The use of computation in archaeology is a kind of magic, a way of heightening the archaeological imagination. Agent-based modelling allows archaeologists to test the ‘just-so’ stories they tell about the past. It requires a formalization of the story so that it can be represented as a simulation; researchers are then able to explore the unintended consequences or emergent outcomes of stories about the past. Agent-based models are one end of a spectrum that, at the opposite side, ends with video games. This volume explores this spectrum in the context of Roman archaeology, addressing the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities of a formalized approach to computation and archaeogaming.
A general introduction to archeogaming describing the intersection of archaeology and video games and applying archaeological method and theory into understanding game-spaces.
“[T]he author’s clarity of style makes it accessible to all readers, with or without an archaeological background. Moreover, his personal anecdotes and gameplay experiences with different game titles, from which his ideas often develop, make it very enjoyable reading.”—Antiquity
Video games exemplify contemporary material objects, resources, and spaces that people use to define their culture. Video games also serve as archaeological sites in the traditional sense as a place, in which evidence of past activity is preserved and has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology, and which represents a part of the archaeological record.
From the introduction: Archaeogaming, broadly defined, is the archaeology both in and of digital games… As will be described in the following chapters, digital games are archaeological sites, landscapes, and artifacts, and the game-spaces held within those media can also be understood archaeologically as digital built environments containing their own material culture… Archaeogaming does not limit its study to those video games that are set in the past or that are treated as “historical games,” nor does it focus solely on the exploration and analysis of ruins or of other built environments that appear in the world of the game. Any video game—from Pac-Man to Super Meat Boy—can be studied archaeologically.
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