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Games and other forms of play are core human activities, as vitally constitutive of cultural and social practices in the past as they are today. Consequently, play, games and fun should be central in archaeological theory, but our review shows they are anything but. Instead, very few studies deal with these concepts at all, and most of those that do focus on how the affordances play offers link it to ritual, power or other ‘more serious’ phenomena. Here, we offer an explanation as to why play has taken such a backseat in archaeological thought and practice, relating it to the ambivalent aesthetics of having fun with the past in our own discipline. Building on our own playful practices and those of other scholars in the ancient board gaming and archaeogaming communities, we propose a move towards a more playful archaeology, which can provide us with a new window into the past as well as into our own professional practices.

Reconstructing ties between archaeological contexts may contribute to explain and describe a variety of past social phenomena. Several models have been formulated to infer the structure of such archaeological networks. The applicability of these models in diverse archaeological contexts is limited by the restricted set of assumptions that fully determine the mathematical formulation of the models and are often articulated on a dyadic basis. Here, we present a general framework in which we combine exponential random graph models with archaeological substantiations of mechanisms that may be responsible for network formation. This framework may be applied to infer the structure of ancient networks in a large variety of archaeological settings. We use data collected over a set of sites in the Caribbean during the period AD 100–400 to illustrate the steps to obtain a network reconstruction.

The Caribbean Sea was centre stage in the earliest, sustained encounters between the New and Old Worlds, heralding the mass movement of people, goods and ideas between two previously unconnected parts of the world. The repercussions of this are woven into the fabric of modern multi-ethnic Caribbean society. However, our current understanding of this important chapter in world history is skewed due to large shortfalls in our knowledge of indigenous agencies in these encounters. A trans-disciplinary field of research, based on the synergy of archaeological and network approaches towards local contexts, provides fresh insights into how indigenous agency developed during these encounters, particularly in terms of migration, mobility and interaction dynamics. The present article illustrates how four indigenous Caribbean communities (re-)negotiated, adapted and integrated their multi-scalar social networks prior to and in the course of the different phases of the colonization process.

Ego-networks, based on a socio-metric method for the analysis of the direct social relations an individual engages in, of archaeological site assemblages may be used to great effect in archaeology. They provide a means to combine multi-scalar and multidisciplinary data and thereby explore sites as a nexus of material relations. This paper outlines how such a site ego-network could be constructed. This is illustrated using the fourteenth century site of Kelbey's Ridge 2, Saba, in the North-eastern Caribbean.Kelbey's Ridge 2 is an interesting case study since it was likely a newly established, but also short-lived settlement. The reason for settlement may have been that, even if the island of Saba was relatively poor in terrestrial resources, it had a geographically strategic location and access to rich marine resources. Intra-site features at the site evidence a complex set of relations between house spaces and living and deceased members of the community. Additionally, the site's engagement with the wider island world is reflective of a transitional moment for communities in the late pre-colonial North-eastern Caribbean. A betweenness analysis of its ego-network provides a new perspective of Kelbey's Ridge 2, pinpointing material practices and objects that must have been crucial for the viability and identity of the community. This case study shows that ego-networks may be profitably used alongside current archaeological relational theories, substantive studies of site assemblages and other archaeological network approaches.

This article explores the extent to which formal network analysis can be used to study aspects of entanglement, the latter referring to the collective sets of dependencies between humans and things. The data used were derived from the Neolithic sites of Boncuklu and Çatalhöyük in central Turkey. The first part of the analysis involves using formal network methods to chart the changing interactions between humans and things at these sites through time. The values of betweenness and centrality vary through time in ways that illuminate the known transformations at the site as, for example, domestic cattle are introduced. The ego networks for houses across four time periods at the two sites are also patterned in ways that contribute to an understanding of social and economic trends. In a second set of analyses, formal network methods are applied to intersecting operational chains, or chainworks. Finally, the dependencies between humans and things are evaluated by exploring the costs and benefits of particular material choices relative to larger entanglements. In conclusion, it is argued that three types of entanglement can be represented and explored using methods taken from the network sciences. The first type concerns the large number of relations that surround any particular human or thing. The second concerns the ways in which entanglements are organized. The third type of entanglement concerns the dialectic between dependence (potential through reliance) and dependency (constraint through reliance).

Video games are one of today's quintessential media and cultural forms, but they also have a surprising and many-sided relation with the past (Morgan 2016). This certainly holds true for Sid Meier's Civilization (MicroProse & Firaxis Games 1991–2016), which is a series of turn-based, strategy video games in which you lead a historic civilization “from the Stone Age to the Information Age” (Civilization ca. 2016). Sid Meier's Civilization VI , the newest iteration of the series developed by Firaxis and released on October 21, 2016, allows players to step into the shoes of idealized political figures such as Gilgamesh, Montezuma, Teddy Roosevelt, and Gandhi. Via these and other leaders, you aim to achieve supremacy over all other civilizations. This is done through founding cities, creating infrastructure, building armies, conducting diplomacy, spreading culture and religion, and choosing “technologies” and “civics”—philosophical or ideological breakthroughs—for your civilization to focus on.

The series Sid Meier’s Civilization is one of the most enduring and successful historical video games to date. With six installments and various spin-offs dating back to 1991, it has influenced the way many players perceive history. From its very first iteration, the series featured several Near Eastern civilizations from several periods. Our research on the game’s portrayal and interpretation of the cultures of the Near East has shown that, while there are several authentic aspects on how these civilizations are depicted, the overall approach of the game can be problematic. This article proposes a reading of Near Eastern cultures through Edward Said’s framework of orientalism as a means to identify key issues in the representation of the ancient Near East in Civilization

The series Sid Meier’s Civilization is one of the most enduring and successful historical video games to date. With six installments and various spin-offs dating back to 1991, it has influenced the way many players perceive history. From its very first iteration, the series featured several Near Eastern civilizations from several periods. Our research on the game’s portrayal and interpretation of the cultures of the Near East has shown that, while there are several authentic aspects on how these civilizations are depicted, the overall approach of the game can be problematic. This article proposes a reading of Near Eastern cultures through Edward Said’s framework of orientalism as a means to identify key issues in the representation of the ancient Near East in Civilization.

The Gift of the « Face of the Living »: Shell faces as social valuables in the Caribbean Late Ceramic Age. The peoples of the Caribbean Late Ceramic Age (AD 600/800-1492) were in contact through intensive and extensive exchange networks. This article takes a close look at the social mechanism behind one of these networks, which consists of face-depicting shell discs or cones. This is done from a gift-theoretical framework that focuses on aspects of alienability/inalienability of these shell faces in a specifically Caribbean setting. These artefacts are characterized from the indigenous concept of guaízas – « faces of the living » – as understood from ethnohistoric sources. After treating their iconography and giving an overview of their archaeological and socio-cultural contexts the discussion will focus on alienable and inalienable qualities of these artefacts. Finally, « shell faces as guaízas » will be used in an argument in which they figure as social valuables that are used to control extra-communal Others.