Okay christ so it's 5 AM and I had a quad shot in the mug I normally use for my pour-over, so lemme just go off a bit, all fantasy and a great deal of sci-fi (not just the weird but especially the weird) operates on a premise of "narrative archaeology"

"Narrative archaeology" is a term I stole from William Gibson, who used "urban archaeology" to describe the setting affect of When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger, the landmark cyberpunk book that *should* have been a smash hit.