
sleeping on a cemetery, how you forget all of your objective training when it's nighttime. And there's a skeleton scratching underneath your tent. And this idea of ghosts is so deep, isn't it? The ghosts of Roman centurions or the ghosts of old ladies that used to live in the house and that you're in now. And
00:06:54
Speaker
It's almost a manifestation of that idea that you are temporary in whatever place you're in. Absolutely. And the past is there still. And as you say, the past infecting the now, David. I think there's also a sense for a lot of us writers, we feel a deep kinship with archaeologists because you are world builders, you are fellow enchanters, you are creating ways and
Archaeologists as Storytellers
00:07:24
Speaker
the work you do creates these portals into the past, you recreate the past, you enchant us, you bring us into its living story. And we kind of feel a kinship because quite often it's very dull, very lonely, not particularly well rewarded. And quite often, you know, nobody sees all the hard graft that goes into it, whether it's a story, or it's a
00:07:48
Speaker
you know, a piece of archaeology. You know, the works seem very similar. Yeah, and I think there's a real sense of kinship, I think. It's one of the reasons why a lot of writers, I think, enjoy having, creating archaeological characters and situations is, you know, I often tell the story of when I was a child in the 1970s of finding a Mesolithic flint head in the South Asian army fields and
00:08:16
Speaker
just how you're taking that object to the local museum and being told what it was. And it created this sort of the temple shades, you know, that field was never just a field again. It was somewhere where the people of the Neolithic had lived and hunted. And I had a completely enchants the landscape and gives this layer of story and gives you eyes to see the landscape of the now through what it was. And it does
00:08:46
Speaker
not in a traditional sense of haunting, but you do archaeologists, when they engage and they give us these amazing stories, they do make a haunted landscape. They do populate it with ghosts, with people, with what was there before. And that's a really very powerful piece of magic. And that's one of the reasons I think you will always find that there are a lot of writers who are always very interested in
Collaboration in Storytelling
00:09:15
Speaker
portraying archaeology and archaeologists because we recognize that's what you do. You may not see yourselves as enchanters and world builders and openers of the ghosts, but that's certainly how you come across to us.
00:09:31
Speaker
I thought, I mean, doing this podcast for several years, I've been looking at the role of writers and authors, storytellers and the role of archaeologists and how they come together and, or indeed don't. And I got the sense that an archaeologist trying to write, trying to tell stories is never as successful as a proper storyteller
00:09:58
Speaker
using the archaeology to tell stories, because the storytelling is so important to get right. And the archaeology can be can be picked up. But for an archaeologist to tell stories, you would you'd need so much training. But I love the way that you've just turned that round on me, David.
00:10:20
Speaker
to suggest that world building. And I think I can think of particular archaeological writers who definitely world build for me, like you mentioned, oh gosh. Mark Edmunds. Mark Edmunds, thank you. Yeah, definitely. Mark Edmunds, definitely. And Juketa Hawke in her way. Oh, yes. You know, I mean, a land is just phenomenal.
00:10:47
Speaker
I really should feature that sometime. But then you have to think as well, sorry just to interject, you know, so Chiqueta Hawkes was living with, not Betjeman, sorry, oh the champion inspector calls.
00:11:05
Speaker
oh priestly yeah so she was in a relationship with priestly by the time she wrote a land and also she oh and he is such an amazing scholar and she moved she moved within the same circles as like paul nash and so on and i think and and of course piggett and nash formed a friendship when nash went to look
00:11:30
Speaker
at the the Avebury works in the in the 30s. Right. And I think that there's this we,
Creative Freedom Beyond Academia
00:11:39
Speaker
you know, and this is something that I really enjoy. Yeah, I'm finishing up a postgraduate degree, which I've enjoyed very much. But
00:11:50
Speaker
I'm stepping away from formal academia in a sense because I find it constricting at times. I can now work openly and freely with writers, with visual and sonic artists, all sorts of people, and we feed off each other. So as David would say,
00:12:15
Speaker
you know, someone might ask me about something archaeological and I can give them the nuts and bolts that, you know, the fact, so to speak, of, say, excavations and so on. And then they take that and they go with that. And then they come back to me with what they've done. And then that inspires me in my research. And it's just like this beautiful connection that is just opening worlds. And it's
00:12:44
Speaker
I always tell archaeologists seduce artists, seduce right, seduce magicians, because you have something we want, which is this archaeology provides the best wall to bounce ideas off of. It's one of the best ways of breaking out of current paradigms, of thinking differently, because the past is sometimes entirely alien. And you have so much to offer
00:13:14
Speaker
creative people is the wall we want to bounce off of. But we need that engagement. And sometimes that engagement has to have a collaborative equity where it isn't about all about theory. We want the nuts and bolts. We want the details. But if you want to start changing the perception that
00:13:32
Speaker
archaeology is not all just about Stonehenge or the Orkneys. You've got to seduce the writers and the artists and the musicians and the storytellers to tell the different stories you want told and to form those partnerships. Because when I was creating Hookland, one of the first things I did was work out what the archaeology of Hookland is, how many barrows, how it sacks and graves rival Berensfield and
00:14:01
Speaker
Swallow Cliff. And I was using the archaeology I knew and I loved to bounce and to create. And as Rebecca says, it can create some wonderful relationships. And one of again, I think the things that we share and the kinship between writers and archaeologists
Archaeologists Inspiring Writers
00:14:19
Speaker
is an absolute obsession with place and focus on place. And we actually have very similar languages, quite often very similar agendas to sell stories about place in the past. And
00:14:31
Speaker
we need to be working together a lot more. And I think, you know, we I just know as a writer, how much I am inspired, how much I get from the archaeological community, from individual archaeologists, people like Ken Brophy, Lorna Richardson, have really inspired my work, and I've been a very powerful influence. And it is, you know, we want to do more of this, and we should be doing more of this, because it's a very different
00:14:59
Speaker
audience quite often. We are very different audiences. And exactly when we work together, we really do become, you know, a very powerful intersection. And we can speak in places where I as a writer don't normally speak, being invited to speak at TAG section called Hoeklandia was just mind blowing to me. It was just it was just, yeah, I don't often get that opportunity.
00:15:26
Speaker
But at the same time, if the narratives in archaeology, which I sometimes I'm trying to showcase in my work, are the ones which are not, you know, don't tend to break through in the media, and we can help each other and we should be collaborating a lot more. Yeah, I so agree. Our joint reaches can be so much more engaging and so much more powerful. And especially at a time when
00:15:53
Speaker
folklore and archaeology and the past itself is weaponized by some of the worst, far more nationalistic forces.
Challenging Existing Narratives
00:16:03
Speaker
It's even more for us to sort of work together to say, yeah, it never was like this. This is never how it was. And these are the alternative stories and the stories that need telling.
00:16:15
Speaker
I think is a very important thing we can do as well. For me personally, Hookland has been a huge source of inspiration for myself in developing my various research projects. I'm really glad that you mentioned the Hooklandia
00:16:35
Speaker
session at TAG because for myself, not just as a person who was brought up in a family which was steeped in folkloric traditions and so on, but as an archaeologist, that was just an absolutely phenomenal
00:16:51
Speaker
session and what really excited me was that through your work, your imagination David, you inspired these archaeologists to create these absolutely amazing papers. I mean Martin Barber's Midsomer Murders one was just phenomenal.
00:17:12
Speaker
And also the fact that we had a fairly small room for that session because Kenny didn't think we were going to get a huge number of people. And literally, Kim, I don't know if you were there, it wasn't just standing room only. There were people that like Julian Thomas was stood in the corridor trying to listen and stuff. And for me, it was just wonderful. It was just so affirming and stuff. It was amazing.
00:17:43
Speaker
No, that was at London. Oh, London. I didn't manage to get to mention much of the London one, which was very frustrating. But one of the I did run a session at London. And it was about what we what have we done for the Romans? I work at a Roman site. Well, yes, I do for a short while longer in a vein of, you know, how we presented the Romans.
00:18:04
Speaker
And we worked with Caroline Lawrence, an author of... Oh yeah, she's lovely. One, absolutely lovely lady. And I was so adamant as presenting that, you know, what we as archaeologists do is not that... It is important, but it doesn't get to people like you say, David.
00:18:23
Speaker
It doesn't have the reach and it's through working with authors like Caroline and like yourself and so many others. So we've featured, for instance, Margaret Elphinstone's book, Gathering Night.
00:18:37
Speaker
Oh, gosh. And now I forgot the name of it. But I think it's called that. Early on, and she worked with Caroline Wickham Jones on that, to do an absolutely amazing book as a result of it and such amazing stories. And some of my most
00:18:57
Speaker
most kind of not gratifying, but moments where I feel so much pride and so much creativity is working with writers and artists. And like, for instance, working on the first foresters and that's one of my favorite books. I love it. It's so wonderful. So much.
Collaborative Projects: First Foresters
00:19:16
Speaker
I mean, I don't feel like I had that much to do with it, but that's just my imposter syndrome there, I think. Working with Matt Ritchie, who is a forestry and land Scotland archaeologist,
00:19:32
Speaker
who has these inspired ideas to create these wonderful resources and working with a huge number of artists and photographers and writers and archaeologists to create beautiful books that you can still get for free. You can download the PDF for free. Working with Alex Leonard, who is a wonderful cartoonist from Oakney,
00:19:57
Speaker
on the 18 characters, Neolithic and Mesolithic characters. That was just some of the most, the funnest time in my life. And the images in first foresters, especially the image of when the imagining of people digging out
00:20:14
Speaker
the henge ditches and when you've got the timber posts and how they imagine it would be and you've got that shamanic type character. For me, that's one of my favourite archaeological
00:20:31
Speaker
images because it just, it's alive. It's completely, the colours are so vibrant. There's movement. It's a static image, but it's, it's full of movement and energy. And it's, it's just, it's phenomenal. Sorry, I will be quite, but that is just what I want to convey. And when you, and the thing is when you then take that image back and walk that landscape, it, it grants you this wonderful, powerful connection that
00:21:01
Speaker
As I say, it is not just this portal into the past. It infects your imagination in a wonderful way. And those images are so wonderful and give such a connection back to place, back to the material. And it's fantastic storytelling. And I think it's a very transformative storytelling because you will not be able to think about the history in the same way.
00:21:31
Speaker
You will not be able to think about the place in the same way. It has changed you. And that's wonderful. It's deeply wonderful.
00:21:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think so this is a manifesto really is that I've been saying this throughout my podcast. Well, to start with, I think my podcast started as a, oh, look how the archaeology has been misrepresented in this book. And it soon became a much, much deeper appreciation for storytelling over, over the strict kind of interpretations of certain archaeological things.
00:22:07
Speaker
And the creativity of working together to create something that's more than any archaeologist could ever create on their own is just so wonderful.
Archaeology's Role in Understanding Humanity
00:22:20
Speaker
I think the manifesto is that archaeology is not just grubbing around in the dirt, although that is a very enjoyable part of it. It is about us, isn't it? It's about our humanity and about who we are and where we have been.
00:22:37
Speaker
our future. And I think it's also about this thing, and this is stuff that I address within my research, is that you don't have to go out into the far reaches of certain planes in southern England or
00:22:53
Speaker
or dilapidated castles. It's everywhere. Archaeology from the minute you, well, I would say it's in your home, but also the minute you step out your door, there is archaeology everywhere. And archaeology doesn't have to be something that's hundreds or thousands of years old. It could be something that was made last year. And the thing is, it's how we connect. And that's what I really enjoy. And with my work,
00:23:21
Speaker
And the way that I present things, yes, I could present interpretations and data analyses in very academic formal context, you know, reports. But I love creating these stories, you see, and drawing on folklore and drawing on the uncanny.
00:23:42
Speaker
If we go into this underpart, there could be portals in there and all these things. There's a pylon that conveyor of the hum, but the hum isn't modern. The hum has been with us since the beginning. Then you're bringing in the archaeological theory, so to speak.
00:24:01
Speaker
through linking the hum and animism and stuff. So there's this, the heartbeat of archaeology, the DNA of archaeology is running through all these things, but we're just presenting it in a different way. And hopefully that will capture the imaginations of people and get them thinking, well, maybe I'm going to go out and have a look and explore and see there, not just the wider world, but even their local
00:24:30
Speaker
you know, landscapes with different eyes and excited eyes, you know. The big thing for Hookland really is partly is you ask what landscape punk has to do with it. I would say landscape punk is just taking it back to the very basic thing that places layers of memory, layers of story, layers of information.
Evocative Power of Archaeology in Storytelling
00:24:50
Speaker
And it's about representing and telling that and allowing that to manifest. And what I'm trying to do in Hookland is offer re-enchantment
00:25:00
Speaker
offer eyes of war onto the familiar. And the familiar can be urban settings, it can be rural settings, but it's just to give people new eyes. And that's archaeology to me. It gives you new eyes and it gives you an exploration of the layers of place, the layers of story that make it and the layers of information. It provides those navigation, it provides those eyes of wonder. And archaeology is a very sublime thing to me.
00:25:30
Speaker
when I'm using it and when I'm working with it, and certainly when I'm trying to represent it in Auckland, I try and represent it in those terms because I think that's what it really is at its core for me. Well, I think that's a good place to bring this to a close. A wonderful description of what archaeology can be. All out of this, the folk horror, which I was obviously facing with trepidation, but
00:25:58
Speaker
I think it is all around us. The fear that comes is part of the effective nature of the past that's with us. It provokes lots of emotions. One of them can be fear, others can be awe and wonder and so on. So I think that they're all quite closely allied. But I wanted to just say thank you to Bec Lambert. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you
00:26:27
Speaker
Me too, it's been really great and thank you David Southwell. It's been a pleasure,
Conclusion and Gratitude
00:26:31
Speaker
thank you. It's been wonderful talking to you and thank you both for your contributions. You were the two last people standing everyone else's debate. Someone's watching over us David.
00:26:45
Speaker
which is wonderful. And I will, as long as it's all right with you, share your accounts on other show notes, so on Twitter and so on, so that people can get in contact with you. Thank you. And hopefully I will manage to talk to Lauren. I hope so. I do hope so. Yeah, but I'm going to bring
00:27:09
Speaker
our talk to a close for now. No problem and thank you and thank you so much Kim for inviting me, I've really enjoyed it. I don't often get invited to be amongst archaeologists and it's always a pleasure when I am and it's been a really special pleasure, thank you so much Kim.
00:27:25
Speaker
Oh, thank you. It has been really nice. I would say I know we say this all the time, David, but you know, I'm just gonna say par and I know you're going to say par and I'm going to throw that part straight back at you to be to talk to Simon, to talk to yourself, to talk to back. I'm really looking forward to what Lauren's gonna say. Yeah. The work you do
00:27:53
Speaker
It isn't about ink stasis, it lives, it inspires. It bleeds out in ways that sometimes you don't even get a chance to track. And to be part of the conversation has just been lovely. Thank you very much.
Preview of Next Episode
00:28:07
Speaker
You're very welcome, but it's been my pleasure.
00:28:17
Speaker
On the third instalment of the folk horror genre for Prehistories, I get to finally talk to Dr. Lauren McIntyre, senior osteoarchaeologist at Oxford Archaeology and a horror aficionado who suggested this whole thing. We finally got our tech sorted. So look forward to that next month.
00:28:48
Speaker
Oh.
00:28:56
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV Traveling America, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, in the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.