Gaming Pieces Research Articles

SMYRNA / İZMİR KAZILARI KEMİK BULUNTULARI

Smyrna Excavations has been conducted since 2007 in the Agora of Smyrna, Kadifekale and Basmane. Most of the bone indings found in these excavations have been examined in this study. Findings from a wide range, 1.century B.C. to Ottoman Period, are represented in this study of selected indings. Majority of the indings consists of bone pins and needles, gaming pieces and counters from Roman Period, typical bone spindle whorls from Byzantium Pe­riod and many bone findings from the Ottoman Period. Apart from these common findings found in every settlement other finds such as purposefully cut bones and semi-worked bone findings has brought further study into a possible bone workshop in the Agora of Smyrna.

A Hematite Cone from Smith County, Texas

Hematite (Fe2O3) is a mineral, its most important usage being iron ore. In the United States, hematite occurs over a large region with a major concentration in the central part of the country. Hematite has varying degrees of hardness and colors. Hematite gives rocks their red color and characteristic “red-streak.” Soft, earthy (red ocher) forms were prized as paints. Hard, compact forms with considerable iron content were valued as tools, because of their strength as well as susceptibility to a high and beautiful polish. Certain forms of hematite are used in making jewelry. During prehistoric times, hematite was fashioned and used in a wide variety of forms including celts, axes, pendants, plummets, pestles, discoidals, cup stones (nutting stones), manos, and cones. The high degree of workmanship on some of these tools, and the absence of use-damage, suggest that some of them may have had uses that were other than merely functional. This study concerns a hematite cone that was found in eastern Smith County, Texas along Prairie Creek (41SM449). I also discuss a possible unfinished hematite cone found at the Brieger Point site (41CP42) at Lake Bob Sandlin. Prehistoric hematite objects are not uncommon in East Texas, the most common forms being grooved axes, celts, nutting stones, and manos. More uncommon are objects such as pendants and plummets. The hematite cone from the Prairie Creek site and the possible hematite cone from the Lake Bob Sandlin area are the only examples of hematite cones that I am aware of from the East Texas area. Hematite cones are more plentiful in the Ohio valley. Their function is unknown, although it has been surmised that they may have been gaming pieces or talismans.

The Lewis Hoard of Gaming Pieces: A Re-examination of their Context, Meanings, Discovery and Manufacture

Almost 180 years of scholarship on the Lewis chessmen have given us a solid foundation of understanding, primarily based upon their art-historical analysis. Taking a more interdisciplinary approach (combining elements of art history with archaeology and history), this paper focuses on some over-looked themes — primarily the archaeological, gaming and political contexts of the 12th- and 13th-century North Sea world — and some more familiar themes but in a new light. We suggest a more fluid composition and function of the gaming hoard, with at least four sets of chessmen from the same workshop conceivably made for use in Lewis, possibly in the early 13th century.

A Viking Boat Grave with Amber Gaming Pieces Excavated at Skamby, Östergötland, Sweden

In the Summer of 2005 the authors directed the excavation of a flat stone setting with a boat-shaped central depression at Skamby, Kuddby parish, Östergötland, Sweden. The stone setting covered a small and poorly preserved boat inhumation, dated by the artefacts recovered to the early Viking period (9th century AD). This is the first excavation of a boat inhumation in the province of Östergötland. The paper reports on the excavations including the discovery of an exceptional collection of 23 amber gaming pieces, which provide a new perspective on Viking-period gaming. The data from this boat grave are considered in relation to the rest of the Skamby cemetery, which remains to be investigated. Judging from a topographical survey of the ridge surrounding the excavated area, and from metal-detector finds recovered from the surrounding fields, the Skamby cemetery appears to be a high-status burial ground divided into two zones, one comprised of boat inhumation graves, the other of circular stone settings likely to cover cremation graves. The results of the excavation lead to a revised picture of boat burial as an élite mortuary rite in southern Sweden during the late 1st millennium AD.

RARÁMURI RIJIBARA: INDIVIDUAL VARIATION IN FLAKED-STONE GAMING PIECES

Rarámuri men of northern Mexico continue to manufacture stone gaming pieces called rijibara for use in a game called cuatro or rijibara. In 1978, eight of these gaming pieces were manufactured by two Rarámuri men during a visit to the Arizona State Museum. The implements and the resulting debitage were analyzed by the first author as a means of identifying variation resulting from individual differences in knapping technique, skill, or motor habit. We find that although the finished implements produced by the two knappers are quite similar, characteristics of the two debitage assemblages are different in terms of flake dimensions, percent cortex, length-to-width ratios, and breakage patterns. We suggest that these characteristics may be useful in recognizing individual variation in the archaeological record.

Shirley Brown /-/- Vestiges (review)

Reviewed by: Shirley Brown – Vestiges James Putnam (bio) Cathy Mattes and Mary Reid. Shirley Brown – Vestiges Winnipeg Art Gallery and Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba. 48. $15.00 This book documents a project by the artist Shirley Brown, inspired by twenty-nine bird skeletons that she discovered in an old stove on her abandoned family homestead in 1996. She not only uses them as subject matter for a series of painterly oil studies and images in old photo albums but she also utilizes the skeletons themselves by displaying them in decorated wooden boxes. As the book's title suggests, 'Vestiges' are traces of something no longer present, in this case a lost bird civilization, a fictional world that Brown has created. She mimics the way a museum might display and interpret artifacts from an ancient civilization by [End Page 649] fabricating a whole material culture and iconography for these birds, even hinting at their religious beliefs by placing bird images in shrines! Brown's underlying intention is to use her mythical bird civilization to mirror humanity, causing us to reflect on the comparative fragility of our own existence. Using vitrines, artifact storage boxes, descriptive labels, and taxonomic style displays, she employs a wide range of museological devices. She even includes a mock museum gift shop in her installation, complete with postcards, mugs and t-shirts. Conceptually, Shirley Brown's project is not particularly original or unique, but is part of a wider artists' penchant for creating fictional artifacts and museum-inspired displays. Back in 1971 Christian Boltanski made a series of works entitled 'Vitrine of Réference,' where he displayed his personal keepsakes and fabricated ethnographic-style artifacts with typed labels and explanatory texts as if they were relics of some past, lost culture. In 'From the Freud Museum' (1991–96), Susan Hiller's installation comprised fifty customized brown cardboard boxes similar to the type used for archaeological specimens displayed in a vast vitrine. Each box contained a diverse range of fictional artifacts, individually titled, dated, and captioned, and some of them were annotated in an ancient or unfamiliar language. Perhaps an even closer parallel to Brown's project was Joan Fontcuberta's series called 'Fauna' (1987–90), for which he made a convincing museological display based on the work of an invented character called Professor Ameisenhaufen. His extensive archive of notebooks, laboratory observations, and field photographs was used in conjunction with specially modified taxidermied animals to make their fiction more plausible. In common with Brown's 'Vestiges,' these projects challenge the notion of evidential facts presented in museum displays where artifacts and natural history specimens are used as proof of truths. Museum displays are essentially a construction, an invention of narratives in order to express or emphasize specific values and opinions. 'Vestiges,' with its collection of 'displaced' specimens and artifacts, both celebrates and critiques the poetics of traditional museum display. Brown has created an imagined lost civilization that she animates through a mock archaeological and anthropological process. Like those rather macabre nineteenth-century museum displays of taxidermied animals, stimulating our curiosity and wonder, her project also expresses the idea of life 'frozen in time.' Since it's essentially a catalogue for a two-site exhibition held at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba in 2005, one has to question whether the publication has a justifiable life of its own. It follows a predictable format, with the almost obligatory director's preface, an artist's statement followed by essays by the two curators of the respective hosting institutions. Cathy Mattes's contribution is very lucid and informative, while in contrast Mary Reid's is a more whimsical piece of 'creative' writing which enters into the spirit of the exhibition's subject [End Page 650] matter. It begins as a fictional account of the former life of one of the birds, 'Flicker' (in 'the enchanted Land of Flickery'), and is written to personify the bird's life in human terms. Her account is interwoven with details of the displayed artifacts such as the clear quartz crystals, the gaming pieces, and the crystal bibles, and she explains their function and amuletic symbolism. She refers to Shirley Brown as an...

Jean-Siméon Chardin's The House of Cards

Jean-Siméon Chardin's The House of Cards

Coming of age in Ancient Greece: images of childhood from the classical past

What was childhood like in ancient Greece? What activities and games did Greek children embrace? How were they schooled and what religious and ceremonial rites of passage were key to their development? These fascinating questions and many more are answered in this groundbreaking book-the first English-language study to feature and discuss imagery and artifacts relating to childhood in ancient Greece.Coming of Age in Ancient Greece shows that the Greeks were the first culture to represent children and their activities naturalistically in their art. Here we learn about depictions of children in myth as well as life, from infancy to adolescence. This beautifully illustrated book features such archaeological artifacts as toys and gaming pieces alongside images of them in use by children on ancient vases, coins, terracotta figurines, bronze and stone sculpture, and marble grave monuments. Essays by eminent scholars in the fields of Greek social history, literature, archaeology, anthropology, and art history discuss a wide range of topics, including the burgeoning role of childhood studies in interdisciplinary studies; the status of children in Greek culture; the evolution of attitudes toward children from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period as documented by literature and art; the relationships of fathers and sons and mothers and daughters; and the roles of cult practice and death in a child's existence.This delightful book illuminates what is most universal and specific about childhood in ancient Greece and examines childhood's effects on Greek life and culture, the foundation on which Western civilization has been based.

A Late Archaic Bison Processing Event in the Texas Panhandle

Block excavations total115 m2 at a 1 m-deep buried occupation surface at the Sanders site, where a single bison processing event probably occurred in March, about 1700-1800 BP. The Late Archaic material assemblage consisted of25,000 pieces of bone splinters, chipped stone hunting and processing tools, a set of unique bone gaming pieces, and a single cord-marked body sherd. The sherd indicates contact with Woodland peoples and documents contemporaneity of these groups. The hunters had acquired quantities of Alibates agatized dolomite before undertaking the communal bison kill event. Intensive bison processing, tool maintenance, maintenance of primary activity areas, and the existence of leisure activities reflected by the set of incised and painted bone gaming pieces together support interpretation of the site as a lengthy encampment. Excellent context and preservation conditions permit identification of refuse discard patterns in specific and general debris piles away from primary activity areas. Environmental data indicate a short grass Plains environment.

“Cash” as currency: Coins and tokens from Yreka Chinatown

Chinese one “cash” coins are widely found in western North American historical sites and are generally thought to have been used primarily as ornaments, gaming pieces, talismans, and gifts to children. The possibility that they were also used as money in the Chinese communities has been suggested by scholars analyzing coins found in various Chinatown sites in the western United States and Canada. The 141 Chinese, Annamese, Hong Kong, and United States coins and tokens recovered from the excavations at Yreka (California) Chinatown appear to validate the hypothesis that Chinese “cash” coins were indeed used as money items by overseas Chinese in the United States.

Books Received

Previous article No AccessBooks ReceivedPDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Classical Philology Volume 70, Number 1Jan., 1975 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/366152 Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Martin Rundkvist, Howard Williams A Viking Boat Grave with Amber Gaming Pieces Excavated at Skamby, Östergötland, Sweden, Medieval Archaeology 52, no.11 (Jul 2013): 69–102.https://doi.org/10.1179/174581708x335440

Account of the Excavations on Traprain Law during the Summer of 1921

Further excavation recovered evidence of Neolithic and early Bronze Age activity in the form of stone and flint artefacts, followed by late Bronze Age and early Iron Age artefacts including socketed axes, terrets, glass beads, clay moulds and pins. There appears to have been a hiatus until the main occupation which spans the end of the 1st century to the early 5th century AD. Occasional levelling of the ground has led to the mixing of artefacts of different dates. Stone-built structures and hearths were identified. Numerous artefacts are reported on and include spindle whorls, pottery, glass and jet armlets, glass beads, slingstones, coins, gaming pieces, clay moulds and brooches. The site is identified as a walled town or oppidum.

Notes on a Collection of Polishers and other Objects found on the Site of the Roman Fort at Newstead, Melrose

On the basis of the fact that only two burials were encountered during excavation it is argued that a cemetery must exist on the outskirts of the fort. With this in mind a systematic search recovered a collection of objects which included twenty three burnishers or polishers, fourteen gaming pieces, ten fragments of beads, a portion of a glass armlet and a brooch.