Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-nr4z6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-19T13:54:31.832Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

This was fun!

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2023

Aris Politopoulos ,
Angus A.A. Mol  and
Sybille Lammes
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
Type
Discussion Article
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , June 2023 , pp. 24 - 30
Check for updates
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

When we originally set out to study the interfaces of past and play, in the Past-at-Play Lab project, we knew there was uncharted potential for a dialogue between the theory and practice of play and the study of the past. As one scholar of play and two archaeologists, we learned many new things from each other and also had a lot of misunderstandings along the way. This shared joy of emerging understanding through dialogue is part of what makes scholarly work so much fun. We thank our commenters for engaging in a similar caring, committed and attentive manner to our main argument: Play and other forms of fun can and should be found, both in the past and in the discipline of archaeology. Their comments reveal, in two different ways, that this dialogue is just the opening move for a playful archaeology. Much needs to be done to craft a framework and set priorities for an archaeology of and as play. We will be honest: If archaeology is to get this right, it is going to be a lot of hard and challenging work. We will first respond to those commenters that suggest there is really no reason to do this hard work. We disagree, and we will explain, following up on the ideas in our main article and the other comments, why studying play and playing will enrich archaeology.

You can spell fun without function

In her comment, Karen Bellinger does not bury the lead and flatly questions the value of an archaeology of play. Like us, she concludes that play and games have already been investigated through other categories. She argues, however, that this study of play, ‘enmeshed within such functional categories’, works well and that there is no need to zero in on it. Christian Horn argues along similar lines, for example, suggesting that, by studying the function of the wheel in some places, we can understand its initial affordances universally, and there is no need to conceptualize the wheel as something that may have originated as fun. Both also question whether we can find play and fun in the past consistently because we lack the means to single it out in the archaeological record.

We will concede that, as our discipline currently stands, it is easier to focus on ‘functional’ elements of material culture; this is what many of our heuristics were originally meant to do, and that is still what we use them mostly for. This, however, seems to us too conservative of a theoretical and methodological position to study, well, anything new. Indeed, the examples in their comments lead us down well-beaten paths in which we view play through the facets of ritual, social status, politics, education and war (Bellinger) or through the lenses of seriousness and violence (Horn).

No serious scholar of play, from Huizinga’s Homo Ludens to contemporary video game scholarship, would dispute these interfaces. After all, play is ubiquitous and is certainly part of other cultural practices such as religion or the development of technologies. Yet to focus on play in this way, we want to stress, comes with the danger that it will be subordinate to other aspects of life. Function and seriousness have such enormous gravity in our current-day reality that they can become inescapable vectors of the human condition, or at least our archaeological understanding of it. This can lead to some lateral intellectual moves. Supposedly, it is possible to scientifically study the material correlates of something quite as ephemeral or intangible as ritual or prestige, yet understanding the material affordances of play as central to culture is too challenging or even naive? Our own move is more straightforward: Let’s probe the possibility that people in the past played for play’s sake.

We are quite serious about this

Without understanding play and fun for its own sake, we end up with an impoverished understanding of what life in the past was like. As Walter Crist points out in his comment, if you do take play seriously, it will be accessible in the archaeological record. Of course, not all forms of play will reveal themselves through material traces. Yet even in those cases where it may remain mostly intangible, we should realize that playful affordances would have been all around – including in shells, stones, seeds and of course one’s own body. Even in the cases where we have clear material traces and historical records, such as the Royal Game of Ur, we might never have as complete an understanding of a game as we have of Monopoly. That we may miss some aspects of it does not mean we should ignore the realities that emerged through playful engagement with objects and places. Moreover, with all the usual caveats about subjectivity in place, we strongly believe that the realities and materialities of play may also (re-)emerge in the present through rigorously scientific, playful experimentation – as has been the aim of projects such as LUDEME and our own Past-at-Play Lab.

If we understand play in the past better, it will have a major impact on archaeological theory and practice. Crist brings up another crucial reason to do so, not addressed in our main argument: Play is underrepresented as heritage, at least in the lists of formal heritage organizations. The fact that only one board game is inscribed on the intangible cultural heritage list of UNESCO, and games as a whole are only a small category, clearly underlines the marginal role play has had in our field thus far. The capitalist and colonialist aesthetics and dynamics of this are effectively discussed by Crist. It is exactly these types of inquiries and actions that could be – should be – the remit of a playful archaeology. It also requires a serious consideration of the diversity of play, with a multitude of currently underrepresented voices and perspectives. This understanding could even shape the future of play, shining a new light on alternative modes for new forms of fun. What could games look like beyond the capitalist realities and functions underpinning many of the things we get to play currently, such as Monopoly?

The stories we play

It will be fascinating to discover the new stories we could tell of and through past-play, and we have only begun to do so in this paper. In her comment, Despoina Sampatakou, rightfully points out that there is already a strong and clear connection between playing and storytelling, which is more established, even if not completely accepted, as archaeological practice. The example of the Heritage Jam – originally drawing on the idea of Game Jams in the game industry – shows how making and playing games and simply having fun is a very good way to create communities, promote interdisciplinarity, break down the hierarchies of academia and generally get people excited about archaeology.

As Bellinger rightfully reminds us, gaming is not the only way to do so. Her preferred medium of choice, documentary television series, has traditionally been used to great effect. We also enjoy plunking down on the couch after a long day with a nice documentary. The same can be said for popular science books. A key difference between these traditional storytelling media and games is the role of the author and the power that stems from it: There is one party who tells the story; the other party is the listener. This does not work the same way in games and other forms of play, where the relations of care, commitment and attention are shaped through interaction. Players, even when they would have no say in the making of a game, are required to actively engage with it to make it happen. By tapping into this power of play, we can create more democratic spaces and settings where archaeologists and the public have the opportunity to share the same playground, something that archaeogaming is actively doing.

This levelling of the playing field has its own dangers and risks. It is, as Sampatakou argues, a form of resistance, in particular to authorities, structures and mindsets that hold great sway over us. Resistance, like play, is voluntary but never futile. We understand, however, that the exciting but challenging proposition of playful archaeology is not for everyone. That is fine. To those of you who want to play along: This may get messy, but we promise it will be fun.

References

Appadurai, A., 1995: Playing with modernity. The decolonization of Indian cricket. In Breckenridge, C. (ed.), Consuming modernity. Public culture in a South Asian world. Minneapolis, 23–48.Google Scholar
Apperley, T., 2010: Gaming rhythms. Play and counterplay from the situated to the global, Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Austin, R.G., 1934: Roman board games. I. Greece & Rome 4(10), 24–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aycock, J., 2016: Retrogame archeology. Exploring old computer games, Berlin.Google Scholar
Aycock, J., 2021: The coming tsunami of digital artefacts, Antiquity 95(384), 1584–1589.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barba, E., and Savarese, N., 2019: The five continents of theatre. Facts and legends about the material culture of the actor, Leiden.Google Scholar
Béart, C., 1955: Jeux et jouets de l’ouest africain, Dakar.Google Scholar
Becq de Fouquières, L., 1873: Les jeux des anciens, Paris.Google Scholar
Bell, R. C., 1979: Board and table games from many civilizations, New York.Google Scholar
Binford, L., 1968: Archaeological perspectives, in Binford, S. and Binford, L. (eds.), New Perspectives in Archaeology, Chicago.Google Scholar
Bird, A., 2021: Synthetic spaces and indigenous identity. Decolonizing video games and reclaiming representation, in Ariese, C.E., Boom, K.H.J., van den Hout, B., Mol, A.A.A. and Politopoulos, A. (eds.), Return to the interactive past. The interplay of video games and histories, Leiden, 103–116.Google Scholar
Black Trowel Collective, 2016: Black Trowel Collective Manifesto. Black Trowel Collective, at https://blacktrowelcollective.wordpress.com/2020/06/17/btc-manifesto/ (accessed 14 July 2022).Google Scholar
Blomster, J., and Salazar Chávez, V., 2020: Origins of the Mesoamerican ballgame. Earliest ballcourt from the highlands found at Etlatongo, Oaxaca, Mexico, Science Advances 6(11). Doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aay6964.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blythe, M.A., Overbeeke, K., Monk, A.F. and Wright, P.C. (eds.), 2004: Funology. From usability to enjoyment, Dordrecht.Google Scholar
Bogost, I., 2016: Play anything. The pleasure of limits, the uses of boredom, and the secret of games, New York.Google Scholar
Borck, L., 2019: Constructing the future history. Prefiguration as historical epistemology and the chronopolitics of archaeology, Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 5(2), 213–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brunache, P., Dadzie, B., Goodlett, K., Hampden, L., Khreisheh, A., Ngonadi, C., Parikh, D. and Plummer Sires, J., 2021: Contemporary archaeology and anti-racism. A manifesto from the European society of black and allied archaeologists, European Journal of Archaeology 24(3), 294–298. doi: 10.1017/eaa.2021.21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carè, B., Dasen, V. and Schädler, U., 2022: Back to the game. Reframing play and games in context, an introduction, Board Game Studies Journal 16, 1–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cassidy, C., 2020: Who invented the wheel? And how did they do it?, Wired, at https://www.wired.com/story/who-invented-wheel-how-did-they-do-it/ (accessed 11 June 2022).Google Scholar
Christiansen, F., 2020: Online activism meets digital gaming, Masters of Media, at https://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/blog/2020/09/27/online-activism-meets-digital-gaming-protesters-are-now-taking-to-the-virtual-streets/ (accessed 14 July 2022).Google Scholar
Christiansen, P., and Kyle, D., 2013: Sport and spectacle in Greek and Roman antiquity, Malden, MA.Google Scholar
Cook Inlet Tribal Council, 2017: Storytelling for the next generation. How a nonprofit in Alaska harnessed the power of video games to share and celebrate cultures, in Mol, A.A.A., Ariese, C.E., Boom, K.H.J. and Politopoulos, A. (eds.), The interactive past. Archaeology, heritage and video games, Leiden, 21–31.Google Scholar
Copplestone, T., 2016: Interactive pasts. A thank-you letter to VALUE, gamingarchaeo, at https://web.archive.org/web/20160808185659/http://blog.taracopplestone.co.uk/interactive-pasts-a-thank-you-letter-to-value/ (accessed 14 July 2022).Google Scholar
Copplestone, T., 2017a: Designing and developing a playful past in video games, in Mol, A.A.A., Ariese, C.E., Boom, K.H.J. and Politopoulos, A. (eds.), The interactive past. Archaeology, heritage and video games, Leiden, 85–98.Google Scholar
Copplestone, T., and Dunne, D., 2017: Digital media, creativity, narrative structure and heritage, Internet Archaeology 44.Google Scholar
Copplestone, T.J., 2017b: But that’s not accurate. The differing perceptions of accuracy in cultural-heritage videogames between creators, consumers and critics, Rethinking History 21, 415–438.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawford, S., Hadley, D. and Shepherd, G. (eds.), 2018: The Oxford handbook of the archaeology of childhood, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawford, S., and Lewis, C., 2009: Childhood studies and the society for the study of childhood in the past, Childhood in the Past 1(1), 5–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crist, W., 2019: Playing against complexity. Board games as social strategy in bronze age Cyprus, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 55, 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crist, W., de Voogt, A.J. and Dunn-Vaturi, 2016b: Facilitating interaction. Board games as social lubricants in the Ancient Near East, Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 35(2), 179–196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crist, W., Dunn-Vaturi, A.-E. and de Voogt, A.J., 2016a: Ancient Egyptians at play. Board games across borders, London, New York.Google Scholar
Cross, G., 2008: Play in America. From pilgrims and patriots to kid jocks and joystick jockeys. Or how play mirrors social change, American Journal of Play 1(1), 7–46.Google Scholar
Csapo, E., Goette, H.R., Green, J.R. and Wilson, P. (eds.), 2014: Greek theatre in the fourth century BC, Berlin.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Csikszentmihalyi, M., 2000: Beyond boredom and anxiety, California.Google Scholar
Dasen, V., and Vespa, M. (eds.), 2021: Play and games in classical antiquity. Definition, transmission, reception, Liège.Google Scholar
Dasen, V., and Vespa, M. (eds.), 2022: Toys as cultural artefacts in ancient Greece, Etruria, and Rome, Dremil-Lafage.Google Scholar
Davies, R., 1925: Some Arab games and puzzles, Sudan Notes and Records 8, 137–152.Google Scholar
de Voogt, A., Nilsson, M. and Ward, J., 2020: The role of graffiti game boards in the understanding of an archaeological site. The Gebel el-Silsila quarries. Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 106(1–2), 123–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Voogt, A.J., Dunn-Vaturi, A.-E and Eerkens, J.W., 2013: Cultural transmission in the ancient Near East. Twenty squares and fifty-eight holes, Journal of Archaeological Science 40(4), 1715–1730.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeBoer, W.R., 2017: Post-game remarks, in Voorhies, B. (ed.), Prehistoric games of North American Indians. Subarctic to Mesoamerica, Salt Lake City, 286–296.Google Scholar
Dennis, M., n.d.: Archaeogaming?, gingerygamer, at http://gingerygamer.com/index.php/archaeogaming (accessed 3 May 2019).Google Scholar
Deveria, T., 1897: Les jeux de dames en Égypte, in Maspero, G. (ed.), Mémoires et fragments II (Bibliothèque Égyptologique 5), Paris, 83–96.Google Scholar
Dings, R., 2011: Wie heeft de straatnamen van Monopoly gekozen? Overstraatname, at https://www.overstraatnamen.nl/2011/08/wie-heeft-de-straatnamen-van-monopoly.html (accessed 8 June 2022).Google Scholar
Drachmann, A.G., 1967: The classical civilizations, in Kranzberg, M. and Pursell, C.W., Technology in western civilization vol. 1, Oxford, 47–65.Google Scholar
Eiselt, S.B., 2018: Vecino archaeology and the politics of play in New Mexico, USA, in Crawford, S.E.E., Hadley, D.M and Shepherd, G. (eds.), The Oxford handbook of the archaeology of childhood, Oxford, 387–403.Google Scholar
Ekholm, G., 1946: Wheeled toys in Mexico, American Antiquity 11(4), 222–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fabregat, R.G., Pace, A., and Perez Blasco, M.F. (eds.), 2021, Warriors @ Play: Proceedings of the International Congress held at the Museum of History and Archaeology of Elche, 28 May 2021, Universitat D’Alacant.Google Scholar
Ferguson, C.J., and Olson, C.K., 2013: Friends, fun, frustration and fantasy. Child motivations for video game play. Motivation and Emotion 37, 154–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finkel, I.L. (ed.), 2007b: Ancient board games in perspective. Papers from the 1990 British Museum colloquium, with additional contributions, London.Google Scholar
Finkel, I.L., 2007: On the rules for the Royal Game of Ur, in Finkel, I.L. (ed.), Ancient board games in perspective. Papers from the 1990 British Museum colloquium, with additional contributions, London, 16–32.Google Scholar
Finkel, I.L., 2007a: On the rules for the Royal Game of Ur, in Finkel, I. (ed.), Ancient board games in perspective, London, 16–32.Google Scholar
Finkel, I.L., and Mackenzie, C. (eds.), 2004: Asian games. The art of contest, New York.Google Scholar
Flannery, K.V., 1982: The golden Marshalltown. A parable for the archeology of the 1980s. American Anthropologist 84(2), 265–278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flexner, J.L., 2020: Degrowth and a sustainable future for archaeology, Archaeological Dialogues, 27(2), 159–171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freidel, D., and Rich, M., 2018: Maya sacred play. The view from El Perú-Waka, in Renfrew, C., Morley, I. and Boyd, M. (eds.), Ritual, play and belief, in evolution and early human societies, Cambridge, 101–115.Google Scholar
Gaither, C.C., and Cavazos-Gaither, A.E., 2012: Gaither’s dictionary of scientific quotations, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garroway, K.H., 2020: Childist archaeology. Children, toys, and skill transmission in ancient Israel, in Garroway, K.H. and Martens, J.W. (eds.), Children and methods, Leiden (Brill Series in Jewish Studies, 67), 55–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geertz, C., 1973: Notes on the Balinese cockfight, in Geertz, C. (ed.) the interpretation of cultures, New York, 412–452.Google Scholar
Gibb, J.G., 2000: Imaginary, but by no means unimaginable. Storytelling, science, and historical archaeology. Historical Archaeology 34(2): 1–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldhill, S., 1997: Modern critical approaches to Greek tragedy, in Easterling, P.E. (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Greek tragedy, Cambridge, 324–347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grabs, J.E., and Parkin, T. (eds.), 2013: The Oxford handbook of childhood and education in the classical world, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graeber, D., 2018: Bullshit jobs. A theory, London.Google Scholar
Graeber, D., and Wengrow, D., 2021: The dawn of everything. A new history of humanity, London.Google Scholar
Graham, S., 2020: An enchantment of digital archaeology. Raising the dead with agent-based models, archaeogaming and artificial intelligence, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gray, P., 2009: Play as a foundation for hunter-gatherer social existence, American Journal of Play 1(4), 476–522.Google Scholar
Gray, P., 2014: Play theory of hunter-gatherer egalitarianism, in Narváez, D., Valentino, K., Fuentes, A., McKenna, J.J. and Gray, P. (eds.), ancestral landscapes in human evolution. Culture, childrearing and social wellbeing, Oxford, 190–213.Google Scholar
Grima, R., 2017: Presenting archaeological sites to the public. In Moshenska, G. (ed.), Key concepts in public archaeology, London, 73–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guttmann, A., 1998: The appeal of violent sports, in Goldstein, J.H., (ed.), Why we watch. The attractions of violent entertainment, Oxford, 7–26.Google Scholar
Hall, M.A., 2014: Merely players? Playtime, material culture and medieval childhood, in Hadley, D.M. (ed.), Medieval childhood. Archaeological approaches, Oxford and Philadelphia, 39–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilakis, Y., 2014: Archaeology and the senses. Human experience, memory, and affect, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hasbro, 2013: Monopoly. English Heritage Edition.Google Scholar
Hassett, B., 2022: Growing up human. The evolution of childhood, London.Google Scholar
Heath-Stout, L.E., and Hannigan, E.M., 2020: Affording archaeology. How field school costs promote exclusivity, Advances in Archaeological Practice 8(2), 123–133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hjorth, L., 2018: Ambient and soft play. Play, labour and the digital in everyday life, European Journal of Cultural Studies 21, 3–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodder, I., 1989: Writing archaeology. Site reports in context, Antiquity 62, 268–274.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holtorf, C., 2007: Archaeology is a brand! The meaning of archaeology in contemporary popular culture, Oxford.Google Scholar
Holtorf, C., 2007: Archaeology is a brand! The meaning of archaeology in contemporary popular culture, Oxford.Google Scholar
Holtorf, C., 2010: Meta-stories of archaeology, World Archaeology 42(3), 381–393. doi: 10.1080/00438243.2010.497382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horn, C., 2019: Andrew Reinhard. Archaeogaming: An introduction to archaeology in and of video games (New York & Oxford: Berghahn, 2018, 236pp., 22 illustr., pbk, ISBN 978-1-78533-873-1). European Journal of Archaeology 22(4), 612–616. doi: 10.1017/eaa.2019.49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horn, C., and Potter, R., 2020: Set in Stone? Transformation and memory in scandinavian rock art, in Horn, C., Wollentz, G., Di Maida, G., and Haug, A. (eds.), Places of memory. Spatialised practices of remembrance from prehistory to today, Oxford, 97–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hughes, G., 2017: Tradigital knowledge. Indigenous video games, copyright, and the protection of traditional knowledge, in Mol, A.A.A., Ariese, C.E., Boom, K.H.J. and Politopoulos, A. (eds.), The Interactive Past. Archaeology, heritage and video games, Leiden, 33–52.Google Scholar
Huizinga, J., 1938: Homo ludens. Proeve fleener bepaling van het spel-element der cultuur, Haarlem.Google Scholar
Huizinga, J., 2016: Homo ludens. A study of the play element in culture, Ranchos de Taos.Google Scholar
Ignatiadou, D., 2019: Luxury board games for the northern Greek elite, Archimede Archeologie et histoire Ancienne 6, 144–159.Google Scholar
Isbister, K., 2016: How games move us. Emotion by design, Cambridge, MA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Juul, J., 2008: The magic circle and the puzzle piece, in Günzel, S., Liebe, M. and Mersch, D.. (eds.), Conference proceedings of the philosophy of computer games, Potsdam, 56–67.Google Scholar
Kohut, B.M., 2011: Buried with children. Reinterpreting ancient Maya ‘toys’, Childhood in the Past 4(1), 146–161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurke, L., 1999: Ancient Greek board games and how to play them, Classical Philology 94, 247–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kyriakidis, E., 2018: Rituals, games and learning, in Renfrew, C., Morley, I., and Boyd, M. (eds.), Ritual, play and belief, in evolution and early human societies, Cambridge, 302–308.Google Scholar
Lammes, S., 2008: Spatial regimes of the digital playground. Cultural functions of spatial practices in computer games, Space and Culture 11, 260–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lammes, S., and Mol, A.A.A., Forthcoming. As a matter of play. Playful methods for the human and social sciences, Hickey-Moody, A., Willcox, M. and Coombs, G. (eds.), New materialist affirmations, Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Majewski, T., 2000: We are all storytellers. Comments on storytelling, science, and historical archaeology, Historical Archaeology 34(2), 17–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malaby, T., 2003: Gambling life. Dealing in contingency in a Greek city, Urbana, IL.Google Scholar
Malaby, T., 2009: Beyond play. A new approach to games, Games and Culture 2(2), 95–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mauss, M., 1923–1924: Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l'échange dans les sociétés archaïques, L’Année sociologique (1896/1897–1924/1925) 1 (1923), 30–186.Google Scholar
McGonigal, J., 2012: Reality is broken. Why games make us better and how they can change the world, London.Google Scholar
Meier, S., 2020: Sid Meier’s memoir! A life in computer games, New York.Google Scholar
Mol, A.A.A., 2020: Toying with History: Counterplay, Counterfactuals, and the Control of the Past, in Lorber, M. and Zimmermann, F. (eds.) History in games, transcript Verlag, Berlin, 237–258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mol, A.A.A., Politopoulos, A., Ariese, C.E., van den Hout, B. and Boom, K.H.J., 2021: Introduction, in Ariese, C.E., Boom, K.H.J., van den Hout, B., Mol, A.A.A. and Politopoulos, A. (eds.), Return to the interactive past. The interplay of video games and histories, Leiden, 7–18.Google Scholar
Morgan, C., 2009: (Re)Building Çatalhöyük. Changing virtual reality in archaeology, Archaeologies 5(3), 468–487.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, C., 2015: Punk, DIY, and anarchy in archaeological thought and practice, Online Journal of Public Archaeology 5, 123–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, C., 2022: Current digital archaeology, Annual Review of Anthropology 51, 213–231. doi: 10.1146/annurev-anthro-041320-114101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morley, I., 2018a: Introducing ritual, play and belief, in evolution and early human societies, in Renfrew, C., Morley, I., and Boyd, M. (eds.), Ritual, play and belief, in evolution and early human societies, Cambridge, 1–8.Google Scholar
Morley, I., 2018b: Pretend play, cognition and life-history in human evolution, in Renfrew, C., Morley, I., and Boyd, M. (eds.), Ritual, play and belief, in evolution and early human societies, Cambridge, 66–86.Google Scholar
Mukherjee, S., in press: Indian boardgames, colonial avatars. Transculturation, colonialism and boardgames. Berlin.Google Scholar
Murray, H. J. R., 1913: A history of chess, London.Google Scholar
Murray, H. J. R., 1951: A history of board-games other than chess, Oxford.Google Scholar
Pankhurst, R., 1971: History and principles of Ethiopian chess, Journal of Ethiopian Studies 9(2), 149–172.Google Scholar
Perry, S., 2019: The enchantment of the archaeological record, European Journal of Archaeology 22(3), 354–371.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phialon, L., 2022, Amulets, gaming pieces, toys, or offerings? Thoughts on animal figurines and funerary practices in the Late Bronze Age Aegean, Board Game Studies Journal 16, 9–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pilon, M., 2015: The monopolists. Obsession, fury, and the scandal behind the world’s favorite board game, London.Google Scholar
Pluciennik, M., 1999: Archaeological narratives and other ways of telling, Current Anthropology 40(5), 653–678.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Politopoulos, A., Ariese, C., Book, K.H.J. and Mol, A.A.A., 2019: Romans and rollercoasters. Scholarship in the digital playground, Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology 2(1), 163–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Politopoulos, A., and Mol, A.A.A., Forthcoming: Critical miss? Archaeogaming as fun yet slippery tools for archaeological research and outreach, in Lambers, K. and Kalayci, T. (eds.), Analecta praehistorica leidensia, Leiden.Google Scholar
Praetzellis, A., 1998: Introduction. Why every archaeologist should tell stories once in a while, Historical Archaeology 32(1), 1–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Praetzellis, M., and Praetzellis, A., 2015: Archaeologists as Storytellers. The Docudrama. In Van Dyke, R. M. and Bernbeck, R. (eds.), Subjects and Narratives in Archaeology, Colorado, 123–143.Google Scholar
Purcell, N., 1995: Literate games. Roman urban society and the game of alea, Past and Present 147, 3–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reinhard, A. 2013. What is archaeogaming?, archaeogaming, at: https://archaeogaming.com/2013/06/09/what-is-archaeogaming/ (accessed 21 July 2022)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reinhard, A., 2018: Archaeogaming. An introduction to archaeology in and of video games, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renfrew, C., Morley, I. and Boyd, M., 2017: Ritual, play and belief, in evolution and early human societies, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renfrew, C., Morley, I. and Boyd, M.J., 2018: Ritual, play and belief, in evolution and early human societies, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Rutecki, D.M., and Blackmore, C., 2016: Towards an inclusive queer archaeology. An overview and introduction, SAA Archaeological Record 16(1), 9–11.Google Scholar
Sharp, J., and Thomas, D., 2019: Fun, taste, & games. An aesthetics of the idle, unproductive, and otherwise playful, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Sicart, M., 2018: Quixotean play in the age of computation, American Journal of Play 10(3), 249–264.Google Scholar
Sillar, B., 1996: The dead and the drying. Techniques for transforming people and things in the Andes, Journal of Material Culture 1(3), 259–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith Nicholls, F., 2018: Virtual dark tourism in the Town of Light, in Champion, E. (ed.), The phenomenology of real and virtual places, New York.Google Scholar
Smith Nicholls, F., 2021: Fork in the road. Consuming and producing video games cartographies, in Ariese, C.E., Boom, K.H.J., van den Hout, B., Mol, A.A.A. and Politopoulos, A. (eds.), Return to the interactive past. The interplay of video games and histories, Leiden, 117–134.Google Scholar
Soemers, D.J.N.J., Crist, W. and Browne, C., 2019: Report on the digital ludeme project, ICGA Journal 41(3), 138–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sommer, M., and Sommer, D., 2017: Archaeology and developmental psychology. A brief survey of ancient Athenian toys, American Journal of Play 9(3), 341–355.Google Scholar
Spaulding, A.C., 1953: Book review: Measurements of some prehistoric design developments in the Southeastern States. James A. Ford. (75 pp., 23 figs., Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. 44, Part 3. New York, 1952.), American Anthropologist 55, 588–591.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spivey, N.J., 2004: The ancient Olympics, Oxford, New York.Google Scholar
Staines, D., 2010: Videogames and moral pedagogy. A Neo-Kohlbergian Approach, in Gibson, D., and Schrier, K. (eds.), Ethics and game design. Teaching values through play, Hershey, 35–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevenson, R., 1960: A wooden sword of the Late Bronze Age, Proceedings of the Society of Antuquaries of Scotland 91, 191–193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sutton-Smith, B., 2001: The ambiguity of play, Cambridge MA.Google Scholar
Tarlow, S., 1999. Bereavement and commemoration. An archaeology of mortality, New York.Google Scholar
Taylor, T.L., 2006: Play between worlds. Exploring online game culture, Cambridge, MA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tekinbaş, K.S., and Zimmerman, E., 2003: Rules of play. Game design fundamentals, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
The British Museum, 2017: Tom Scott vs Irving Finkel: The Royal Game of Ur | PLAYTHROUGH | International Tabletop Day 2017, YouTube, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZskjLq040I (accessed 21 July 2022)Google Scholar
The Heritage Jam, 2022: The 2022 Heritage Game Jam. [Online]. The Heritage Jam, at https://heritagejam.hosted.york.ac.uk/ [accessed 2 March 2023].Google Scholar
UNESCO 2020: Decision of the Intergovernmental Committee: 15.COM 8.B.37, at https://ich.unesco.org/en/decisions/15.COM/8.B.37 (accessed 6 March 2023).Google Scholar
Valavanis, P., 2004: Games and sanctuaries in Ancient Greece. Olympia, Delphi, Isthmia, Nemea, Athens, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Voogt, A. de, Nilsson, M., and Ward, J., 2020: The role of graffiti game boards in the understanding of an archaeological site. The Gebel el-Silsila quarries, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 106, 123–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voorhies, B. (ed.), 2017, Prehistoric games of North American Indians. Subarctic to Mesoamerica, Utah.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voorhies, B., 2017: Introduction, in Voorhies, B. (ed.), Prehistoric games of North American Indians. Subarctic to Mesoamerica, Salt Lake City, 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voss, B.L., 2021: Documenting cultures of harassment in archaeology. A review and analysis of quantitative and qualitative research studies, American Antiquity 86(2), 244–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, G., 2018: Playing with things. The archaeology, anthropology and ethnography of human-object interactions in Atlantic Scotland, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodruff, P., 2008: The necessity of theater. The art of watching and being watched, Oxford, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zimmerman, E., 2012: Jerked Around by the Magic Circle – Clearing the Air Ten Years Later, Gamasutra, at https://web.archive.org/web/20220326054650/https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6696/jerked_aro (accessed 21 July 2022).Google Scholar