October 2022 – Coles Book Club
Thursday 27th October 2022 @ 7pm
Amara Thornton & Katy Soar (ed.) – ”Strange Relics: Stories of Archaeology and the Supernatural, 1895 – 1954”
The Coles Book Club – an opportunity to read the book and then join us to meet the editors, Amara Thornton and Katy Soar, for an evening of chat and enjoyment at Coles with your fellow readers. The book you buy from Coles becomes your ticket for the evening – click on the book cover below to buy your book online and we’ll post it to you, or call in at the Shop and pick up a copy.
Never before have so many relics from the past caused such delicious and intriguing shivers down the spine.
Archaeological historian Amara Thornton of the University of London, and Classical archaeologist Katy Soar from the University of Winchester have curated a selection of twelve outstanding supernatural stories about what can happen after an archaeological excavation. From Neolithic rite to ancient Egyptian religion to Roman battle remains to medieval masonry to some uncanny ceramic tiles in a perfectly orfinary American sun lounge, the relics in these stories are, frankly, horrible.
Authors include E. F. Benson, Algernon Blackwood, John Buchan, Arthur Conan Doyle, H. D. Everett, M. R. James, Margery Lawrence, Rose Macaulay, Arthur Machen, Dorothy Quick, Eleanor Scott and Alan Wace.
About the editors: Amara Thornton is a historian of archaeology, and co-investigator on the research project ‘Beyond Notability: Re-Evaluating Women’s Work in Archaeology, History and Heritage in Britian 1870-1950’ at the University of London. Her ‘Archaeologists in Print: Publishing for the People’ was published in 2018.
Katy Soar is a Senior Lecturer in Classical Archaeology at the University of Winchester. Her research interests are Greek archaeology (especially the Bronze Age of the Aegean), and the history and reception of archaeology. She is also a frequent contributor to ‘Hellebore.’
