Strange Games: some Iron Age examples of a four-player board game? (original) (raw)
Related papers
Strange Games: Some Iron Age examples of a four-player board game? [2016]
From Cardboard to Keyboard: Proceedings of the XVII Annual Colloquium of the International Board Game Studies Association. UCS Ipswich 21-24 May 2014, 2016
A late Iron Age cremation grave, dated to the second half of the first century BC, excavated from a site in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, contains an apparently unique set of glass gaming pieces. The gaming pieces are visually striking because of their distinctive appearance: the twenty-four opaque or semi-translucent coloured glass domes (six white pieces, six yellow, six red and six green), each with adorned with decorative spiral motifs, seem to comprise a complete set of game pieces for what may be an unknown four-player game. They were found in a rich burial containing five Dressel 1B wine amphorae and an Italian silver cup, along with other grave goods. Some account of the pieces is given by Donald Harden in Stead’s archaeological report (Stead, 1967), along with a scientific analysis by Tony Werner and Mavis Bimson, based on spectrographic and X-ray examination. Harden describes the game pieces as being “of the greatest interest and rarity,” noting “not only is there is no comparable set extant; there is not even a single gaming piece of the same form and decoration which can be cited as a parallel, whether contemporary or not” (Stead, 1967 p. 15). Harden goes on to suggest “the places where we could most reasonably expect to find parallels to these pieces are eastern and southern Gaul, the Alpine region and the upper Rhineland, and the Po valley, and it is likely that in time parallels to them in or more of those areas will turn up” (Stead, 1967 p. 16). While Harden’s account of the glass pieces emphasises their unique significance for the double-spiral motif, and Werner and Bimson’s analysis suggests the yellow pieces show the earliest example of the use of lead and tin as an opacifying agent, the pieces are also thought to represent a unique example of a game for four players, described by Stead as “similar to a game played in India on a board with cruciform marking. This game was [...] patented with the name ‘ludo”’ (Stead 1967, p. 19). Footnotes in Stead suggest that other examples of what could also be glass gaming pieces for a four player game – or at least incomplete sets of glass gaming pieces that can be organised into four groups by design or colour – have also been found in a number of Italian locations, including sites in the Po Valley. This paper will seek to present several examples of Iron Age Italian gaming pieces, and to offer some comparison to the Welwyn Garden City pieces in order to draw attention to what may be examples of a hitherto overlooked four-player game. (A version of this paper, without the note on game boards, appears in the Board Game Studies Journal 9 (2015) pp. 17-40.)
Board Game Studies Journal, 2015
A late Iron Age cremation grave, dated to the second half of the first century BC, excavated from a site in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, contains an apparently unique set of glass gaming pieces. The gaming pieces are visually striking because of their distinctive appearance: the twenty-four opaque or semi-translucent coloured glass domes (six white pieces, six yellow, six red and six green), each with adorned with decorative spiral motifs, seem to comprise a complete set of game pieces for what may be an unknown four-player game. They were found in a rich burial containing five Dressel 1B wine amphorae and an Italian silver cup, along with other grave goods. Some account of the pieces is given by Donald Harden in Stead's archaeological report (Stead, 1967), along with a scientific analysis by Tony Werner and Mavis Bimson, based on spectrographic and X-ray examination. While Harden's account of the glass pieces emphasizes their unique significance for the double-spiral motif, and Werner and Bimson's analysis suggests the yellow pieces show the earliest example of the use of lead and tin as an opacifying agent, the pieces are also thought to represent a unique example of a game for four players, described by Stead as "similar to a game played in India on a board with cruciform marking. This game was [...] patented with the name 'ludo'" (Stead, 1967, p. 19). Footnotes in Stead suggest that other examples of what could also be glass gaming pieces for a four player game---or at least incomplete sets of glass gaming pieces that can be organized into four groups by design or colour---have also been found in a number of Italian locations, including sites in the Po Valley. This paper presents several examples of Iron Age Italian gaming pieces, and offers some comparison to the Welwyn Garden City pieces in order to draw attention to what may be examples of a hitherto overlooked four-player game.
Strange Games: Some Iron Age examples of a four-player board game? [revised draft, 2014]
A late Iron Age cremation grave, dated to the second half of the first century BC, excavated from a site in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, contains an apparently unique set of glass gaming pieces. The gaming pieces are visually striking because of their distinctive appearance: the twenty-four opaque or semi-translucent coloured glass domes (six white pieces, six yellow, six red and six green), each with adorned with decorative spiral motifs, seem to comprise a complete set of game pieces for what may be an unknown four-player game. They were found in a rich burial containing five Dressel 1B wine amphorae and an Italian silver cup, along with other grave goods. Some account of the pieces is given by Donald Harden in Stead’s archaeological report (Stead, 1967), along with a scientific analysis by Tony Werner and Mavis Bimson, based on spectrographic and X-ray examination. While Harden’s account of the glass pieces emphasises their unique significance for the double-spiral motif, and Werner and Bimson’s analysis suggests the yellow pieces show the earliest example of the use of lead and tin as an opacifying agent, the pieces are also thought to represent a unique example of a game for four players, described by Stead as “similar to a game played in India on a board with cruciform marking. This game was […] patented with the name ‘ludo’” (Stead 1967, p. 19). Footnotes in Stead suggest that other examples of what could also be glass gaming pieces for a four player game – or at least incomplete sets of glass gaming pieces that can be organised into four groups by design or colour – have also been found in a number of Italian locations, including sites in the Po Valley. This paper presents several examples of Iron Age Italian gaming pieces from the Po Valley, and offers some comparison to the Welwyn Garden City pieces in order to draw attention to what may be examples of a hitherto overlooked four-player game.
Archaic Greek Terracotta Gaming Tables Revisited
Pallas, 2022
The subject of this contribution is five terracotta gaming tables from the archaic period, which are grouped for discussion for the first time. The reason being that in addition to the three previously known gaming tables of this type – one in the National Museum in Copenhagen from the Athenian art market, along with an example from the necropolis of Anagyrous (Vari) to be found in the National Museum in Athens and the third from the Kerameikos necropolis in the Kerameikos Museum – it is only recently that attention has been drawn to two more similar gaming tables. One in the Brauron Museum comes from the necropolis of ancient Myrrhinous, modern Markopoulo, Merenda, and was initially briefly described in the publication of the excavations. The fifth table was recently acquired by the Swiss Museum of Games (La Tour-de-Peilz) from the art market.
Board Games and Funerary Symbolism in Greek and Roman Contexts
In Greece in the Archaic period miniature clay models of game-boards found in Attic tombs indicate that board games were symbolically associated in some way with death. 2 The earliest example, dating to the middle of the seventh century (protoattique moyen), comes from the offering trench of a cremation burial at Vari. The game-board has the form of a squareish table. The fields are marked out with painted lines and the sides were decorated with floral and abstract patterns Another example, dating to the early sixth century, was found in Opferplatz Y/Anlage LXXV of the Kerameikos. It was decorated with lions on the sides.
The doctor’s game – new light on the history of ancient board games
Philip Crummy et.al., Stanway: An Elite burial site at Camulodunum, Britannia Monograph Series No. 24, London 2007, 359-375, 2007
Dr Schädler also makes the point that, as far as can be gauged, rectangular boards like the one in the Doctor's burial, with its width to length ratio of about 2:3 or more, were not latticed. However, all three boards which he cites from Britain as having measurable dimensions (i.e. the Doctor's burial at Stanway, Grave 117 at King Harry Lane (Stead and Rigby 1989, 109) and Burial 6 at Baldock (Stead and Rigby 1986, 68-9)) are likely to have been broadly of the same type and may even be from the same workshop, thereby opening up the possibility that they represent a type of board and game not recognised before. Although these boards were not identical (they did not all have metal corner pieces and handles), various features bind them together as a group, i.e. a) all three were hinged, b) at least two (Stanway and Baldock) were made of maple, the wood of the third being unidentified, c) Baldock and Stanway were very similar in size and shape, and King Harry Lane could have been the same (same length as the other two but of indeterminate width), and d) leather traces were found on the boards at Stanway and King Harry Lane. All three were found in the territory of the Catuvellauni (and we include Camulodunum in this), although this relatively tight distribution might simply be the result of chance. Thus the three boards, plus those in the Warrior's burial and in Chamber BF6 (pp. 126, 186-90) and the possible board in Grave 309 at King Harry Lane (Stead and Rigby 1989, 109-10, figs 108, 152), could have been part of a distinctive British body of artefacts linked to a specific game popular among a group of Britons in the south-east of the country with strong connections with the nearby Romanised Continent. The case for fidhcheall needs to be balanced against the fact that Roman counters and boards in the possession of Romanised Britons provides strong evidence in favour of the playing of a Roman game of some sort.
Applied Sciences, 2022
An interesting assemblage of ancient ceramic materials connected or potentially connected with gaming activities has been characterized from the archaeometric point of view. The materials (washer-like pieces, small spheres, and cubic dice, with and without inscriptions) were found in the Villa del Foro excavation (Alessandria, Italy). They are related to the early Ligurian population of the site and their frequent contacts with Etruscan both in Etruria and in the Po Valley, in a period spanning the early VI century BC till the first half of the V century BC. Starting from the materials evidence, hypotheses are proposed concerning their possible use and cultural meaning. The studied cubic dice are discussed in the wider context of the pre-Roman diffusion of these objects.