Strange Games: Some Iron Age examples of a four-player board game? (BGS presentation, 2014) (original) (raw)
Related papers
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? [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.)
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.
Strange Games: some Iron Age examples of a four-player board game?
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 colored 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, an...
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.
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.
Roman gaming boards from Britain
Roman Finds Group Datasheet 13, 2021
ISSN 2634-4491 When we think about games in the Roman world, many of us may first conjure up vivid images of the arena; it is perhaps less likely that our immediate thoughts will be of board games. The study of Roman board games has until recently focussed on the reconstruction of gaming rules from textual references and surviving board de-signs. New work is now increasingly putting the social aspect of leisure time into greater fo-cus, through the collation and analysis of corpora of gaming paraphernalia, primarily boards, dice and counts. This datasheet arises from a research project undertaken by the authors which aimed to unite the evidence for all gaming boards in Roman Britain and to examine their distribution (for a preliminary report, see Courts and Penn 2019). It will provide a concise guide to the identifi-cation and significance of known board game types from Roman Britain. A full digital catalogue of over 100 boards, along with a detailed analysis, will be published elsewhere.