Megan Rhodes Victor
H ave you previously encountered the terms “archaeologist,” “archaeology,” and “artifact” and, if so, in what context? I ask my students this question at the start of each semester as they gather, sleepily, in the lecture hall for Introduction to Archaeology. I encourage them to be honest and remind them that as long as they put something down on the paper for me, they will not lose any points or be judged—quite real fears in an introductory course. Once I have collected the ragged pile of torn notebook paper, sheets of looseleaf, index cards, sketchbook paper, and even the odd sticky note (and Lord help me, one time a gum wrapper with the foil-free side filled with tiny letters), we discuss their answers. At my current institution, I have asked this question of roughly 800 undergraduate students.
The answers to the question generally fall into the following categories :
The video games mentioned in this in-class exercise range widely, lacking the uniformity seen in the answers mentioning film or television. Sometimes, students would excitedly fill an entire page telling me about an experience they had encountering archaeology in a video game from their childhood, from their home country, or sometimes both. A few sheepish answers admitted they had forgotten the exact name of the game but that its depiction of archaeology had stuck with them for years. Others cited well-known and well-publicized games—referred to in the game industry as AAA games—as the source of their archaeological knowledge. Certain AAA franchises came up over and over: the Tomb Raider franchise and its heroine Lara Croft (Core Design 1996, 1997, 1998; Crystal Dynamics 2006, 2008, 2013, 2015, 2018; Crystal Dynamics and Buzz Monkey Software 2007), the Uncharted franchise and its antihero Nathan Drake (Naughty Dog 2007, 2009, 2011, 2016), and The Elder Scrolls franchise, especially the incredibly popular Oblivion and Skyrim chapters (Bethesda Game Studios 2006, 2011). Excitingly, however, students also mentioned archaeological aspects of games I had never considered as having an archaeological theme or as being even tangentially related to the field. Students frequently cited the popular Chinese Roleplaying Game Genshin Impact (MiHoYo 2020) as something that made them consider the power of the past and of ruins. Others pointed out the exploration and documentation inherent in the Subnautica franchise (Unknown Worlds Entertainment 2018, 2021) and that it was the first time they felt they were exploring the past: “you know, like an archaeologist,” one wrote.
Such a response from my students both surprised and delighted me. My surprise did not come from the presence of student responses focused on video games; instead, it was the sheer volume of video game-related answers for which I was not initially prepared. After all, archaeology and its representation in the media had been discussed during my undergraduate and graduate work. Indiana Jones was writ large as a force for recruitment for the field and an embodiment of what not to do in the field. I remember my professors frequently mentioning the archaeologists of Michael Crichton’s 1999 novel Timeline, which Paramount Pictures turned into a movie in 2003. They even reached further back to reference H. Rider Haggard’s intrepid Allan Quatermain from King Solomon’s Mines (1885). My professors then contrasted these examples with films such as Fox’s Night at the Museum (2006) and Plan B Entertainment’s The Lost City of Z (2016).
In asking my students about their experiences with the concept of archaeology, I expected to hear references to popular culture, but largely anticipated that it would be in the form of films with television and books sprinkled in, following the patterns seen in my own classroom discussions. As a scholar who has spent quite some time documenting archaeology within video games, it was gratifying to see so many of my students recognizing the very same subject matter in the media that they consume. It also made it abundantly clear to me that video games held a prominent place in my students’ worlds and had a powerful potential to influence them.
This influence among my Introduction to Archaeology students is not unique, nor should it be taken for granted. Video games are now a medium that reaches roughly 2.6 billion individuals worldwide, with their expected audience set to grow to over 3 billion by 2029 (Statista 2024). Within video games, whether they are on personal computers (PCs), consoles (such as Sony’s PlayStation, Microsoft’s Xbox, or Nintendo’s Switch), or mobile devices, there are many references to the human past, which players actively or passively consume. Sometimes these references are explicit, as with Rockstar Games’ 2010 western roleplaying game Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar Games 2010). The game takes place in 1911 and this date was chosen specifically to highlight the conflict between the lifeways of the late nineteenth century in the American Southwest and Great Plains and those of the early twentieth-century urban centers. Material culture is used to great effect within the game, giving players a sense of the discordant clash of daily life between the two different spheres of influence and the materiality of this, from clothing to food to personal grooming items. At other times, the references to the human past are more subtle, as with Santa Monica Studios’ original God of War trilogy (Santa Monica Studios 2005, 2007, 2010), which takes place during the Greek Bronze Age generally, but no specific dates are mentioned. The material culture is vague and draws on Minoan and Mycenaean influences, among others, to make players feel vaguely that they are in “Ancient Greece” as they play through the three games’ storylines involving the gods of Mount Olympus.
Video games also harness the power of the past to create a sense of depth for the often elaborate new worlds that they create for players to explore. In seeding the landscape with books of history, ruined architecture, and populations who hold an oral history, developers can create a sense of permanence in a newly coded environment (Zorpidu 2004; Reinhard 2018). In this way, players work through a more immersive world, one where time is as much a set piece as the lush environmental coloring or the layered sounds in the background. Whether used for specific effect or as a thematic component, the inclusion of the past in video games leads to a large number of individuals interacting with conceptions of—and the materiality of—the human past.
These players are therefore a ready audience to consume information about those that interact with the human past as well. They can see the way their character reacts to historical events, old structures, ruins, artifacts, the documentary record, and oral history. Further, they can see the way that nonplayable characters (NPCs) in the world of the game interact with these aspects of archaeology. In studying video games, then, there is much to unpack about broader impressions of and reactions to the human past. Why do ancient ruins and artifacts appear in many top-selling games? What makes the past worth playing in? Ludology—also known as game studies—is one of the best means through which to answer these questions.
Ludology is the name used for the academic study of play and, most often, the myriad ways that humans currently play and have played throughout our history. Games have accompanied humans for millennia; one of the oldest known gaming-related artifact sets comes from the site of Başur Höyük, where archaeologists found that chess-like stone pieces “carved in the shape of animals, pyramids, spheres, and bullets” were used in play 5,000 years ago in southeastern Turkey (Sağlamtimur and Massimino 2018: 332). Archaeologists have found dug-out pits, game boards, marbles, and carved pieces from a variety of locations globally (see David Parlett’s The Oxford History of Board Games (1999) for an excellent, if somewhat dated, overview of the wide variety of games found archaeologically). Because “play is one of the oldest cultural techniques of mankind,” studying activities that are ludic—those that inspire play—has a profound ability to reveal subtle information about the players behind the games (Suter 2019: 19). For players, games can serve a variety of functions, including “relaxation, diversion, entertainment or competition” (Suter 2019: 19).
The worlds in which games exist—and the rules by which players must regulate their actions—reflect another important aspect of studying these ludic activities: games can be subversive, allowing players opportunities to perform tasks and act out a reality that they could never participate in outside of the game world (Sicart 2009; Suter 2019; Walk 2019). This includes activities like robbing trains, stealing cars, pickpocketing, murdering, exploring unstable or dangerous locations, and running away from authority figures when caught without any in-game consequences. In some games, any accrued bounty from “getting caught,” as it were, fades away with time and the NPCs soon blithely forget the crimes the player committed. This allows the player a certain relaxing amount of freedom, simply in the fact that “something that may be completely logical, reasonable and ethically correct in the game world, can be completely different in the real world” (Walk 2019: 199). In other instances, this break from the world outside the game allows players to experience a world “where things are clear, concise, accountable and predictable” because they are protected by the overarching power of the game (Bauer 2019: 36). In this way, games represent societal ideals, as reflected in the rules.
While some concepts of “right” and “wrong” are fairly well established across a variety of games, with most players likely agreeing that murdering an unsuspecting NPC or stealing a puppy would count as “wrong” and, conversely, that stopping said murder or theft would count as “right,” compelling ludic games have potential for nuance. Why? Players’ lived experiences are nuanced and complex. For example, if the unsuspecting NPC is a murderer and the player a vigilante, how wrong is the “wrong” of murdering the individual? When flexibility and choice are introduced, players must contend not simply with the sharp contrasting perspectives on their actions, but with the game world’s ethics and thus their own. Wolfgang Walk reflects that game designers must also be content with the fact that “a person with no moral integrity in the game world may still be of utmost moral integrity in the real world and vice versa” (Walk 2019: 199). Reflecting the murkiness of decision-making in their lived experiences, ethics-based choices in games result in players becoming more invested in the storylines that they are playing through. These games are generally viewed as “better games—more challenging, interesting, in brief: more fun” (Walk 2019: 194). Seen as more ludic in nature, a game with ethics built into its mechanics “takes the player seriously as an individual with an ethical reasoning developed appropriate to their age, leaving it up to them to make a decision” (Walk 2019: 194).
Archaeological content in video games often exists within this nuanced, foggy area between the clearly defined “right” and “wrong” choices. As a player, is it wrong to pick up items you find in an ancient ruin? What if they belong to the monster you just slayed in the ruin? What if they belonged to refugees that fled centuries earlier? Similarly, is it wrong to sell the sword you found among scattered timbers on the beach? What if it was found in a locked chest among those timbers? What if it was found on a body? Now, what if the player was actually walking in an abandoned ruin or on a wind-blasted beach? Does behavior change with respect to objects if one is outside of a video game?
Rules of conduct are a key component within ludology. These in-game mechanics, as they are often called, frequently exist within a system of reward or punishment for the player. If a player’s actions fit the rules of the game, the player is rewarded with experience, items, new abilities, etc. If the solution to a particular challenge does not meet the game’s requirements or fit the rules, the player is punished through their avatar—their in-game persona. They may have a harder time moving through the world, their avatar may die and be sent back to a previous location to try again, etc. (Bauer 2019).
Most often, however, in-game mechanics have no specific punishment for poor archaeological ethics—and often reward it. This may be due, in part, to the fact that in a given society, “ethics and morality don’t mean the same thing,” because morality is not inherently rational and at the societal level not only can it “withstand rational justifications,” it can also frequently be a product of beliefs that “derive from obsolete traditions or the power-political interests of a ruling group” (Walk 2019: 200). As such, moral distinctions “may immediately fall victim to a serious ethical investigation” (Walk 2019: 200). Further, developers may have reservations about questioning “rules and play, as concepts,” when it applies to cultural heritage, because the act of questioning such concepts is “necessary to challenge Western colonialism and its invisible hand within games history,” which is a heavy weight to bear (Clapper 2024: 472).
There is inconsistent depiction and treatment of archaeological content, including mechanics that align or conflict with cultural heritage ethics. The blame for this cannot lie solely with video game developers, however; it must be acknowledged that there are very real inconsistencies about the ethical treatment of material culture that exist in the real/nondigital worlds in which these developers and their players live and work. Developers write within—and produce games for—a world characterized by debates over ownership of cultural patrimony, research needs, and repatriation that are entangled in local, national, and regional politics (Meyers Emery and Reinhard 2015; Clapper 2024; and see Dennis 2019 for an excellent discussion of archaeological ethics and their connection to virtual space and to fieldwork).
Wolfgang Walk, in examining ethical behavior as game mechanics, offers a powerful motivation for developers. He urges them “to make better games in order to make a better world” (Walk 2019: 194). One way in which to help with the weighty task is to engage actively with the ethical nuances that make games ludic and make players think critically about cultural heritage and the material history of the world around them. This volume represents a means of aiding this process. It uses archaeogaming—the study of the intersection of archaeology and games—as a medium through which to examine broader concepts in archaeology, ludology, and ethics in the representation of cultural heritage in media.
In 2018, Andrew Reinhard published Archaeogaming and gave much-needed attention and legitimacy to an emerging subfield. Eight years later, the subfield has grown, largely because of the excellent work put forth in that monograph. Then, as now, the main question that surfaced was: “what is archaeogaming?” Reinhard defined the term, at its broadest, as “the archaeology both in and of digital games” (Reinhard 2018: 2). While this definition has been expanded upon in the years since the publishing of Archaeogaming, as will be discussed, its roots remain the same. The subfield examines the intersection of games and archaeology, rather than simply using archaeological language as an analytical device. Within archaeogaming, “archaeology is not used as an analogy or metaphor,” but instead “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” (Reinhard 2018: 2).
One of the most powerful arguments Andrew Reinhard made in his foundational Archaeogaming almost a decade ago was that “all games can be explored on two levels: in-game (synthetic world) and extra-game (natural world)” (Reinhard 2018: 2). The heart of this statement has motivated the expansion of the field of archaeogaming in the years since 2018; namely, that all games can be explored, regardless of subject matter or format. Reinhard asserted that “any video game . . . can be studied archaeologically” (Reinhard 2018: 2). Contemporary scholars of archaeogaming expand the field a step further and argue that there are valuable data to be found in the intersection of archaeology and board games (such as Klaus Teuber’s wildly popular CATAN), tabletop roleplaying games, or TTRPGs like Wizards of the Coast’s famous Dungeons & Dragons (Wizards of the Coast LLC 2025a, 2025b), and card games, which include the often highly competitive trading card games like the Pokémon Company’s Pokémon Trading Card Game (The Pokémon Company, Nintendo, Creatures Inc., and GAME FREAK Inc. 2025). While there will always be nuances when trying to pin down the definition of a research area, the ArchaeoGaming Collective’s current definition of “archaeogaming” aligns with the way that the majority of researchers currently use the term:
The study of archaeology in and of video games, tabletop games, and games represented in media. Archaeogaming-based research aims to apply archaeological tools and methods to investigate them as landscapes, sites, and artifacts in order to understand how archaeology, archaeologists, and the ethics of the real world discipline are both portrayed and perceived by players and game developers. (ArchaeoGaming Collective 2025)
This volume operates using this more holistic approach to archaeogaming and the chapters within all address archaeogaming as the intersection of games and archaeology in one way or another.
In addition to establishing a definition for the subfield, Reinhard’s monograph established five main themes extant in the research at the time of publication. He identified active projects that examined the following: physical video games and their metadata, archaeology within video games, archaeological methods applied to video games, game design and its effects on the world in which players move and exist, and game mechanics. This volume simplifies these themes a bit, condensing the division of the subfield into three main aspects:
This first aspect of archaeogaming research takes a material approach to games and gaming. This category includes research done on the material culture associated with games, including video games, tabletop games, and card games. This wide array of objects encompasses all of the hardware and software for computer and console games, as well as mobile games, and typotechnical analyses of this material as artifacts (Aycock and Biittner 2024 is a strong example of one such analysis). The data also include game guides, instruction manuals, merchandise and memorabilia, marketing material, and the equipment associated with play including customized gaming tables, controllers, keyboards, gaming mice, headsets, and gaming chairs. In examining the physical aspect of games, archaeologists whose research falls into this category explore topics such as artifact seriation, trade and exchange, means of manufacture, use wear patterns, and community formation centered on or around this material culture. In short, this first aspect of archaeogaming “views a game as a physical artifact” and accordingly takes into account all of the paraphernalia associated with it, “looking at the box, the manuals, the disks/cartridges” (Reinhard 2018: 3). One of the best known examples of this aspect is the documentation of the 2014 Atari excavation (Reinhard 2015, 2018). Scholarship that falls into this category would fall under the first theme initially identified by Reinhard as the “media archaeology approach” (Reinhard 2018: 3).
The second aspect of archaeogaming research views the worlds of games—along with their inhabitants—as subjects worthy of archaeological study. This category includes research that views the constructed digital worlds of video games and the constructed miniature worlds of tabletop games through an archaeological toolkit. As such, scholars analyze architecture and features, use of space, settlement patterns across the landscape, and spatial context as it relates to natural resources. They also examine past cultures present within the worlds of games, examining cultural regimes of value, material choice in the creation of artifacts, burial practices, and evidence of social stratification. In analyzing the built environments and the human past within the landscape of a game, archaeologists using this aspect of archaeogaming perform fieldwork and documentation—often in digital space—following the same basic principles as those used on field sites around the world. Researchers can thus analyze the data from such analyses just as they can data from physical sites, drawing on site information and theory (such as Sequeira, Chapter 7 in this volume).
This second category of research uses games as the space in which archaeologists perform “in-game fieldwalking, artifact collecting, typologies, understanding of context, even aerial/satellite photography,” with the main difference between this work and that performed in traditional archaeology being that archaeogaming work takes place “within the immaterial world,” as Reinhard elegantly phrases it, instead of on a physical site, which he refers to as existing within the “meatscape” (Reinhard 2018: 3). The uncoupling from physical space has the potential to be a boon, as well, as these spaces can serve as low-stakes environments in which to practice survey methodologies and to hone analytical skills (see Patterson, Chapter 5, and Pugh, Chan Nieto, and Zygadło Vera, Chapter 6, both in this volume). Scholarship that falls into this second aspect encompasses the third theme initially identified by Reinhard as “the application of archaeological methods to synthetic space” (Reinhard 2018: 3).
In focusing on the built environment and the cultures of games, archaeogaming researchers also have an added layer of analysis within their work. As they draw out themes on material use, settlement hierarchies, and local economies, they also collect data on choices made by a game’s developers. The data collected from the game may indicate the sort of players that developers hope to attract to the game—those who feel that they need to save a marginalized people, for example—and it may also indicate inherent cultural biases of which developers may or may not be aware (see Dennis 2019 and Clintberg, Chapter 8 in this volume). In examining the built environment as the work of developers who often have specific players in mind, this research also encompasses the fourth and fifth themes initially identified by Reinhard, referring to the way that “game design manifests everything players see and interact with in-world” and the way that game mechanics are inherently entangled with their players, respectively (Reinhard 2018: 3).
The third aspect of archaeogaming research examines the portrayal of archaeology as a field within games. This category includes analyses of the representation of archaeology as a discipline, archaeologists as a profession, archaeological sites and ruins, artifacts (as well as those objects referred to as relics and antiquities), antiquarians, academics, explorers, and treasure hunters within video games. Scholars analyze the way that game developers use language when discussing the human past and materiality in the dialogue of in-game characters or in-narrative text. Research in this aspect assesses the accuracy of the depictions and actions of archaeologists in games. These projects examine how developers, players, and characters within games view the past. Topics range broadly and include stereotypes of archaeologists as individuals constantly in danger, excavations—and their artifacts—as places associated with the arcane and with curses, artifacts as objects of great wealth, archaeologists as simultaneously disconnected academics and worldly adventurers, etc.
Given games’ broad reach, accurate representation is crucial, as is parsing out where problematic messages are present. If treasure hunting and looting masquerade as archaeology within game-based narratives, a vast audience is consuming ethically problematic information with archaeologists unaware. Such analyses of representation, then, are necessary so that suggestions may be made for more accurate—and ethical—representations in future games, without sacrificing any ludic aspects (see in this volume Krupa, Chapter 1, Zimmerman, Martino, and Nejo, Chapter 2, Jackson and Minniti, Chapter 3, and Victor, Chapter 4). When the narrative of a site’s representation is considered in advance, it can also serve as a powerful pedagogical tool about an archaeological site and a culture. Alice Watterson and Charlotta Hillerdal discuss one such example, the Nunalleq Project, in which a game was built using a multivocal approach that drew on oral history and archaeology to create an interactive, pedagogical tool (Watterson and Hillerdal 2020). Archaeogaming scholarship that falls into this third category is encompassed by the third theme initially identified by Reinhard as the “reception studies approach” (Reinhard 2018: 3).
Motivated by the vast amount of data that players passively consume about the digital world(s) they explore through their games while they play, this volume addresses games and their connections to material culture, the built environment, and the human past. As players operate within a game’s mechanics, they move through the worlds of the games that they play, whether this is the lush, digitally rendered landscape of an AAA video game, the tapestry woven of handbook rules and collective imagination within a TTRPG, the fictive world of a board game upheld by cardboard and kitchen table, or the rapidly changing arena of a trading card game. This experiential aspect of games gives players the ability to take up fictional space in worlds where they can use in-game objects to make substantive changes to their in-game lives and to future narratives. Such a presence is not dissimilar from the actions taken by one occupying a site or using objects in that bounded space in a way that archaeologists will later regard as artifacts, Reinhard observes (Reinhard 2018).
As both players and developers represent a sizeable audience for the consumption of both solid data and misconceptions about aspects of the human past and about those who research it, this volume proposes that archaeologists ought to analyze the data within this medium so as to better understand games as a powerful source of influence on nonprofessionals’ perceptions. Further, due to the fact that games are inherently created by humans, the objects, built environments, cultural divides, and socioeconomic classes are all artifacts that represent social constructs. Games act as microcosms of “their own real-world player—and developer—cultures” (Reinhard 2018: 2). Their study by archaeologists, then, is as mandatory as “any place on Earth that has been manipulated, managed, and transformed by people past and present” (Reinhard 2018: 2).
To that end, the case studies in this volume combine data drawn from video games with those of archaeological excavations, the documentary record, and theoretical analyses to examine topics including stakeholder engagement, landscapes and placemaking, survey methodology, psychology and sociology, urbanization, trade and exchange, colonialism, and migration. The chapters are organized into sections that address one of two main themes: Representation & Pedagogy and Methodology & Theory.
Part I of the volume includes analyses of the ways that video games represent archaeologists as professionals and academics, as well as the broader field of archaeology; within are discussions of archaeological ethics, the need for community engagement, the coproduction of knowledge, and the necessity of multivocal narratives of the past. Depictions of the profession—as well as certain places, eras, and lived experiences—can also serve as powerful teaching tools. Ludic, experiential, and frequently data-driven, games offer archaeologists, instructors, communities, and developers a chance to craft and deliver data for an audience that potentially spans thousands, if not millions, of diverse individuals.
Opening the volume, Krystiana L. Krupa’s “Publish (or Plunder) or Perish?: Women and Professional Archaeology in The Elder Scrolls Online” addresses representation in archaeology through an examination of the way that the video game The Elder Scrolls Online (ZeniMax Media Inc. 2014, 2020) portrays female archaeologists and their research efforts. Given that female-presenting archaeologists publish at a lower rate than those who are male-presenting, especially in the field’s most highly respected journals, examples of female archaeologists conducting research that is accessible to the general public are much needed (Fulkerson and Tushingham 2019). Krupa’s contribution offers a meticulous analysis of gender, access to systems of power, and the role of female archaeologists in the production of knowledge. In examining a video game’s representation of women in the field, Krupa confronts stereotypes of academics and researchers that the game’s players may hold as biases and the ways that archaeogaming can call into question—or reinforce—those perceptions.
Michael Zimmerman, Shannon Martino, and Renee Nejo’s “The 4X Model Game and the Archaeology of Movement, Migration, and Settler Colonialism” examines the representation of archaeology in service to settler colonial nation-building. Building a detailed study of expansion-driven games—such as the Sid Meijer’s Civilization franchise (MicroProse 1991, 1996; Firaxis Games 2001, 2005, 2010, 2016)—the authors address the ludic appeal of colonization, while also highlighting the pedagogical potential of the 4X model. They argue this popular game genre can become a powerful tool by which players can learn about migration and colonialism, especially if archaeologists and historians can provide information for in-game consumption.
Briana C. Jackson and Kate Minniti’s “The Roots of the Tech Tree: City-Building Games as a Learning Tool for Early Urbanization” focuses on games centered around city-building, particularly those set against the backdrop of “ancient societies” like Mesopotamia and Egypt. The authors select five games, two taking place in Mesopotamia and three set in Egypt, and assess the ways that they portray urbanization and the features of a state-level society. Additionally, they examine the depictions of phenomena such as the advent of pottery or the adoption of agriculture and the weight that the games’ developers give these in-game changes. Combining representation and pedagogy, Jackson and Minniti address the efficacy of city-building games as educational tools for students in primary and secondary schools.
The final chapter in Part I, “Who Is Holding the Controller of This Narrative?: Combatting Antiquated Representations of Archaeology with The Elder Scrolls Online’s Antiquities System,” addresses stereotypes of archaeologists in AAA video games. I draw on case studies from The Elder Scrolls Online (ZeniMax Media Inc. 2014, 2020) to analyze the game’s potential to accurately explain archaeological survey and excavation methodology and to facilitate discussions of cultural patrimony and the necessity of stakeholder engagement.
Part II of this volume includes assessments of the ways that video games can act in service to archaeological field methodology and to archaeological site reconstruction. The chapters within also examine the ability of video games to allow for new combinations of theoretical applications that challenge concepts such as cultural landscape and address the influences of neurodivergence on the construction of the very games in which archaeogaming analyses take place.
London Patterson’s “It’s an Open World Out There: Using Open-World Video Games as Pedagogical Tools for Archaeological Survey” puts forth video games as a means by which students with limited access to field opportunities can gain experience in field survey methodology. Drawing on three different single-player, open-world games, notably from three different popular franchises, Patterson assesses the ways that the games’ vast digital expanses work in service to the teaching of archaeological field methods. They argue that players have the opportunity to conduct landscape analysis and to engage in studies of use of space, such as the ability to distinguish patterns that identify a location as rural or urban in a digital environment that represents a low-stakes space for education and student engagement.
Timothy W. Pugh, Evelyn M. Chan Nieto, and Gabriela Zygadło Vera’s “Nixtun-Ch’ich’ in Roblox: An Icarian Fall into an Ancient Maya City” offers an alternative means of sharing site data to the industry standard among Mayanists: “malerization.” This prismatic rendering of architectural data offers viewers a better understanding of the findings from large, urban excavations than two-dimensional representations, and yet the technique comes with its own challenges. To address this, the authors propose the use of video games as a method by which scholars can share representations built solely on survey data. As a case study, they demonstrate the utility of Roblox (Roblox Corporation 2006) as an interpretive tool with which viewers-as-players can better travel across the Mayan landscape of the past, as constructed by data-driven archaeological survey.
João Luís Sequeira’s “Fallout 3: A Cultural Imagined Landscape or an Imaginary Non-place?” calls into question theoretical concepts in archaeological landscape analysis including cultural landscapes, non-places, and liminality. Centering the single-player RPG Fallout 3 (Bethesda Game Studios 2008) at the heart of his analysis, Sequeira pushes back against the sharp separations between cultural landscapes and non-places popular in landscape archaeology by observing that the world of the video game—itself a social construct and an artifact simultaneously—irreverently mashes together these terms that are so painstakingly kept separate in standard archaeological analyses. He also challenges the reader to confront preconceptions about fixity of place and observes that locations can exist as spaces packed with sociocultural meaning even in an imaginary digital world.
Finally, Kal Clintberg’s “The Implications of Neurodiversity in Archaeogaming” rounds out this volume with a thorough analysis of the ways in which neurodiversity—and the neurodiverse—have impacted the intersection of archaeology and games. Using Minecraft (Mojang Studios 2011) and the Pokémon game franchise (Game Freak 1996) as a case study, Clintberg assesses the ways in which those who are neurodivergent interact with the world of the game and the ways by which the uniquely digital nature of video games’ environments—often crafted by developers who are themselves neurodivergent—provide neurodivergent individuals with opportunities for archaeological education and for engagement in content in an assessable way often barred to them through more traditional methods of instruction and interaction.
Overall, this volume encourages readers to critically examine the ways that video games present the past, including individuals’ lived experiences, elaborate constructed worlds, and artifacts, as well as those professionals most associated with studying it. It offers experiential approaches to archaeological pedagogy and the presentation of site data, encourages professional input in the crafting of historical narratives that millions will passively consume, and provides new voices in theoretical discourse. Most importantly, when considering the human past, this volume and the contributing authors encourage readers—above all else—to play!