Trading Shovels for Controllers: A Brief Exploration of the Portrayal of Archaeology in Video Games

Archaeology has been a persistent theme for video games, from the long-running Indiana Jones and Lara Croft franchises to more recent uses of archaeology in games like Destiny and World of Warcraft. In these games, archaeology is often portrayed as a search for treasure among lost worlds that leads to looting and the destruction of cultural heritage. In this article, we review the current state of archaeological video games, including mainstream and educational games. While this is not an exhaustive discussion, it provides an introduction and overview to the current landscape. We propose that an understanding of current popular archaeological video games is important to archaeologists for three reasons: (1) it is a source of potentially dangerous misconceptions about the discipline that must be addressed; (2) it can be a source of inspiration for funding and a means to recruit new students to the discipline; and (3) games can be leveraged as teaching moments in classrooms and public discussions. It is important that archaeologists recognize the ways the discipline is being portrayed in such public contexts, in order to maximize the potential benefit for archaeology and to prevent further misconceptions about the subject.     

The mechanics of innovation: clover cultivation in Wales before 1750

Welsh agriculturists were more responsive to the introduction of new crops in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries than is generally assumed. In particular, they appreciated the nutritious fodder that could be provided for their livestock by the sown grasses, notably clover, sainfoin and perennial rye grass. These legumes were tried on Welsh estates at least as early as 1668. The initial mechanics of innovation are explored: what were the processes by which knowledge was gained, distributed, tested and used in the decision-making of those who first cultivated the grasses? On the Trevor estates the stages of adoption included the inception of trial plots of sainfoin; observation and enquiry with several English growers; assessment of soils and seeds; parallel experiments at two sites; close reference to the printed word about the crop, in papers of instruction and books. Welsh initiators also followed patterns of imitation, in some cases based on clover cultivation already established in Wales, in others on the classic model of Herefordshire. The scale of adoption is indicated by data from every Welsh county, and for landowners and farmers at different levels of operation. The literature of improved agriculture was directly influential, as were the ties of family kinship, language and religion among adopters. The working of a three-step flow of communication is suggested.     

Présentation

Sans résumé Président du Comité d'organisation du colloquePensée et science, ancien professeur invité de l'EPF, Lausanne.     

Negotiations with the Animate Forest: Hunting Shrines in the Guatemalan Highlands

Ethnoarchaeological research at highland Maya hunting shrines documents the material remains of interactions between two types of animate beings: humans and the forest. When either active agent enters the others’ domain there are accompanying ceremonial activities to assuage the inherent danger, often leaving physical traces in the material record. These traces, if found in the archaeological record, might reveal similar ancient interactions. Using the material correlates of modern hunting rituals, we explore the utility of ethnoarchaeological research in identifying negotiations with non-human agents associated with the animate forest – an active agent in many societies.     

Perspectives on ancient Maya bone crafting from a Classic period bone-artifact manufacturing assemblage

This paper explores the nature of utilitarian bone-artifact crafting from the perspective of an unusual assemblage of manufacturing debitage dated to the Terminal Classic. This large assemblage contains unprecedented quantities of debris from the production of utilitarian artifacts, primarily bone perforators (needles, pins, awls). The collection was recovered from Group L4-3, a small, non-elite, Late and Terminal Classic residential complex located adjacent to the central palaces and residences of the ruling nobility of the ancient Maya site of Dos Pilas, Petexbatún, Guatemala. This study evaluates the standardization of raw materials, methods, and finished artifacts of the assemblage based on criteria used in discussions of scale of production and craft specialization. These evaluations are used to explore whether the L4-3 bone crafters were part- or full-time specialists, whether they produced their products on a large or a small scale and for domestic or external consumption, and for whom they crafted these products. The continuous occupation of the L4-3 complex through the transition from Late to Terminal Classic, a time of social change, offers a rich background for this evaluation of Maya utilitarian bone-artifact crafting.     

A Place to Rest Your (Burnt) Bones? Mortuary Houses in Early Anglo-Saxon England

This article presents a fresh interpretation of square and rectangular mortuary structures found in association with deposits of cremated material and cremation burials in a range of early Anglo-Saxon (fifth-/sixth-century AD) cemeteries across southern and eastern England. Responding to a recent argument that they could be traces of pyre structures, a range of ethnographic analogies are drawn upon, and the full-range of archaeological evidence is synthesized, to re-affirm and extend their interpretation as unburned mortuary structures. Three interleaving significances are proposed: (i) demarcating the burial place of specific individuals or groups from the rest of the cemetery population, (ii) operating as ‘columbaria’ for the above-ground storage of the cremated dead (i.e. not just to demarcate cremation burials), and (iii) providing key nodes of commemoration between funerals as the structures were built, used, repaired and eventually decayed within cemeteries. The article proposes that timber ‘mortuary houses’ reveal that groups in early Anglo-Saxon England perceived their cemeteries in relation to contemporary settlement architectures, with some groups constructing and maintaining miniaturized canopied buildings to store and display the cremated remains of the dead.