“Re-Rolling the Past” conference publication completed

In 2020, the ISAW Library hosted a virtual conference entitled “Re-Rolling the Past: Representations and Reinterpretations of Antiquity in Analog and Digital Games,” organized by Gabriel Mckee and Daniela Wolin. The conference brought together historians, archaeologists, scholars of gaming, and game designers for explorations and discussions about turning the past into something to play. Now, eight of the papers presented at this conference have been published as a special issue of the open-access online journal ISAW Papers.

A first batch of papers from the conference were published in 2022, including Hamish Cameron’s discussion of abstractions in representing playable versions of historical events; Shawn Graham, Tom Brughmans, and Iza Romanowska’s overview of their game FORVM and its origins in an agent-based model of the Roman economy; Anne Dunn-Vaturi’s exploration of the Egyptian game of Hounds and Jackals; and an introductory essay by conference organizers Daniela Wolin (Visiting Assistant Professor 2018-2020) and Gabriel Mckee (ISAW's Librarian for Collections and Services). 

These have now been expanded with four additional essays by members of the ISAW community: Sebastian Heath’s exploration of the use of game engines in explorations of Roman Pompeii; Daniela Wolin's inquiry into how tabletop games about the ancient world represent gender; David M. Ratzan’s rules for and discussion of Agoranomika, a classroom game about ancient weights and measures; and current doctoral student Mi Wang’s presentation of a virtual museum on the Bamiyan site, constructed using the PlayCanvas game engine. 

Together, these papers provide a detailed and lasting record of the lively interdisciplinary conversation that unfolded at the “Re-Rolling the Past” conference. We hope that these papers will continue to inspire and guide the development, play, and study of games about the ancient past for years to come.