Tag: archaeogaming

Archaeology

On Getting There: The (Im)patience of Archaeology and Heaven’s Vault

by Dr Alex Fitzpatrick1 Comment on On Getting There: The (Im)patience of Archaeology and Heaven’s Vault

Please note that this blog post contains spoilers for the game “Heaven’s Vault”.

As I wrote in a post almost a year (!!!) ago, I finished my second playthrough of Heaven’s Vault (Inkle Studios, 2021). And perhaps one of the things that struck me most on this replay was just how long the travel sequences were – for those who have not played, the main method of travel in the universe of Heaven’s Vault is by “sailing” space rivers which consist of flows of oxygen, hydrogen, and ice. These sailing sequences aren’t particularly action-heavy, with the only input of the Player consisting of steering the ship to the correct fork and hitting a button to check out ruins that are along the rivers.

However, they are long…like, really long. The map for the game is deceptively large, with many twisting rivers that coincide with other pathways, making it easy to get lost as you unlock more areas and expand your exploration range further. And honesty? It gets a bit…annoying. And boring. To give the game developers credit, there is an “auto-travel” option where you can hand off steering duties to your robotic companion, basically teleporting you to your destination. But there’s a catch – your robotic companion is unable to stop at any unexpected ruins you might come across, meaning that you can easily miss out on exciting finds that may give further clues towards the central mystery of the game.

Screenshots from the game depicting the Nightingale “sailing” on one of the many space rivers found in the game. Text is from one of the many conversations that occur during the very long sequences of traveling in Heaven’s Vault, with our main character Aliya Elasra saying, “Tracing the movements of things is another way of tracing the movements of people…in the end, the things aren’t really that important.”

Obviously, Heaven’s Vault is a video game about archaeology so there are some very explicit similarities between its core gameplay mechanics and archaeological methods. But I think we can also, perhaps more abstractly, relate the long and winding travels on Heaven’s Vault’s space rivers to the often long, and sometimes winding process of archaeology, a discipline in which research is constantly revisited and revised over long periods of time, with unpublished data from decades earlier finally getting worked into more recent, published work, and old, outdated theories re-invented over time. And yet we also see an impatient side to archaeology as well – the short turnarounds expected from most fieldwork, the need to produce results as soon as possible due to contractor needs and funding policies.

Thinking about patience (or the lack thereof on my part) in Heaven’s Vault reminds me of “slow archaeology”, which was a concept first put forth by archaeologist William Caraher. In his original 2013 article, Caraher suggests the use of a slower archaeology in contrast to the time-efficient, assembly line-like approach to fieldwork that has been facilitated by digital tools and other technical innovations that are mainly accessible to larger, more well-funded projects. A slower archaeology, on the other hand, is often embodied by smaller, less-funded projects with small teams working multiple roles on-site. This, in Caraher’s view, returns archaeology to a state of craftwork, where manual handling of the work requires more attention at a slower pace, maintaining an embodied experience and knowledge that isn’t disrupted through technological processes.

In response to Shawn Graham’s (2017) critical view of slow archaeology as one that also requires a level of privilege not afforded to underrepresented and otherwise marginalised archaeologists, Caraher (2019) has more recently suggested a reframing of slow archaeology to be more about an “archaeology of care”; that is, an archaeology that takes care to understand how the discipline is ultimately shaped and informed by the relations between individuals, tools, methods, and technologies. Regardless of whether or not archaeology is more craft or industry, maintaining this critical eye throughout keeps archaeology embodied as a method of knowledge-making and cautions us to not get too complacent with the increasingly digitised workflows of the discipline.

Reflecting back at my impatience at the travel system in Heaven’s Vault and my penchant for using the auto-travel button, I can see how that runs counter with the idea of “slow archaeology” – in automating this travel (in the most literal way possible given that a robot takes over for you), you are missing out on embodying that experience, even if its long and boring. And without that embodiment, you miss out on being able to make off-the-cuff decisions or discoveries, such as stopping at a random ruin which gets bypassed in automation. In bypassing this experience, I can still get to a conclusion – ignoring manual sailing doesn’t impact the ending of the game, for example. But I do miss out on smaller elements that could have become something much greater through my experience with it, producing a result that maybe isn’t deemed to be productively important in the grand scheme of things, but ultimately enhances my understanding by interacting and engaging with it.

Something that I think we can all do to remember that is emphasised by Heaven’s Vault’s story is that archaeology is an “incomplete” story, that none of us will really see the completion of our understanding of the past as we ourselves are drawn into histories through the passage of time. This isn’t to say that project and fieldwork results aren’t useful, of course! But it may be that they’re not the true goal of a slower, more caring archaeology – that we don’t have to streamline and make things more efficient and productive, but strive towards being “in the moment” with the past that we handle, engaging archaeology in order to enable a more thoughtful and embodied approach to our understanding.

You can buy Heaven’s Vault now for the Nintendo Switch, Playstation, and for PC via Steam.

References

Caraher, W. (2013). Slow archaeology. North Dakota Quarterly, 80(2), 43-52.

Caraher, W. (2019). Slow archaeology, punk archaeology, and the ‘archaeology of care’. European journal of archaeology, 22(3), 372-385.

Graham, S. (2017). Slow Archaeology? Electric Archaeologist. Retrieved from https://electricarchaeology.ca/2017/03/20/slow-archaeology/

Inkle Studios. (2021). Heaven’s Vault, video game, Nintendo Switch. Cambridge: Inkle. 

If you’re financially stable enough, why not donate to help out marginalised archaeologists in need via the Black Trowel Collective Microgrants? You can subscribe to their Patreon to become a monthly donor, or do a one-time donation via PayPal.

My work and independent research is supported almost entirely by the generosity of readers – if you’re interested in contributing a tiny bit, you can find my PayPal here.

Archaeology, Fun

Stories and Histories: The Importance of the Written (and Spoken) Word in ‘Pentiment’

by Dr Alex Fitzpatrick

Please note that this blog post has major spoilers for the video game Pentiment, which I highly recommend you play before reading further as its a fantastic game!

In one part of the game, Andreas (the Player Character) has a discussion with Sister Illuminata regarding various books – depicted here with both characters inserted into the illustrated manuscripts. In this screenshot, the two characters are placed in a series of pages with Latin text depicting (on the left) a maiden spying on two lovers at the edge of a lake in the forest and (on the right) a burning, praying woman at the water’s edge looking at a couple on a boat. Sister Illuminata is depicted as the burning woman saying “Even in stories, we are maidens to be rescued and wed, cruel seducers of men, or wizened crones”, while Andreas is part of the couple on the boat.

There’s lots you can talk about with Pentiment, a point-and-click historical mystery game set in 16th century Bavaria (and I’m sure I’ll talk about this game a lot on this blog in the future!), but as an archaeologist, what interested me the most was the overarching themes of storytelling, mythology, and history – not just as separate entities, but as tangible elements often in conflict with each other and impacting the lives and worldviews of people. Archaeology in itself is just another story, after all, that finds itself similarly engaging with folklore and mythology in both negative and positive ways – and we even see this in the game as well.

That the game is set in 16th century Europe isn’t surprising with these themes in mind – at this point in time, the Reformation had thrown previously accepted ideas of the world and beyond into question, including that of class and the feudal order (Koenigsberger et al. 1989, p. 1-2). Unsurprisingly, this coincides with more people becoming literate in Europe, allowing for people to engage with new schools of thought that often clashed with official religious teachings (Konnert 2008, p. 89) – in fact, literacy would become central to the reformation movement occurring in England at the same time (Pendergast 2006, p. 44).

The Player begins the game as Andreas, an educated and literate artist working on commissions in the local monastery of Tassing, Bavaria. Throughout the game, you’re able to have discussions with people from all different backgrounds: from uneducated peasants to well-read monks, to even some members of nobility. Despite the variance of education and literacy, however, many of the conversations you have are related to history, folklore, and literature, and the ways in which these things impact people and their sense of the world around them. For instance, an early conversation with one of the nuns, Sister Illuminata, has the two characters ruminating on the depiction of women in the Aeneid (an ancient epic poem written by the Roman poet Virgil) and how it mirrors the poor treatment of women at the time in the 16th century.

In this screenshot from the game, Andreas (the Player Character) is in the middle of the meadow in the rain, surrounded by sheep and overlooking the ruins of a Roman aqueduct in the background. He is looking at an old man named Til, carrying a shepherd’s crook and wearing a flat cap who is saying, “It’s nice to feel you’re connected to those who came before you, even if its only by the land you live on”.

In another conversation with Til, a local townsperson, you can chat about the local folklore related to the Roman ruins found across Tassing and ponder the similarities between tales told of local saints and Roman mythology. Its in this conversation where Til makes a remark that I think hits upon a point that I fear is often obscured in archaeology: about the importance of local stories and how they can facilitate and strengthen connections to the surrounding land by making you feel part of a larger narrative, and how even the most fantastical folklore can draw from real, tangible elements (in this case, the local ruins and landscape of Tassing).

By Act 3, the importance of stories and histories became emphasised as the Player is entrusted with the task of painting a mural that represents the culture and history of Tassing. There is tension amongst the townsfolk with this task – some are worried about how the depiction of the past will be perceived by others, particularly those with authority. Despite this, the Player sets out to research the earliest known histories of the town, eventually making their way into the scattered bits of Roman ruins across Tassing to find out more about who once settled on these lands in the past. Of course, this being the 16th century, we’re still a bit aways from when we start to see the earliest iterations of what has been considered formal archaeological practice in the 17th and 18th centuries (Fleming 2020); as such, the Player is met with confusion and dismay at their insistence that these bits of the past (which other characters in the game will confess to finding and tossing during farm work!) could be used to further their understanding of ancient peoples.

This bit of proto-archaeology is quite interesting, with the Player being able to utilise pot sherds and Roman graffiti to extrapolate more information about Roman (and even pre-Roman) inhabitants of Tassing, even connecting some of the artistic depictions with folklore that has some of the town elders have mentioned in passing (to the chagrin of their God-fearing neighbours, as they often stray towards the paganistic). As the Player continues, they soon begin to see how some bits of evidence either confirms or contradicts others, with both textual and oral histories, stories, and folklore interconnecting into a messy web of fact and fiction.

Final warning – major spoilers for the plot of the game below!

In this screenshot, the Player Characters (Andreas, now an old man in rags, and Magdalene, a young blonde woman) confront Father Thomas (an old priest and recurring character) in the ruins of a Roman bath house. Father Thomas is saying, “But they knew of the saints and learned local legends of the region and applied them to the figures they found here.”

This all culminates in the finale of the game, where the Thread-Puller (the person manipulating others to commit the murders throughout the game) is revealed to be Father Thomas, attempting to cover up the peasants and townsfolk of Tassing from learning the truth – that the stories of their Saints, who we have learned to be so central to the lives of these people, are simply Roman myths transformed over time. Such a revelation would potentially shake the foundations of their trust in the Church, which has already been tested by the influx of Reformation ideals being circulated by literate townsfolk as well as previous conflicts over taxes between the local monastery and the peasants.

It’s a revelation that truly encapsulates the tension at the heart of Pentiment – between stories and histories, and the ways in which the “truth” can become inconvenient or even dangerous to others looking to uphold a particular status quo. And the game doesn’t present the decision to tell the truth to the rest of the townsfolk as an easy one, either – having just spent all of Act 3 witnessing the effects of a failed peasant revolt, it is made clear to the Player that there are no light consequences for having one’s worldview completely changed.

To tie it all back to archaeology, I think Pentiment really illustrates how our understanding of the past isn’t just something that exists in a vacuum, but a messy, interconnected thing that touches upon every facet of society and culture. That Father Thomas risks so much to keep the truth of these stories and their connection to the pagan past away from the townsfolk emphasises how foundational one’s sense of history is to their worldview – to counter this requires a complete rethinking not just of one’s religious views, but also one’s place in a very hierarchical world. For archaeologists, I think this works in two ways – that every interpretation we develop has an impact on how people perceive not only their ancestors, but also themselves and the way they interact with the world around them, and that every local story or myth (even if its not necessarily the “truth” as viewed from the archaeological record) impacts the way that people view the past, which in turn colours their present and future worldviews. Maybe this conversation is getting a bit too circular and abstract, but the main point that I think I’m trying to get at (and that Pentiment clearly gets at!) is that stories (histories and otherwise) are so vitally important to people – not just through a lens of understanding the past, but for understanding…well, everything, really.

A screenshot from the very end of the game, depicting the mural created by Magdalene – I chose to depict (from left to right) – Perchta and the Wild Hunt, a pagan myth often told by elders of Tassing with the inclusion of a sacrificial scene taken from archaeological remains found by Madgalene earlier in the game; the founding of the abbey; Otto, an outspoken and radical townsperson, speaking to the townspeople and peasants about the need for societal change; and finally, the Roman ruins from the end of the game, located below the town church.

You can buy Pentiment now for PC via Steam or on Xbox.

References

Fleming, D. (2020). The Internationalization and Institutionalization of Archaeology, or, How a Rich Man’s Pastime Became an International Scientific Discipline, and What Happened Thereafter. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, 30(1).

Koenigsberger, H.G., Mosse, G.L., & Bowler, G.Q. (1989). Europe in the Sixteenth Century. 2nd Edition. Harlow, UK: Longman.

Konnert, M. (2008). Early Modern Europe: The Age of Religious War, 1559-1715. Toronto, CA: University of Toronto Press.

Obsidian Entertainment (2022). Pentiment, video game, PC. Redmond, WA: Xbox Game Studios.

Pendergast, J.S. (2006). Religion, Allegory, and Literacy in Early Modern England, 1560-1640: the Control of the Word. Burlington, VA: Ashgate Publishing.

If you’re financially stable enough, why not donate to help out marginalised archaeologists in need via the Black Trowel Collective Microgrants? You can subscribe to their Patreon to become a monthly donor, or do a one-time donation via PayPal.

My work and independent research is supported almost entirely by the generosity of readers – if you’re interested in contributing a tiny bit, you can donate here.

Archaeology

Did They Finally Make an Archaeology Game? A Very Late (Archaeological) Review of Heaven’s Vault

by Dr Alex Fitzpatrick

Yes, okay this game came out in 2019, and I actually played it for the first time in 2021, but I didn’t actually write a review then, so I’m writing one now based on a recent playthrough. So, if you haven’t played it in the past four years since it was released, beware of spoilers for the game in the blog post below.

Our main character, Aliya, is here to give you support if you’re no longer actively working in the field – once an archaeologist, always an archaeologist!

Heaven’s Vault originally came out in 2019, developed and published by Inkle Studios. In the four years since its release, many archaeologists have already written their takes on the game (e.g., Reinhard 2019,  Haneuer 2021, Draycott 2022), so nothing I’ll probably say in this post will be particularly innovative, because frankly? I agree with most of these takes: that Heaven’s Vault is a fantastic addition to the catalogue of archaeology-inspired video games and is arguably the only game to produce an experience that most closely resembles the reality of archaeological investigation (albeit set in the distant future and in space with robots, something that I haven’t experienced myself!).

Deciphering ancient writing is most of the gameplay – and something I’ve literally never come across in my actual archaeological work, but it’s definitely fun!

Heaven’s Vault is very much concerned about a specific archaeological approach, and perhaps that is what makes it a more imperfect depiction of archaeology; that said, I also understand that this decision is based on developing easy-to-understand gaming mechanics, and I doubt anyone playing the game outside of the discipline wants to run lipid analysis on sherds as part of the fun (or maybe they do! I don’t know what the youth enjoy!). As I’ve written about in the past, archaeology in games is often used as an excuse for certain types of side questing mechanics like collectables; the mechanic that creates the main methodology of archaeological investigation in Heaven’s Vault is through translation. Starting with a couple of pre-translated words, you’re tasked with linguistic puzzles, using context clues and similarities between characters of script to propose translations that are often critiqued by surrounding characters as well as your player character. Over time and repeated exposure to certain characters of script, you’re able to make decisions on what is the “definitive” translation of certain words, slowly building up your dictionary of known words to help identify new ones. And although this isn’t representative of how all archaeologists work, I still find this mechanic to be accurate in the way in ultimately illustrates the process of interpretation – slow, but steadily brings the bigger picture into focus as you gather further evidence through careful consideration of artefacts, bioarchaeological investigation, and comparative information from the broader regional and temporal context. To refer to the archaeological process as “solving a puzzle” may be a bit of a cliché at this point, but it is true in my experience – it’s about finding the connections that each archaeological find has to another and recognising the way it ultimately fits into a bigger picture of how we understand the past.

Wanna have a brief existential crisis? The timeline mechanic for the game has you covered!

Perhaps the best part of the game, in my opinion, was the way it handles the concept of time. In the game’s menu, you’re able to see a timeline – not just of the in-universe history, but also of your actions so far in the game.  I’ve previously written about how archaeologists conceptualise time in the past, and this timeline is such an incredible addition to that discussion. That it also includes your own actions as part of the broader narrative is also a really interesting approach to a more self-reflexive form of archaeology that considers how excavation and curation practices are ultimately connected within the history of a particular artefact (and, within the story of Heaven’s Vault, shows how the past can influence the present and future, as the information you gather during the game is meant to help you make the final decision at the end). It’s something I think real world archaeologists to reflect upon more – I think some of us often feel removed from our work (in an idealistic, scientific type of way), when in actuality, our research is just another addition to the long history of these artefacts that we excavate and handle.

As I mentioned in the preface to this blog post, I’m actually writing this review after my second playthrough of the game, which means I was able to play using a New Game+ mode. For those who may not know, this is a mechanic that’s become quite popular in the past decade to encourage replays of video games, often by allowing you to retain elements of your previous playthrough (i.e., levels, skills, experience, items, etc.). In Heaven’s Vault, New Game+ allows you to bring across some of the translations you identified in your last playthrough. In my second playthrough, I’ve not only discovered new artefacts but also made new breakthroughs including a more definitive understanding of the ancient pantheon of Gods and the events of the past that have ultimately set the Nebula on its course to where you currently are within the game. It’s a fascinating way to illustrate how our understandings of things change over time, and how each era (read: playthrough) potentially brings with it further knowledge of the past to apply towards the present and future.

Heaven’s Vault may not be an exact replica of what it is like to be an archaeologist, but I don’t think that’s the point at the end of the day, As an archaeologist myself, even if I was unable to relate to the approaches used to undertake archaeology in the game, I could still find relatable in the broader experience of archaeological investigation – the game perfectly illustrates why many of us become archaeologists, as well as the many ethical issues that we sometimes face along the way as we reflect upon our role in interpreting the past and how it ultimately impacts the present and the future. And frankly, as a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to video game collectables? I’m very excited to undertake my third playthrough in the near future and continue to build up my dictionary of ancient script.

You can buy Heaven’s Vault now for the Nintendo Switch, Playstation, and for PC via Steam.

References

Draycott, J. (2022). Not male, not pale, and definitely not stale: Aliyah Elasra and archaeology in Heaven’s Vault. In J Draycott (ed)Women in Historical and Archaeological Video Games, 9. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, p. 341-360

Haneuer, S. (2021). Archaeogaming: How Heaven’s Vault Changes the “Game”. in A Abar et al. (eds) Pearls, Politics and Pistachios: Essays in Anthropology and Memories on the Occasion of Susan Pollock’s 65th Birthday, Heidelberg: Propylaeum, p. 631-642.

Inkle Studios (2021) Heaven’s Vault, video game, Nintendo Switch. Cambridge: Inkle. 

Reinhard, A. (2019) The Archaeology of Heaven’s Vault. Archaeogaming. Retrieved from https://archaeogaming.com/2019/04/16/the-archaeology-of-heavens-vault/  

If you’re financially stable enough, why not donate to help out marginalised archaeologists in need via the Black Trowel Collective Microgrants? You can subscribe to their Patreon to become a monthly donor, or do a one-time donation via PayPal.

My work and independent research is supported almost entirely by the generosity of readers – if you’re interested in contributing a tiny bit, you can donate here.

Archaeology, Fun, Review

The Archaeology of Memories and Mementos: An Archaeologist’s Review of “I Am Dead”

by Dr Alex Fitzpatrick

Please note that this blog post contains spoilers for the game “I Am Dead”.

One of the opening images for the game, and arguably one of my favourite death-adjacent topics to explore via fiction – what will your legacy be after you die?

So, one of the things I was most excited to get to post-PhD was my ever-increasing backlog of video games (damn you, Nintendo Switch sales!), and I was particularly excited about tackling the long list of indie games. One of these was, of course, the subject of this blog post: I Am Dead, a game made by Hollow Grounds and originally released in 2020. I had known that it was, by all accounts, one of those cute little indie games with a fun “hidden item”-type of puzzle mechanic.

You can imagine how surprised I was to find out that it was secretly one of the best archaeology games I’ve ever played!

Not to get too sentimental but this game really touched a lot of my perhaps more overly-optimistic viewpoints regarding archaeology – the tangibility of history and past experience!

The game is centered on Morris Lupton, a recently deceased inhabitant of the fictional island town of Shelmerston and previously the curator of the local museum. He is tasked with finding a new guardian for the town in order to stop its imminent destruction by a long-dormant volcano. To do this, Morris must travel around the town and invoke its local spirits by finding items hidden away connected to various memories of the deceased held by their still-living friends and family.  

It’s a very sweet and short game that really touches upon the idea of legacy – both in what we leave behind in our work and passions, as well as within our interpersonal relationships. This is further emphasised in where the game takes place – we do not join Morris right after death, but some time later. He is quite content with his afterlife, and much more concerned with the fate of the living who still remain in Shelmerston. But Morris also gets the unique opportunity to see how much of a difference he has made as the island’s lone curator, particularly in the way in which his work has helped shaped the memory of the island itself.

One of my favourite moments of connection within the game – revisiting the memory of a prehistoric person’s birth, and also finding the very artefact used during this. Would we have known how it was truly used?

So, yes, there is an obvious archaeology component here with the museum, particularly with the final level which is split between the exhibitions of the local museum and Prehistoric Shelmerston. But what I find more interesting, perhaps, is the idea of memory here, particularly the way in which memory interacts with material culture.

The archaeology of memory isn’t a new concept, with a variety of sub-types that have been thoroughly discussed in previous literature; this includes collective memory, public memory, and social memory (Van Dyke 2019, p. 208-209). But what is perhaps closer to what is being illustrated in this gameplay is the idea of “problematic stuff” (Buster 2021a and 2021b), which describes the sort of everyday “mundane” object that is ultimately the focus of much emotion and sentimentality. Buster originally explored this idea through discussions with healthcare professionals and end-of-life caregivers as part of the Continuing Bonds Project, as it became apparent that many people placed particular emphasis on the material objects that were left behind by the deceased. When viewed from a more archaeological perspective, this concept sheds a different light on some of the artefacts that are often found in what may seem to be “random” places, particularly within the Iron Age of Britain. Funerary traditions during this period of time continue to be difficult to determine due to the “invisibility” of the dead within the archaeological record (Harding 2016). And yet many Iron Age sites exhibit deposits of rather mundane items. Perhaps we have been missing part of the puzzle by overlooking these objects, which may be representative of personal objects that, unbeknownst to modern day archaeologists, embody many memories and emotions.

I Am Dead can be seen as a demonstration of the power of memory, as well as the ways in which memory become embodied into these “problematic stuff” – we see first-hand how these random objects become important through association of past events and interactions by the living. What to us is just a lost glove, or a buried box of beer, or a badge, are to others memories of finding a beloved treasure, or teenage antics, or the start of a beautiful friendship. It asks us, as archaeologists, to consider the things – that perhaps seem so small at first glance – that are inaccessible to us in the present day, but may transform rubbish into something much more meaningful and important.

You can buy I Am Dead now for the Nintendo Switch or for PC via Steam.

References

Buster, L. (2021a) ‘Problematic Stuff’: Death, Memory, and the Interpretation of Cached Objects. Antiquity 95(382), pp. 973-985.

Buster, L. (2021b) Why Couldn’t Iron Age People Throw Some Stuff Away? Sapiens. Retrieved from https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/iron-age-britain-houses/

Harding, D.W. (2016) Death and Burial in Iron Age Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hollow Grounds (2020) I Am Dead, video game, Nintendo Switch. West Hollywood, CA: Annapurna Interactive.

Van Dyke, R.M. (2019) Archaeology and Social Memory. Annual Review of Anthropology 48, pp. 207-225.

If you’re financially stable enough, why not donate to help out marginalised archaeologists in need via the Black Trowel Collective Microgrants? You can subscribe to their Patreon to become a monthly donor, or do a one-time donation via PayPal.

My work and independent research is supported almost entirely by the generosity of readers – if you’re interested in contributing a tiny bit, you can donate here.

Archaeology, Fun

Hey, is That a Great Auk in My Assassin’s Creed Game?! Reviving an Extinct Species in the Digital World

by Dr Alex Fitzpatrick

Okay, so a disclaimer: despite me being a so-called “video game enthusiast”, I have actually only played one out of the 12 games that make up the bulk of the Assassin’s Creed franchise. Yeah, I know, feel free to boo me. That said, I was surprised to find out that I actually have more of a connection with the Assassin’s Creed franchise than previously thought. As Shay Cormac in Assassin’s Creed Rogue, you spend a fair bit of time travelling around the North Atlantic, visiting the many islands within that area…and along the way, you run into my favourite extinct species of all time – the Great Auk!

Assassin’s Creed Rogue protagonist Shay Cormac encounters an entire…flock? Herd? of Great Auk

So, who is the Great Auk and why should we care? First of all…how dare you even ask? But seriously, I am extremely biased at this point as I have spent a lot of time with the poor extinct bird during my PhD. The Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis) was a flightless bird that was, to be frank, an easy target for predators – especially humans, who hunted them for their meat and fat (Svanberg 2014, p. 311). The Great Auk appear to have been an important part of many local meals from as early as the prehistoric period (Best and Mulville 2013, p. 424), lasting until its extinction in 1844 (Serjeantson 2001, p. 43). Sadly, humans have a lot to answer for with regards to the extinction of the Great Auk, as overexploitation truly decimated its populations…however, it was natural history collectors who may have helped to deliver the final blow, as the demand for Great Auk remains for collections increased as populations decreased (Minteer et al., 2014).

One of my favourite finds from our excavations at the Covesea Caves – its an articulated (still held together by soft tissue) leg from a Great Auk!

Allegedly the last reported Great Auk was killed by sailors off of St. Kilda, who had feared that the poor bird was actually a witch (Galasso 2014). And while that may sound a bit strange, it seems to fit into a much older concept of the Great Auk that is still being explored through interpretations of ritual archaeology – for example,  at the site of Broxmouth Hillfort in East Lothian, Scotland, skull fragments of a Great Auk were found alongside a nearly completed horse skull as part of a structured deposit near one of the entrances (Salvagno 2013, p. 473). As part of my PhD research in the Covesea Caves of Scotland, I have also found several instances of Great Auk remains (of really fantastic preservation as well, given the amount of surviving soft tissue observed on some bones!). As these caves have already been identified as potential sites of funerary and ritual activity from the Later Prehistoric Period and possibly as late as the Medieval Period, it is possible that these Great Auk remains were also significant for certain rites. However, there’s other possibilities (they may have been eaten, or they may just represent natural deposits) and not enough concrete evidence to give a confident interpretation right now (Fitzpatrick et al. 2020).

So, why does it matter that this extinct bird showed up in a video game? Besides just being a cool little detail, it is interesting to see the ways in which extinct species are revived digitally. Of course much has already been discussed by archaeologists who specialise in archaeogaming on the ways in which video games can be a form of digital reconstruction of the past (Reinhard 2018, p. 188 – 193), but I feel as though less attention has been placed on digital zooarchaeologies in this context, and I feel that Assassin’s Creed in general has been an interesting case study of digital reconstructions of the zooarchaeological record and how it allows players to engage with extinct or otherwise drastically changed animals from the past.

Anyway, #BringBacktheGreatAuk, am I right?!

References

Best, J. and Mulville, J. (2013) ‘Between the Sea and Sky: The Archaeology of Avian Resource Exploitation in Scottish Island Environments’, in Daire, M., Dupont, C., Baudry, A., Billard, C., Large, J., Lespez, L., Normand, E. and Scarre, C. (eds.) Ancient Maritime Communities and the Relationship between People and Environment along the European Atlantic Coasts. Oxford: Archaeopress, pp. 417-426.

Fitzpatrick, A., Bond, J., Büster, L., & Armit, I. (2020) A Brief Consideration of the Later Prehistoric
Appearance and Possible Significance of the Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis) in the Covesea Caves of
North-East Scotland. The Glasgow Naturalist 27(2)

Galasso, S. (2014) When the Last of the Great Auks Died, It Was by the Crush of a Fisherman’s Boot. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/with-crush-fisherman-boot-the-last-great-auks-died-180951982/

Minteer, B. A., Collins, J. O., Love, K. E. and Puschendorf, R. (2014) ‘Avoiding (Re)extinction’, Science, 344, 260-261.

Reinhard, A. (2018) Archaeogaming: an Introduction to Archaeology In and Out of Video Games. Berghahn Books.

Salvagno, L. (2013) ‘Bird Bone’, in Armit, I. and McKenzie, J. (eds.) An Inherited Place: Broxmouth Hillfort and the South-East Scottish Iron Age. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, pp. 471-473.

Serjeantson, D. (2001) ‘The Great Auk and the Gannet: a Prehistoric Perspective on the Extinction of the Great Auk’, International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 11, 43-55.

Svanberg, I. (2014) ‘Great Auk’, in Hund, A.J. (ed.) Antarctica and the Arctic Circle: A Geographic Encyclopedia of the Earth’s Polar Regions. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, pp. 311.

Ubisoft Sofia (2014) Assassin’s Creed Rogue. Ubisoft.

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Archaeology, Fun, Radical Archaeology

Community-Led, Community-Run: The Blathers’ Approach to Museum Curation

by Dr Alex Fitzpatrick

In the Animal Crossing video game series, Blathers is the rather stereotypical curator of the local museums; a straight-laced nerd who punctuates his educational rambling with “wot?” and is dutiful in his collecting…even if he has to occasionally handle a bug or two. But what is less stereotypical is his curatorial approach as the head of a museum that is part natural history, part aquarium, part insect sanctuary, and part art galley. You see, it’s the Player Character’s responsibility (as well as other Player Characters who may visit via online play) to actually fill the museum with donated material!

And, honestly? I think we can learn something about museum curation from this nerdy entomophobe.

Blathers: “The cultural development of Wakame (my island in Animal Crossing) is a worthy endeavour indeed.”

In a way, I guess you can consider the museum in Animal Crossing to be a sort of “community-led museum”, in that ultimately it is you, the non-specialist member of the general public, who is providing material for the museum to exhibit. Of course, its not entirely community-led : Blathers ultimately has final say in what gets displayed (no repeats! no fake artwork!) and, given the game mechanics, nearly every player will end up with the same museum as they’re encouraged to collect all of the bugs, sea creatures, fish, and artwork available in the game. But I think we can see the Animal Crossing museum as a sort of example from which we can really discuss and development the idea of a truly community-led museum.

The idea of community-led museums isn’t new, of course – in fact, if we use a broad definition of the museum as any space that has collected and protected specific objects for viewing of the general public, then community-led museum-like spaces have existed for centuries in the form of shrines and communal areas. The more modern concept of the museum (as well as its associated curation policies) are arguably more “Western” in nature, with much of it developed in a colonial framework that unfortunately influences curatorial decisions to this day (Kreps 2006). Thus, many see the resurgence of the community-led museum as a means of shifting towards a more ethical approach to curation and display.

Of course, this also means that we are discussing a very site-specific form of community-led curation – similar to the way in which the Player Character is developing exhibitions of their town/island’s specific biodiversity in Animal Crossing, I would argue that community-led museums work best when dealing with its own community. In other words, it is important to not repeat the power dynamics of the colonial museum, but with a more communal approach! Previous experiments in the community-led approach has shown that it can help develop better relationships with the concept of a local, shared heritage, and lead to a feeling of collective ownership…and responsibility…of the history and artwork on display (Debono 2014, Mutibwa et. al. 2020).

What I find most interesting about the museum in Animal Crossing is the emphasis on natural history, on what a community-led natural history museum would look like. Of course, a real life application of the techniques used in the video game would be an ethical nightmare (not sure how you feel about encouraging the general public to catch and donate live fish and bugs at their leisure?), but I think the general conceit of the approach is something to consider. Citizen science, for example, has become very popular as a means of public engagement by institutions over the past decade, and there has been some examples of natural history museums spearheading projects to engage the community to participate directly in research (Ballard et. al. 2017).

As we find ourselves in a period of revaluation and reflection due to the influence of the Black Lives Matter movement, there is great potential for utilising a framework such as the community-led museum as a means of accountability and justice within historically colonial and racist institutions. As Olivette Otele recently said in a discussion with Fischer and Jansari (2020), community curation can be a means of shifting and taking power from the museum to the communities, where they can curate in ways that suit their means. This could also develop and improve long term sustainable relationships between the community and the institution, especially if the process of curation is also archived as part of the museum as well – forever preserving that collective labour, perhaps to use as a template moving forward to bigger and more radical things.

At some point, though, we should probably talk about Blather’s complicity (as well as the Player Character’s) in the illicit trade of artwork and antiquities…

References

Ballard, H.L. et al. (2017) Contributions to Conservation Outcomes by Natural History Museum-Led Citizen Science: Examining Evidence and Next Steps. Biological Conservation 208. pp. 87-97.

Debono, S. (2014) Muza: Rethinking National Art Museums and the Values of Community Curation. Malta Review of Educational Research 8(2). pp. 312-320.

Fischer, H. and Jansari, S. (2020) International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition. Podcast. British Museum. Retrieved from https://soundcloud.com/britishmuseum/august-23-podcast-ep-mixdown

Kreps, C. (2006) Non-Western Models of Museums and Curation in Cross-Cultural Perspective. In A Companion to Museum Studies (eds S. Macdonald). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 457-472.

Mutibwa, D.H., et al. (2020) Strokes of Serendipity: Community Co-Curation and Engagement with Digital Heritage. Convergence 26(1). pp. 157-177.

Nintendo (2020) Animal Horizon: New Horizons, video game, Nintendo Switch. Kyoto: Nintendo.

If you’re financially stable enough, why not donate to help out marginalised archaeologists in need via the Black Trowel Collective Microgrants? You can subscribe to their Patreon to become a monthly donor, or do a one-time donation via PayPal.

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Archaeology

The Witcher is a Bioarchaeologist – Okay, Let Me Explain…

by Dr Alex Fitzpatrick

Okay, I mean…technically the Witcher is more of a zoologist with a bit of forensics training, but let me shoe-horn in my expertise please!

Screenshot_2020-01-27 Let's Play The Witcher 3 - Part 4 - Griffin's Nest - YouTube
Geralt, the Witcher, examining a griffin corpse in the Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt (2015).

After years of being yelled at to play the Witcher 3: the Wild Hunt (2015), I am finally playing the Witcher 3: the Wild Hunt (round of applause please). And I’m enjoying it a lot, as it fills the fantasy void within my heart that the Dragon Age series has left. But the gameplay mechanic that interests me the most is, unsurprising, the investigation sequences during the Witcher contracts.

Geralt, the main character, is a Witcher (have I written that word enough yet?). This means he’s been trained and physically & genetically enhanced in order to combat monsters and other deadly creatures.

So, what do I mean that Geralt is basically a trained bioarchaeologist? Well, one of the many types of quests you can get during the game are called “contracts”, which are basically paid jobs, usually involving the defeat of some creature that’s terrifying the local populace. But it’s not just about riding off and fighting a griffin or an ogre…there’s a bit of investigation involved as well.

Screenshot_2020-01-27 Witcher 3 Blood and Wine - Contract Bovine Blues - YouTube
Geralt investigates the corpses of a human and a cow during a quest in the Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt (2015).

During these quests, Geralt is usually directed to a site where some horrible thing has happened – a peasant has been horribly murdered, or a person has gone missing and only left behind a blood trail, or maybe it’s just the whispers of local folklore that’s brought him there. Whatever it is, Geralt will begin to investigate and look for clues; these will come in the form of animal tracks, bloodstains, or even the deceased themselves.

Again, most of these interactions are probably more forensic in nature, but there’s still lots of similarities with bioarchaeology. For example, Geralt has an incredible amount of knowledge of common taphonomic processes (which I’ve actually written about here, except in a different video game). Taphonomy refers to the processes through which a living being undertaken as they move from living to being part of the archaeological record as a post-mortem deposit (Lyman 1994).

When Geralt looks at remains, he can deduce the actions that occurred to cause that particular deposit – did they die here, or were they placed here after death? Has any animals moved or otherwise affected the body in any way? What about the environment – has weather affected these remains in any way? Is there something significant about the way this body was or was not buried?

And these are important questions to ask about archaeological deposits as well! It isn’t assumed that we are looking at an intentional grave, as many factors could have led to this particular deposition – were they buried here intentionally, as a “final resting place? Were they first placed somewhere else and then moved here? Was the body modified in anyway prior to this eventual deposition? This can include not just other humans, but other animals and environments factors.

But more specifically, Geralt is a walking bestiary – he knows not only how to recognise and identify faunal remains, but also understands their living behaviours as well. When Geralt comes across the remains of a slain griffin, he immediately makes the connection that the one he has been hired to kill was the deceased’s partner – but how? Well, he understands the mating behaviours of griffins!

And, as a zooarchaeologist myself, I really enjoy seeing how extensive Geralt’s zoological knowledge is and how he incorporates it in his interpretations alongside his observations and evaluations of the surrounding environment. Why? Well, to quote Diane Gifford-Gonzalez (1991), “bones are not enough”!

Being able to identify animal bones is a vital skill, but it’s not just the end of zooarchaeology. Knowledge of behavioural studies, of regional geology, climate and environmental studies…these can all be utilised and factored into an interpretation, allowing for an interdisciplinary and more dimensional narrative for the assemblage at hand.

Now, if only I can hire a Witcher to take a look at my current faunal assemblage…

References

CD Projekt (2015) The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt.

Gifford-Gonzalez, D. (1991) Bones are Not Enough: Analogues, Knowledge, and Interpretive Strategies in Zooarchaeology. Anthropological Archaeology 10. pp. 215-254.

Lyman, R.L. (1994) Vertebrate Taphonomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

If you’re financially stable enough, why not donate to help out marginalised archaeologists in need via the Black Trowel Collective Microgrants? You can subscribe to their Patreon to become a monthly donor, or do a one-time donation via PayPal.

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Archaeology, Uncategorized

Guardians, Gods, or Geodudes? Pokemon and Battling Animals in Antiquities

by Dr Alex Fitzpatrick

 

A Pokemon battle in Pokemon Moon (2016)In the Pokemon franchise, Pokemon (or “pocket monsters”, as it directly translates to English) are catchable creatures that can be trained for battle between Pokemon trainers. Pokemon battles have developed an extensive amount of lore through the video games and associated anime series, particularly through myths and legends that the Player can learn about on their journey. The Veilstone’s Myth from the Sinnoh Region, for example, uses the myth of a human killing a Pokemon with a sword and causing a Pokemon to temporarily disappear to provide one explanation for why Pokemon battles exist.

In the Alolan region, Pokemon battles have been incorporated into rites of passage. One type of battle practiced during this rite, known as the Battle Royale, is fought between four Pokemon trainers and is said to be based off of the war between the Guardian Deities of the region.

A character from Pokemon Moon (2016) saying, “Hoo-ee! Another great battle this year!”

We can draw some parallels between these battles and some actual, similar concepts found within the archaeological record – particularly those that take place in the Alola region, which have an especially significant place within the cultural rites of the region. Generally speaking, we have a plethora of evidence for ritual events that utilise non-human species in one form or another. However, with Pokemon battles in mind, let’s focus on forms of more ritualised, or culturally significant, combat.

Elephants in an Ancient Roman amphitheater
Elephants being fought by humans in a Roman amphitheatre (Image: Stefano Bianchetti)

Animal fighting is more or less frowned upon today, but we can find much archaeological (and textual) evidence of the cultural and ritual importance of animal combat in antiquity. Evidence for dog fighting can be seen amongst Etruscan tomb art and Greek vases (Kalof and Taylor, 2007). Cock-fighting, perhaps the most known form of animal combat, has a long history, with depictions found in Greece on Corinthian and Attic vases and amphorae (Lewis and Llewelynn-Jones, 2018). Although both dog and cock fighting were most likely used as entertainment amongst the ancient Greeks, the latter also had a significant ritual dimension as well; cock-fights were annual affairs in Athens, with cocks being associated with both Ares and Athena for their fighting prowess (Shelton, 2014).

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Terracotta figure of children watching a cockfight, from the Archaeological Museum in Naples (Image: Mary Harrsch)

There are also instances of inter-species fighting, specifically between humans and other animals. The ancient Romans, of course, are commonly associated with the grand spectacle of gladiatorial fights in popular media – and there’s historical evidence to support the existence of these gory shows, too. Animals – particularly exotic animals caught and shipped to Rome – were used in “venationes“, or hunts in which they were pitted against humans for entertainment, and also as a common tool of execution, known as damnatio ad bestias…again, for entertainment (Wazer, 2016). These animals were also pitted against other animals in arenas in a way that could be argued as ritually staged, as it demonstrated and affirmed the Roman domination over nature itself (Gilhus, 2013).

Museum_of_Sousse_-_Mosaics_2_detail
A man executed by leopard, as depicted in Roman mosaics from the Archaeological Museum of Tunesia (Image: Rached Msadek, 2007)

Another particular form of this inter-species fighting that was culturally significant throughout antiquity is that of the mythological. Artwork, such as Greek vase art, often depicted the heroic battles of legends like Heracles against creatures both mythological and non-mythological. In these depictions, the concepts of humanness, beastliness, and perhaps something in-between are on full display (no pun intended)…sometimes even more literally, with hybrid creatures made from both human and animal, like the Minotaur, put in combat with others (Beier 2017).

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A Tyrrhenian amphora that may depict the mythological Calydonian boar hunt, displayed at the Altes Museum (Image: Bibi Saint-Pol, 2008)

Despite the battle-based gameplay of the Pokemon series, creator Satoshi Tajiri has also said that a core concept of the games was communication and community – players were encouraged to not just compete against friend, but also trade Pokemon with each other as well (Yokada, 1999). And perhaps that’s truly the connecting tissue between Pokemon and the animal battles of ancient times…at the end of the day, it was the community that was the core of these rituals and stories, bringing people together with shared mythologies, cosmologies, and activities.

Although, I don’t know if folks in antiquity were desperately looking for friends to trade Pokemon so you could evolve your Haunter into Gengar…?

gigantamax-gengar.png_618x0_
Gigantamax version of Gengar from Pokemon Sword and Shield (2019)…I love you, Gengar! (Image: Prima Games, 2019)

References

Beier, C. (2017) Fighting Animals: An Analysis of the Intersections between Human Self and Animal Otherness on Attic Vases. In Interactions between Animals and Humans in Graeco-Roman Antiquity (eds. T. Fögen and E. Thomas). De Gruyter: Berlin. pp. 275-304.

GameFreak (2007) Pokemon Diamond/Pearl. Nintendo.

GameFreak (2016) Pokemon Sun/Moon. Nintendo.

Gilhous, I.S. (2013) From Sacrifices to Symbols: Animals in Late Antiquity to Early Christianity. In Animals as Religious Subjects: Transdisciplinary Perspectives (eds. C. Deane-Drummond, D.L. Clough, and R.A. Kaiser). Bloomsbury: New York. pp. 149-166.

Kalof, L. and Taylor, C. (2007) The Discourse of Dog Fighting. Humanity and Society 31(4). pp. 319-333.

Lewis, S. and Llewellynn-Jones, L. (2018) The Culture of Animals in Antiquity: A Sourcebook with Commentaries. New York: Routledge.

Shelton, J. (2014) Spectacles of Animal Abuse. In The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life (ed. G.L. Campbell). Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 461-477.

Wazer, C. (2016) The Exotic Animal Traffickers of Ancient Rome. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/03/exotic-animals-ancient-rome/475704/

Yokada, T. (1999) The Ultimate Game Freak. TIME Magazine. Retrieved from http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2040095,00.html

If you’re financially stable enough, why not donate to help out marginalised archaeologists in need via the Black Trowel Collective Microgrants? You can subscribe to their Patreon to become a monthly donor, or do a one-time donation via PayPal.

My work and independent research is supported almost entirely by the generosity of readers – if you’re interested in contributing a tiny bit, you can donate here.

Archaeology, Fun, Radical Archaeology

“Hypnospace Outlaw” and the Archaeological Internet Site

by Dr Alex Fitzpatrick

Note: This blog post will have slight spoilers for the recent video game Hypnospace Outlaw, which I highly suggest you play if you haven’t already done so!

Last month, I played through Hypnospace Outlaw, a new video game in which the Player is basically the new moderator (called an “Enforcer”) of an early form of the Internet during the late 1990’s, known as “Hypnospace”. This was a community of early Internet users who utilised a technology known as the “Hypnoband” to traverse various pages and “hubs” on the Internet during their sleep. As an Enforcer, the Player scrolls through listed and unlisted (or hidden!) community pages, learning via contextual clues more about the individual members of the communities and their relations as played on via the Internet.

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Just an example of the sort of 90’s, early Internet vibe that “Hypnospace Outlaw” delivers (Image Credit: Cecilia D’Anastasio, Kotaku)

In the last third of the game, the story jumps to the current year and the Player finds themselves part of a group of ex-users of the now-defunct Hypnospace who are attempting to archive it for posterity. And of course, this immediately sparks my interest as an archaeologist!

The concept of an “Internet archaeology” isn’t necessarily new, of course – one of the earliest considerations of such a framework was as early as 1997, when Quentin Jones wrote about the idea of “cyber-archaeology“. This theoretical framework viewed Internet communities as “virtual settlements”, where virtual interactions and activities are analysed as a sort of material record from which behaviours and relations can be interpreted from. With the rise in Internet archival systems, we’ve seen iterations of cyber-archaeology in practice – for example, there’s the Deleted City project which archives the now-defunct online community GeoCities after its closure in 2009 (Vijgen 2012). Today, a lot of what we would consider “Internet Archaeology” is part of the much wider field of “digital archaeology”; for an example related to GeoCities, Matt Law and Colleen Morgan (2014) have written about the sustainability of digital sites and how utilising previous archaeological websites that have since been long abandoned, we may be able to learn more about methods of archaeological outreach, ultimately applying the sorts of skills we learn and use in “traditional” archaeology towards the digital sphere. Similarly, Lorna Richardson has done much in digital/public archaeologies, particularly in studying the ways in which archaeology is both communicated and experienced in the Digital Age (Richardson 2013).

What I really like about Hypnospace Outlaw is how, whether or not it was intended, it really is a great example of an archaeology game. The mechanics of the game are basically those found in any detective game, but I’d argue that the method has much more in common with Jones’ concept of cyber-archaeology, particularly with the idea of an “Internet archaeological record” including textual interactions and conversations between users within the community.

I’d also argue the game creates tools that would actually be useful for an Internet-based excavation. The main tool used during the archival section of the game (see image below) is not unlike a Harris Matrix, which is used by archaeologists to show the sequencing of archaeological contexts from a single site. In fact, the tool allows for the Player to change between specific periods of time, allowing webpages to be seen not just as static objects but as constantly changing ones that are updating and changed by their users over time.

Although the HAP (Hypnospace Archival Project) tool is clearly created to allow for Players to see where they are missing content and allows them to 100% complete the game, I am really fascinated about this – and similar tools – as a means of actually participating in an “Internet excavation“, so to speak. The game also requires the Player to download certain programs to allow them access to hidden and secret pages, which again leads me to think – what kind of advances in coding and programming would be required for Internet archaeology? As we lose access to HTMLs and other sources of media and content, how do we attempt to navigate around that? When giant networks like Facebook and Twitter finally end, will we be able to archive all of that material? How will we maintain access to these digital/archaeological sites over time?

But, alas…I don’t know anything about coding or computers so don’t look at me!!

Screenshot_2019-06-30 Hypnospace Archival Project
The tool used for the Hypnospace Archival Project (Image Credit: Merchant3y3z, Hypnospace Outlaw Wiki)

You can download Hypnospace Outlaw for the PC via Steam or GOG, for the Nintendo Switch, or for the PS4. 

References

Jones, Q. (1997) Virtual-Communities, Virtual Settlements, & Cyber-Archaeology: A Theoretical Outline. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 3(1).

Law, M. and Morgan, C. (2014) The Archaeology of Digital Abandonment: Online Sustainability and Archaeological Sites. Present Pasts 6(1). pp. 1-9.

Richardson, L. (2013) A Digital Public Archaeology? Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 23(1). pp. 1-12.

Tholen, J. (2019) Hypnospace Outlaw. Manchester: No More Robots.

Vijgen, R. (2012) The Deleted City: A Digital Archaeology. Parsons Journal for Information Mapping.

If you’re financially stable enough, why not donate to help out marginalised archaeologists in need via the Black Trowel Collective Microgrants? You can subscribe to their Patreon to become a monthly donor, or do a one-time donation via PayPal.

My work and independent research is supported almost entirely by the generosity of readers – if you’re interested in contributing a tiny bit, you can donate here.

Archaeology, Studies in Skyrim

Vampires of Skyrim (and in Real Life Archaeology): Yesterday and Today

by Dr Alex Fitzpatrick1 Comment on Vampires of Skyrim (and in Real Life Archaeology): Yesterday and Today
Skyrim_20180709225100
When your Skyrim character becomes a vampire, their skin becomes deathly pale and their eyes turn an otherworldly orange.

In the Elder Scrolls video game series, there are many fantastical creatures and monsters inhabiting the world, both friendly and hostile to the player character. One of these monsters (or perhaps that’s a bit too judgemental?) is the vampire, whose curse (or blessing?) is passed to others through a disease called “sanguinare vampiris”, also known as “porphyric hemophilia” in earlier games. The player character can become infected with this disease and become a “creature of the night”, obtaining all the advantages and disadvantages of vampirism.

Vampire lore was elaborated on extensively in Skyrim, specifically through the downloadable content Dawnguard, which places the player character in the middle of a conflict between vampires and vampire hunters. In this DLC, it is explained that there are many individual clans of vampires across the world, with the most powerful vampires known as “pure-bloods”. A pure-blooded vampire will have been granted their powers from the Daedric Prince (basically one of the Elder Scrolls deities) Molag Bal directly. The DLC also introduced the “Vampire Lord” form – this is considered the ultimate form of vampirism and is usually a power that only pure-blooded vampires have.

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The Dawnguard DLC reveals that one can become a “Vampire Lord”, which completely transforms the body into a powerful creature of the night.

The idea of the “vampire” is a relatively old one, of course. In Europe, it seems that vampirism became a topic of interest during the 18th century, with the word “vampire” officially entered into the Oxford English Dictionary in 1734. Many early stories of vampires appear to have originated from German and Slavic folklore, although there are many instances of vampire-like creatures in stories around the world (Barber 1988).

Literature and film eventually created what we may consider today to be the “archetypal vampire” – Polidori’s The Vampyre, Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula provided the textual background for the modern day vampire, while F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu and Tod Browning’s Dracula ultimately solidified the visual characteristics associated with the monster that are still used to this day. However, we still occasionally get new “twists” on the old formula in popular culture – from “sexy, brooding vampires” (see Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles series or Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series) to more hilarious takes on vampire culture (see Jermaine Clement and Taika Watiti’s mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows).

vampire_brick
A digital recreation of how some “vampire burials” would place a stone or brick into the mouth of the dead (Image Credit: Matteo Borrini)

But what about vampires in archaeology? We already looked at lycanthropes in the archaeological record – can we find vampires as well?

Well…kinda.

When it comes to “deviant” burials, or burials that differ from normative burial practices, it’s easy to draw negative assumptions of the deceased, particularly when combined with “flights of fancy” of local folklore. Among these deviant burials, many have been interpreted as possible “anti-vampire burials”; this was a term first used in 1971 off-handedly by Helena Zol-Adamikowa and eventually popularised throughout Slavic archaeological literature to refer to most burials that defied funerary norms (Hodgson 2013).

Some of the various evidence used to support these “anti-vampire burials” include protective burial goods (like sickles), stones left atop of bodies, stakes or knives stabbed through the chest, decapitations, and, perhaps one of the more prolific examples, stones or bricks placed within the mouth of the deceased (Barrowclough 2014).

While there are undoubtedly examples of how pervasive the idea of vampires or, more generally, the undead were throughout folklore in “deviant” burials, there should also be a bit of caution in generalising all non-normative burials in this way, of course! There has been plenty of debate even regarding the evidence mentioned above. But perhaps the most solid thing to come out of all of this archaeological research is how such abstract concepts can ultimately be reflected in the material culture that remains.

Oh, and that apparently if you run into a vampire, you should definitely stuff a brick in their mouth.

References

Barber, P. (1988) Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality. Yale University Press.

Barrowclough, D. (2014) Time to Slay Vampire Burials? The Archaeological and Historical Evidence for Vampires

Bethesda Game Studios. (2011) The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Hodgson, J.E. (2013) ‘Deviant’ Burials in Archaeology. Anthropology Publications. 58. pp. 1-24.

If you’re financially stable enough, why not donate to help out marginalised archaeologists in need via the Black Trowel Collective Microgrants? You can subscribe to their Patreon to become a monthly donor, or do a one-time donation via PayPal.

My work and independent research is supported almost entirely by the generosity of readers – if you’re interested in contributing a tiny bit, you can donate here.