Exploring the archaeology in (and of) video games.
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Archaeogaming is an upcoming subdiscipline with quite a body of academic literature on the topic. This page serves as a gateway list of archaeogaming publications. Please email us at archaeogaming@gmail.com if you would like to add a publication of your own or otherwise to the list.
Atkinson, Andrew. 2017. “Virtually Sacred: Sacred Space, Ritual, and Narrative in Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and The Talos Principle.” Journal of Religion & Popular Culture 29 (1): 55-68.DOI: 10.3138/jrpc.29.1.3976.
Aycock. J. 2016. Retrogame Archaeology: Exploring Old Computer Games. Springer.
Aycock, J. and A. Reinhard. 2017. “Copy Protection in Jet Set Willy: Developing Methodology for Retrogame Archaeology.” Internet Archaeology 45.
Bainbridge, W. S. 2010. The Warcraft Civilization: Social Science in a Virtual World. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Boellstorff, T., B. Nardi, C. Pearce, and T. L. Taylor. 2012. Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Brown, Harry J. 2008. Videogames and education. London: Routledge.
Carvalho, Vinicius Marino. 2017. “Videogames as Tools for Social Science History.” The Historian 79 (4):794-819. DOI: 10.1111/hisn.12674.
Chairi, Kiourt, Pavlidis George, Koutsoudis Anestis, and Kalles Dimitris. 2017. “Realistic Simulation of Cultural Heritage.” International Journal of Computational Methods in Heritage Science (IJCMHS) 1 (1):10-40. DOI: 10.4018/IJCMHS.2017010102.
Champion, E. M. 2017a. “Single White Looter: Have whip, will travel,” in The Interactive Past: Archaeology, Heritage, and Video Games (ed. A. A. Mol, C. E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, K. H. J. Boom, and A. Politopoulos). Sidestone Press.
Champion, E. M. 2017b. “Bringing Your A-Game to Digital Archaeology: Issues with Serious Games and Virtual Heritage and What We can Do About It.” SAA Archaeological Record 17 (2): pp. 24–27.
Champion, E. M. 2016a. “Entertaining the Similarities and DSistinctions between Serious Games and Virtual Heritage Projects.” Entertainment Computing 14, pp. 67–74.
Champion, E. M. 2016b. “A 3D Pedagogical Heritage Tool Using Game Technology.” Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 16.5: 63–72.
Champion, E. M. 2015. Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage. Routledge.
Champion, E. M. 2014a. “Theoretical Issues for Game-Based Virtual Heritage” in Immersive Education (ed. M. Ebner et al.), pp. 125–136. Springer.
Champion, E. M. 2014b. “History and Heritage in Virtual Worlds,” in The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality (ed. M. Grimshaw). Oxford University Press.
Champion, E. M. 2011. Playing with the Past. Springer.
Chapman, A. 2016. Digital Games as History: How Videogames Represent the Past and Offer Access to Historical Practice. Routledge.
Chapman, A. 2010. “A Playful Past: The Videogame as Historical Narrative,” in From Fiction to Reality: Image, Imaginary, Imagology (ed. A. Mihalache and S. M. Barutcieff). Lasi.
Cook Inlet Tribal Council. 2017. “Storytelling for the Next Generation: How a nonprofit in Alaska harnessed the power of video games to share and celebrate cultures,” in The Interactive Past: Archaeology, Heritage, and Video Games (ed. A. A. Mol, C. E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, K. H. J. Boom, and A. Politopoulos). Sidestone Press.
Copplestone, T. 2017a. “Adventures in Archaeological Game Creation,” SAA Archaeological Record 17 (2): pp. 33–39.
Copplestone, T. 2017b. “Designing and Developing a Playful Past in Video-Games,” in The Interactive Past: Archaeology, Heritage, and Video Games (ed. A. A. Mol, C. E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, K. H. J. Boom, and A. Politopoulos). Sidestone Press.
Copplestone, T. 2016. “But that’s not Accurate: The Differing Perceptions of Accuracy in Cultural Heritage Videogames Between Creators, Consumers, and Critics.” Rethinking History. DOI: 10.1080/13642529.2017.1256615.
Copplestone, T. 2014. “Clifford’s Tower 1263 AD: Gaming Technologies for Archaeological Uses.” Methods and Apparatus 1, pp. 22–26.
Copplestone, T. and S. Perry. 2016. “The Heritage Jam,” Archaeology Scotland 25 (Spring 2016), pp. 12–13.
Dennis, L. M. 2016. “Archaeogaming, Ethics, and Participatory Standards.” SAA Archaeological Record 16(5): 29–33.
Dörner, R., S. Göbel, M. Kickmeier-Rust, M. Masuch, and K. Zweig. 2016. Entertainment Computing and Serious Games Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Chem: Springer.
Ducheneaut, N., N. Yee, E. Nickell, and R. J. Moore . 2007. “The Life and Death of Online Gaming Communities: A Look at Guilds in World of Warcraft,” CHI 2007 Proceedings, 839–48.
Flick, Catherine, L. Meghan Dennis, and Andrew Reinhard. 2017. “Exploring Simulated Game Worlds: Ethics in the No Man’s Sky Archaeological Survey.” The Orbit Journal 1:2.
Fothergill, T. and C. Flick. 2017. “Chickens in Video Games: Archaeology and ethics inform upon complex relationships,” in The Interactive Past: Archaeology, Heritage, and Video Games (ed. A. A. Mol, C. E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, K. H. J. Boom, and A. Politopoulos). Sidestone Press.
Gardener, A. 2012. “Strategy Games and Engagement Strategies,” in Archaeology and Digital Communication: Towards Strategies of Public Engagement (ed. C. Bonacchi), pp. 38–49. Archetype Publications.
Gardner, A. 2007. “The Past as Playground: The Ancient World in Video Game Representation,” in Archaeology and the Media (ed. T. Clack and M. Brittain), pp. 255–272. Left Coast Press.
Glas, R., J. de Vos, J. van Vught, and H. Zijlstra. 2017. “Playing the Archive: Let’s Play videos, game preservation, and the exhibition of play,” in The Interactive Past: Archaeology, Heritage, and Video Games (ed. A. A. Mol, C. E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, K. H. J. Boom, and A. Politopoulos). Sidestone Press.
Goldberg, D. and L. Larrson. 2015. Introduction: Post-Escapism: A New Discourse on Video Game Culture. In The State of Play: Creators and Critics on Video Game Culture, edited by D. Goldberg and L. Larsson, 7–14. New York: Seven Stories Press.
González-Tennant, E. 2016. “Archaeological Walking Simulators.” SAA Archaeological Record 16(5): 23–28.
Graham, S. 2017. “On Games that Play Themselves: Agent based models, archaeogaming, and the useful deaths of digital Romans,” in The Interactive Past: Archaeology, Heritage, and Video Games (ed. A. A. Mol, C. E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, K. H. J. Boom, and A. Politopoulos). Sidestone Press.
Graham, S. 2016. “The Archaeologist Who Studies Video Games and the Things He Learned There.” SAA Archaeological Record 16(5): 16–18.
Graham, S. 2014a. “Pulling Back the Curtain: Writing History Through Video Games,” in Web Writing: Why and How for Liberal Arts Teaching and Learning (ed. J. Dougherty and T. O’Donnell). University of Michigan Press/Trinity College ePress edition.
Graham, S. 2014b. “Rolling Your Own: On Modding Commercial Games for Educational Goals,” in Pastplay: Teaching and Learning History with Technology (ed. K. Kee), pp. 214–227. University of Michigan Press.
Graham, S., A. Arya, P. Hartwick, and N. Nowlan. “Collaborating through Space and Time in Educational Virtual Environments: 3 Case Studies.” The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy 2.
Guins, R. 2014. Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Hepler, Jennifer Brandes. 2017. Women in game development: breaking the glass level-cap. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group.
Hiriart, J. F. 2016. “Surviving the Middle Ages: Notes on Crafting Gameplay for a Digital Historical Game.” SAA Archaeological Record 16(5): 34–37.
Huffer, D. 2009. “Conserving the past through play: educational gaming and anti-looting outreach in Cambodia.” Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Assoc. 29, pp. 92–101.
Huffer, D. and M. Oxenham. 2015. “How Much Life Do I Lose from the Plague: Educational Board Games as Teaching Tools in Archaeology and Ancient History Courses.” Public Archaeology 14:2, pp. 81–91.
Hughes, G. 2017. “Tradigital Knowledge: Indigenous video games, copyright, and the protection of traditional knowledge,” in The Interactive Past: Archaeology, Heritage, and Video Games (ed. A. A. Mol, C. E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, K. H. J. Boom, and A. Politopoulos). Sidestone Press.
Kee, K. and S. Graham. 2014. “Teaching History in an Age of Pervasive Computing: The Case for Games in the High School and Undergraduate Classroom,” in Pastplay: Teaching and Learning History with Technology (ed. K. Kee), pp. 270–291. University of Michigan Press.
King, B. and J. Borland. 2004. Dungeons and Dreamers: The Rise of Computer Culture from Geek to Chic. New York: McGraw-Hill/Osborne.
Kocurek, Carly. 2017. “Ronnie, Millie, Lila–Women’s History for Games: A Manifesto and a Way Forward.” American Journal of Play 10 (1): 52-70.
Lien, Tracy. 2013. “No Girls Allowed.” Polygon. (Not an academic article but a good article on the history of games)
Lowe, D. 2013. Always Already Ancient: Ruins in the Virtual World. In Greek and Roman Games in the Computer Age, edited by Thea S. Thorsen, 53–90. Trondheim: Fagbokforlaget.
Lowe, D. 2009. “Playing with Antiquity: Videogame Receptions of the Classical World,” in Classics for All: Re-Working Antiquity in Mass Cultural Media (ed. D. Lowe and K. Shahabudin), pp. 62–88. Cambridge Scholars Press.
Majewski, J. 2017. “The Potential for Modding Communities in Cultural Heritage,” in The Interactive Past: Archaeology, Heritage, and Video Games (ed. A. A. Mol, C. E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, K. H. J. Boom, and A. Politopoulos). Sidestone Press.
Mäyrä, F. 2008. An Introduction to Games Studies: Games in Culture. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.
Martin, Paul. 2011. “The Pastoral and the Sublime in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.” Game Studies 11 (3).
McCall, J. 2016. “Teaching History with Digital Historical Games.” Simulation & Gaming 47:4, pp. 517–542.
McCall, J. 2013. Gaming the Past: Using Video Games to Teach Secondary History. Routledge.
McGraw, J., S. Reid, and J. Sanders. 2017. “Crafting the Past: Unlocking new audiences,” in The Interactive Past: Archaeology, Heritage, and Video Games (ed. A. A. Mol, C. E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, K. H. J. Boom, and A. Politopoulos). Sidestone Press.
Meades, A. F. 2015. Understanding Counterplay in Video Games. Routledge.
Melnic, Vlad. 2018. “The Remediation of the Epic in Digital Games: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.” American, British and Canadian Studies 30 (1): 153. DOI: 10.2478/abcsj-2018-0009.
Metzger, Scott Alan, and Richard J. Paxton. 2016. “Gaming History: A Framework for What Video Games Teach About the Past.” Theory & Research in Social Education 44 (4):532-564. DOI: 10.1080/00933104.2016.1208596.
Minkin, L. and F. Summers. 2016. “How to Accommodate Grief in Your Life.” Philosophy of Photography 7:1–2, pp. 83–113.
Mol, A, A., C. E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, K. K. J. Boom, A. Politopoulos, and V. Vandemeulebroucke. 2016. “Video Games in Archaeology: Enjoyable but Trivial?” SAA Archaeological Record 16(5): 11–15.
Mol, A. A., C. E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, K. H. J. Boom, and A. Politopoulos. 2017. “Leveling Up: The future of interactive pasts,” in The Interactive Past: Archaeology, Heritage, and Video Games (ed. A. A. Mol, C. E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, K. H. J. Boom, and A. Politopoulos). Sidestone Press.
Myers Emery, K. and A. Reinhard. 2016. “Trading Shovels for Controllers: A Brief Exploration of the Portrayal of Archaeology in Video Games.” Public Archaeology 14.2, pp. 137–149.
Morgan, C. 2017. “An Unexpected Archaeology: An Interventionist Strategy for Video Games and Archaeology,” SAA Archaeological Record 17 (2): pp. 28–32.
Morgan, C. 2016. “Video Games and Archaeology,” SAA Archaeological Record 16(5): 9–10.
Pias, C. 2011. The Game Player’s Duty: The User as the Gestalt of the Parts. In Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications, edited by E. Huhtamo and J. Parikka, 164–183. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Poullis, Charalambos, Marta Kersten-Oertel, J. Praveen Benjamin, Oliver Philbin-Briscoe, Bart Simon, Dimitra Perissiou, Stella Demesticha, Evangeline Markou, Elias Frentzos, Phaedon Kyriakidis, Dimitrios Skarlatos, and Selma Rizvic. 2019. “Evaluation of “The Seafarers”: A serious game on seaborne trade in the Mediterranean sea during the Classical period.” Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage 12: e00090. DOI: 10.1016/j.daach.2019.e00090.
Pringle, Holly Maxwell. 2015. “Conjuring the Ideal Self: an Investigation of Self-Presentation in Video Game Avatars.” Press Start, Vol 2, Iss 1, Pp 1-20 (2015) (1): 1.
Rienhard, Andrew. 2018a. Archaeogaming: An Introduction to Archaeology in and of Video Games. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Reinhard, A. 2018b. “Adapting the Harris Matrix for Software Stratigraphy”, Advances in Archaeological Practice 6:2, 157–172.
Reinhard, A. 2017. “Video Games as Archaeological Sites: Treating Digital Entertainment as Built Environments,” in The Interactive Past: Archaeology, Heritage, and Video Games (ed. A. A. Mol, C. E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, K. H. J. Boom, and A. Politopoulos). Sidestone Press.
Reinhard, A. 2016. “Toward Archaeological Tools and Methods for Excavating Virtual Spaces.” SAA Archaeological Record 16:5, 19–22.
Reinhard, A. 2015a. “Excavating Atari: Where the Media was the Archaeology.” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 2:1, pp. 86-93.
Reinhard, A. 2015b. “Gaming the System: A Numismatic Primer for Video Games.” ANS Magazine 2015.1, pp. 26-37.
Reinhard, A. 2015c. “Review of Never Alone [game].” Internet Archaeology 38. (http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue38/6/reinhard.html)
Reinhard, A. 2014. “The Video Game Graveyard.” Archaeology magazine, July/August 2014, pp. 11–12.
Reinhard, A., W. Caraher, R. Rothaus, R. Guins, and B. Weber. 2014. “Why We Dug Atari.” The Atlantic (online edition, August 7, 2014).
Rodriguez, Marco Antonio. 2014. “From the Periphery to Center Stage: The Effects and Exploitation of the Other in Titus Andronicus and Assassin’s Creed III.” Communication Review 17 (3): 245-255. DOI: 10.1080/10714421.2014.930277
Rubio-Campillo, X., J. C. Saiz, G. H. Pongiluppi, G. L. Cabo, and D. R. Garcia. 2017. “Explaining Archaeological Research with Video Games: The case of Evolving Planet,” in The Interactive Past: Archaeology, Heritage, and Video Games (ed. A. A. Mol, C. E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, K. H. J. Boom, and A. Politopoulos). Sidestone Press.
van der Schilden and B. Heijltjes. 2017. “Herald: How Wispfire used history to create fiction,” in The Interactive Past: Archaeology, Heritage, and Video Games (ed. A. A. Mol, C. E. Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, K. H. J. Boom, and A. Politopoulos). Sidestone Press.
Shaw, Adrienne, and Elizaveta Friesem. 2016. “Where is the queerness in games? Types of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer content in digital games.” International Journal of Communication (Online): 3877.
Shaw, Adrienne. 2015. Gaming at the Edge : Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Shaw, Adrienne. 2012. “Do you identify as a gamer? Gender, race, sexuality, and gamer identity.“ New Media & Society 14 (1): 28-44. DOI: 10.1177/1461444811410394.
Shaw, Adrienne. 2009. “Putting the Gay in Games: Cultural Production and GLBT Content in Video Games.” Games and Culture 4 (3): 228-253. DOI: 10.1177/1555412009339729.
Sirangelo, Valentina. 2014. “From Myth to Fantasy Role-Playing Game: Aspects of the Child God in The Elder Scrolls Lore.” Caietele Echinox 26: 201-218
Sotamaa, O. 2014. “Artifact,” in The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, edited by M. J. P. Wolf and B. Perron, 3–9. New York: Routledge.
Therrien, C. 2012. Video Games Caught Up in History. In Before the Crash: Early Video Game History, edited by M. J. P. Wolf, 9–29. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Watrall, E. 2002a. “Interactive Entertainment as Public Archaeology,” SAA Archaeological Record (2)2: 37–39.
Watrall, E. 2002b. “Digital Pharaoh: Archaeology, Public Education, and Interactive Entertainment.” Public Archaeology 2:3, pp. 163–169.
Westin, Jonathan, and Ragnar Hedlund. 2016. “Polychronia – negotiating the popular representation of a common past in Assassin’s Creed.” Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 8 (1): 3-20. DOI: 10.1386/jgvw.8.1.3_1.
Williams, Dmitri, Nicole Martins, Mia Consalvo, and James D. Ivory. 2009. “The virtual census: representations of gender, race and age in video games.” New Media and Society 11 (5): 815-834. DOI: 10.1177/1461444809105354
Wolf, Mark J. P. 2008. The Video Game Explosion: A History From PONG to PlayStation and Beyond. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Zarzycki, Andrzej. 2016. “Epic video games: Narrative spaces and engaged lives.” International Journal of Architectural Computing 14 (3): 201-211. DOI: 10.1177/1478077116663338.
Copplestone, Tara. 2014. Playing With The Past: The Possibilities and Pitfalls of Video-Games for and About Cultural Heritage. University of York (MSc).
Johnson, Emily. 2013. Experienced Archaeologies: A mini-ethnography exploring the way in which people engage with the past in single player role-playing videogames. University of York (MA).
Rice, Hannah. 2014. Exploring the Pedagogical Possibilities of applying Gaming Theory and Technologies to Historic Architectural Visualisation. University of York (MSc).
Archaeogaming 