Abstract
Engagement with, or research and teaching driven by, play has long been only a minor aspect of archaeological scholarship. In recent years, however, spurred on by the continued success of interactive entertainment, digital play has grown from a niche field to a promising avenue for all types of archaeological scholarship (Champion 2011; Champion 2015; Mol et al. 2017a; Morgan 2016; Reinhard 2018).Firstly, this article provides an introduction on the intersection between play and scholarship, followed by a discussion on how ‘archaeogaming’ scholarship has been shaping and been shaped by its subject matter over the last years. Secondly, the scholarship that arises from digital play is further illustrated with a case study based on the RoMeincraft project developed by the authors. The latter, made use of Minecraft, the popular digital building game, to (re-)construct and discuss Roman heritage through collaborative play between archaeologists and members of the public. Starting with in-game maps, sites such as forts, settlements, and infrastructural elements were rebuilt based on geological, archaeological, and historical information. These crowdsourced reconstructions, which not only relied on archaeological knowledge but also on a fair dose of creativity, took place in a series of educational public events in 2017–2019. The case study will detail the results of this project, as well as its methods, thus providing a practical example of digital scholarship which begins with discovery and ends in learning. The paper will conclude by reflecting on how the fun yet unpredictable dynamics of a digital playground not only shape public engagement with the past, but also open up unexpected avenues for more inclusive archaeological scholarship.
Highlights
The study of play, as a fundamental aspect of human society, formally started with Homo Ludens, a comparative study of play by the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1938)
Meghan Dennis, in her Gingerygamer blog defined archaeogaming as “the utilization and treatment of immaterial space to study created culture, through video games” (Dennis n.d.) definitions such as these are helpful in creating a common ground, we suggest that rather than defining archaeogaming as a subfield or through theoretical or methodological interests, it can be better understood and discussed as a movement born in and out of playful, digital scholarship
As a phenomenon at the fringes of what has traditionally been perceived as archaeological scholarship, it is to be expected that a combination of the digital and the playful has been mostly pioneered outside of the ivory tower of academia: through blogging platforms, unconferences, live streams, crowd-facing publications, game-playing and making, and many other creative renegotiations of the past and the discipline that studies it
Summary
Engagement with, or research and teaching driven by, play has long been only a minor aspect of archaeological scholarship. The scholarship that arises from digital play is further illustrated with a case study based on the RoMeincraft project developed by the authors. The latter, made use of Minecraft, the popular digital building game, to (re-)construct and discuss Roman heritage through collaborative play between archaeologists and members of the public. Starting with in-game maps, sites such as forts, settlements, and infrastructural elements were rebuilt based on geological, archaeological, and historical information These crowdsourced reconstructions, which relied on archaeological knowledge and on a fair dose of creativity, took place in a series of educational public events in 2017–2019. The paper will conclude by reflecting on how the fun yet unpredictable dynamics of a digital playground shape public engagement with the past, and open up unexpected avenues for more inclusive archaeological scholarship
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