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Virtual Excavation in Second Life Has Found a New Home

February 27, 2009 10:53 am / Leave a Comment

My thanks to Colleen Morgan, who has found a lovely corner of Anteater Island, an island in SL associated with the AAA/American Anthropologist and UC Irvine, for me to re-establish my virtual excavation.

I hope to have it up and running within the next month, at which point I’ll give the exact  slurl and invite feedback and criticism.

Thank you very much Colleen!

R.F.Newbold, “Some social and economic consequences of the AD 64 fire at Rome”,. Latomus 33 (1974), 858-69

February 27, 2009 9:59 am / Leave a Comment

It’s freezing rain today, and the library is over an hour to the east, over hill and under dale. If somebody had a copy of

R.F.Newbold, “Some social and economic consequences of the AD 64 fire at Rome”,. Latomus 33 (1974), 858-69

they could lend me, I’d be most appreciative…

TweetMapping Archaeology

February 27, 2009 9:55 am / 2 Comments

At OUseful, Tony Hirst shows how one can take a search feed from Twitter, and run it through Yahoo Pipes, to produce a map showing who is tweeting about a particular subject & where.

This might be useful, indeed. So I cloned the pipe, and banged in ‘archaeology’ OR ‘archeology’, and made a copy of it available here.

I should have included ‘archaeology’ in other languages, but that’s easy enough to do in the search box.

tweetmap

Archaeology: Let’s Build Something New

February 26, 2009 9:33 pm / 3 Comments

Colleen throws down the gauntlet:

We must interfere in the public’s understanding in the past. Change it. Surprise, enlighten, destroy when necessary and rebuild a better, stronger, more curious and more passionate interest in what we do. This is my charge to myself and to other archaeologists and to anyone who wants to join us.

What are you doing to Participate?

Good question. What am I doing? At the very least, I hope that what I write in this blog rises to that challenge. Rob MacDougall, in his tribute to Digital History Hacks, writes

…one meta-idea which Bill [read his work now! - SG] taught me is that the loftiest questions about what we do are not separate from the nuts and bolts of how we do it. As above, so below: lofty philosophical issues are practical technical questions and vice versa. Change the tools available to the humanities and you have the opportunity to rethink what the humanities are.

That’s what I aspire to do. I try to find the leading edge of what’s happening in new media, tech, games, society at large, and I try to wonder, intelligently, about how these things intersect with archaeology. Sometimes, it’s archaeology at the edge, sometimes not. Bill is passionate about getting historians to do their own coding. Archaeologists should do the same. Moreover, Bill’s pushing the historians and the humanities people more generally to get into making the digital devices themselves:

In my new research program, I’m exploring ways to build historical interpretations into physical devices and environments. This work is backward looking, in the sense that it engages with the histories of measurement, materials science and machine tools. It is also very present-minded, since I am approaching the project as a form of critical technical practice, building on new developments in ubiquitous / pervasive computing and desktop fabrication. To support this work, I have put together a modest Lab for Humanistic Fabrication with an associated Fabrication Wiki.

Read the wiki. Let’s build something!

At the very least, why not let’s try an open-source approach and make the most excellent Iphone Archaeology App ever? (Link thanks to Colleen)

Archaeology, Art, and Abandoned Urban Places

February 24, 2009 9:49 am / 1 Comment

I lived in Rome for a time, as a research assistant at the British School. One of the perks of the job was getting invited along to urban sites recently discovered, or newly re-opened (especially the levels beneath the churches!). In that vein, courtesy of Pmog, I’ve come across the following sites that are worth a visit:

http://www.arssubterranea.org/

We like to play inside ruins.

Ars Subterranea is comprised of artists, historians, and urban explorers working to create an intersection between art and architectural relics in the New York City area.

Our aim is to instigate unique perceptions of New York’s history by constructing narratives around the city’s forgotten relics. Ars Subterranea encourages its audiences to interact with the city’s neglected and ruinous locations by recreating obscure but fascinating aspects of its urban development. Our projects include art installations, history-based scavenger hunts, unusual preservation campaigns, and much more.

We invite you to find out more about our past and future projects and to contact us if you would like to know more.

I like what those folks are doing: archaeology as performance!

And from the other side of the pond,

http://www.subbrit.org.uk

Formed in 1974, Subterranea Britannica is a society devoted the the study and investigation of man-made and man-used underground places. Cold War related material is covered separately here: COLD WAR -Bunkers etc. Subterranea Britannica brings together people with an interest in all types of underground space – from deneholes to dug-outs and from souterrains to subways – see the sites pages. Indeed, as the list shows, there are at least seventy categories of underground excavations that are of particular interest to our members

Before there were graphics, there was text: and fake dead people too

February 21, 2009 11:25 am / 1 Comment

I’m still mulling Colleen’s post, Fake Dead People, where she writes about using non-player characters in games as mere ‘mouthpieces’ for architecture:

Turning people of the past into mere mouthpieces for their architecture diminishes the rich potential of reconstructions to impart information about complex lifeways. Using programmable objects such as the previously mentioned mano and metate allows avatars to act as their own guides to the past, populating the re-created ancient landscape with avatars of people interested in the past, interacting with artifacts and taking on roles suggested by these artifacts. This is simple for archaeologists who are accustomed to telling stories through objects and adds another level of interactivity to the virtual reconstruction.

She goes on to say,

[...]fundamentally we are better off wearing Caesar’s crown for ourselves rather than asking a poor simulacrum about the weather in the Republic.  Thinking of Caesar as a non-player character in history is a stretch by any means.  But game developers (and digital archaeologists) will probably not stop populating virtual worlds with fake people.  These NPCs are nonhuman manifestations of a network of agents (polygons, “modern” humans, fiber-optics, and the dead person herself) and the relationships between these agents and as a result should be studied as such.  But does this understanding of an NPC as a network make it ethical to take such liberties with the visages of the dead?

I like the phrase ‘network of agents’, but I wonder about the classification of what agents are. My agent models, though populated with simple & stupid autonomous creatures, are still autonomous… (although I like the idea of looking at the network of connections; that’s a major theme in my research) but that’s a side thought. What really prompted this post is this article from the Brass Lantern by Stephen Granade

One way to categorize non-player characters is by whether or not they act separately from the player. Many NPCs are reactive, living only to respond to player actions (assuming they respond at all). They are there to make the setting more real, provide information, or impede the player’s progress. They’re the cafe patron who doesn’t look up from her paper, or the mysterious man in the tweed jacket who talks of destiny and evil forces arrayed against you, or the guard who won’t let you into the building until you show her the proper keycard.

Autonomous NPCs are both harder to get right and more rewarding when done well. They don’t necessarily wait for the player to do something or stay in one place. They wander around and do their own thing, perhaps making unwanted comments or picking up things you really need.

Autonomous NPCs can be further subdivided based on how they’re implemented. Some NPCs are scripted: The NPC does exactly what the author codes. Others are freeform: They have a collection of rules that define their behavior, and the author winds them up and lets them go.

So I guess where I’m going with this thought: archaeological NPCs, whether appearing in text or in graphics, need to be of the autonomous kind, the kind that move with the emergent behaviour found in agent-based models. Then we’d have some real virtual reality in archaeology!

That’s a tall order. My first stab wasn’t all that successful, but it’s something to aim for.

Excavating Second Life

February 19, 2009 8:23 am / 4 Comments

When I was a grad student, I remember coming to the common room to find a friend of mine, tearing out his hair. Apparently, someone in his native Norway had just published a substantial article on the exact subject of his MA thesis, meaning he had to change his direction.

I was reminded of him when I opened my in-box this morning to discover that somebody has beaten me to the punch re the archaeology of second life. This is, actually, a good thing. For one, it shows that I’m not out to lunch with this project, and two, that archaeological journals (or at least, the Journal of Material Culture) will publish such work.

So congratulations to Rodney Harrison of the Open University, for his paper:

Excavating Second Life

Cyber-Archaeologies, Heritage and Virtual Communities

Rodney Harrison The Open University, UK, r.harrison@open.ac.uk

While the anthropology of online communities has emerged as a significant area of research, there has been little discussion of the possibilities of the archaeology of virtual settlements, defined here as interactive synthetic environments in which users are sensually immersed and which respond to user input. Bartle (in Designing Virtual Worlds, 2003: 1) has described such virtual settlements as `places where the imaginary meets the real’. In this sense, an examination of the role of heritage in virtual settlements has the potential to shed light on the role of heritage in both `real’ and `imagined’ communities more generally. This article develops the concept of `cyberarchaeology’ (originally devised by Jones in his 1997 article, `Virtual Communities’) to study the virtual material culture of the settlement Second Life, and in particular, its explicit programme of heritage conservation. A survey of heritage places in Second Life suggests that the functions of heritage in virtual settlements may be far more limited than in the actual world, functioning primarily as a structure of governance and control through the establishment of the rationale for (virtual) land ownership and the production of a sense of community through memorials which produce a sense of `rootedness’ and materialize social memory. Such functions of heritage are consistent with recent discussion of the role of heritage in western societies. Nonetheless, this study of heritage and cyber-archaeology provides insights into the ways in which the notions of heritage are transforming in the early 21st century in connection with the proliferation of virtual environments, and the challenge this provides to contemporary society.

Key Words: community • cyber-archaeology • heritage • Second Life • virtual settlements

I look forward to reading this!

Re-writing History: Battle of the Plains of Abraham part deux

February 17, 2009 11:17 am / 2 Comments

The Battle of the Plains of Abraham conventionally marks the beginning of British North America (ie, the parts that became Canada after the Americans had their Revolution). To mark the anniversary of the battle, a group of American re-enactors was going to stage a replay of the battle. Later battles where the French won were also going to be staged. (Ultimately, France decided that Guadeloupe was more important, and traded it for what became Quebec. Britain, in a decision rare for the age, allowed the existing power structures, the elites and the church, to remain in place. Thus set the preservation of the Francophone community in North America).

A jolly day outing, a bit of tourism, commermoration of the battle that marked French Canada’s preservation as a ‘distinct society’ (for comparison, note what happened to Louisiana).

Alas, the Sepratists got their knickers in a twist, and no-one is allowed to mark the occasion:

(from the National Post)

A ragtag army of Quebec separatists, armed only with Internet petitions and menacing e-mails, have triumphed where the French army failed 250 years ago, preventing another British victory on the Plains of Abraham.

Following weeks of mounting controversy that last week reached Parliament, the National Battlefields Commission cancelled its plans to commemorate the anniversary of the historic 1759 battle.

Even before the announcement, opponents of the centrepiece event, a July re-enactment of the battle between the forces of Wolfe and Montcalm, were claiming victory after the commission president distanced himself from the idea of restaging the battle. In weekend interviews, Andre Juneau said the commission had to “take into consideration certain threats” as it scaled back its plans.

Radical separatist groups threatened to disrupt the re-enactment, with some individuals saying they would come armed with paintball guns.

The volunteer re-enactors, the majority of whom are American, cannot believe that four years of planning for the anniversary have come to this.

“They’re kind of surprised and stunned by everything that’s happening,” said Horst Dresler, a Vermont resident who was marshalling the 2,100 volunteers that were expected on the Plains. He said this is the first time he has encountered opposition in 25 years of staging battle re-enactments. “It’s kind of mind-boggling. I just can’t believe that this handful of people are patting themselves on the back, feeling very proud of themselves. They have no idea what they’re doing for the province.”

He said the thousands of re-enactors and the tourists drawn for the spectacle would have pumped millions into the Quebec City economy.

Separatist opponents of the re-enactment are vowing not to stop at having the cannons silenced. Le Devoir reported yesterday that some militants are demanding that control over the Plains of Abraham be transferred to the province. Patrick Bourgeois, who has led the charge against the re-enactment, wrote on his Web site on the weekend that the next step should be to push for the removal of “all monuments dedicated to the memory of Wolfe” in Quebec City. James Wolfe, the British general, died in battle on the Plains.

Pauline Marois, leader of the opposition Parti Quebecois, joined the call for the re-enactment to be scrapped. Yesterday she called the event “a manipulation of public opinion” designed to increase the federal government’s visibility in Quebec. Any event marking the anniversary must be sombre, she added: “It is the Conquest, the beginning of the end of New France in America. There were thousands of deaths, farms were burned. We have a duty to remember these events, but it is not a celebration.”

Mr. Dresler said it was only sovereigntist opponents who described the re-enactment as a celebration. “We do this as a hobby to teach people and to learn from people. That’s all this is, no other agenda,” he said. For that, he received e-mails from Quebec saying things such as, “We will take care of you when you get here,” and, “We will give you a party you will never forget.”

Louis Valiquette, a re-enactor from Montreal, said yesterday he is resigned to seeing the battle cancelled. “I would have a hard time bringing my children to a place where there could be an outburst, whether verbal or physical, or vandalism. It’s not suitable for us,” he said.

He said the battlefields commission deserves some of the blame for not doing a good job explaining the nature of the commemoration, leaving the impression that it was a festive event. “There is a lot of frustration right now in the re-enactment community, because people have booked vacations, they made commitments, they have started spending money,” he said.

Mr. Juneau had been summoned to testify on the re-enactment plans before the House of Commons heritage committee next week.

As a proud Quebecer, I really am embarrassed by these twits. Everything is an insult, everything a ‘slap in the face’, to the separatist. Makes teaching, studying, and celebrating history all the more difficult: and important!  Instead of discussing the battle, and using the re-enactment as a point of departure, the separatists choose instead to re-write history, and consign us to the memory hole.

Lovely.

Stone Age Online Game: Greenland

February 14, 2009 11:33 am / Leave a Comment

From Terra Nova:

A main goal of the synthetic worlds initiative at Indiana University is to develop large games as research environments. To test some ideas, we have prepared a browser-based game of kingdoms, trade, diplomacy, and warfare in the stone age. The world is called Greenland and it enters open beta today. We invite those interested in such things to help us by testing the environment and contributing reactions and criticism to the forums.

To enter Greenland, go to http://greenlandgame.com/ and choose the Mercator server (the other two servers are closed for internal testing).You will need a code to register for the server; it is GLOPENACCESS.

If you have questions or problems, please contact our community manager Matt Falk at mfalk@umail.iu.edu.

They say ‘stone age’, but I doubt they mean an archaeologically-informed rendering of the Neolithic in code. But I could be wrong:

Greenland is a game of late neolithic society. Tribes of hunter-gatherers have begun to settle into farming communities. Players are leaders of these tribes, claiming spaces on a browser-based hexagonal map that contains rivers, woods, mountains, and grassland. They can assign the populations of these spaces as a labor force to extract resources from the various types of terrain. With good management, players can grow their populations and lay claim to more hexes. In so doing, players will come into conflict with other players over space and resources.

Contact: Edward Castronova (castro@indiana.edu)

From their website, it appears a bit more Civilization-ish:

The goal of Greenland is to gain the highest rank possible and expand your kingdom, accumulating territory, resources, and the respect (or fear!) of the other budding nations you’ll come into contact with. Greenland is a turn-based game, and you can input one turn per day. You can place commands and update or change your commands until 3am (US Eastern) server time, but the turn locks and all players’ orders are finalized at 3am (US Eastern).

How to survive your first turns:

1) You cannot expand your clan unless you are an active leader. Thus, MAKE SURE YOU SUBMIT ACTIONS EVERY DAY. Moreover, make sure you do this BEFORE 3am (US Eastern).

2) In particular, Folk DIE if they are not fed. And when the population of a given hex dwindles below 100 Folk, the hex is lost. Every turn, there will be two actions automatically added to all of your hexes. These actions will automatically allocate some of your current resources towards the creation of Bread in order to sustain your current population level. If you decide that you want to grow your Folk rather than merely sustain your current population level, you can submit additional Bread and Folk Build commands. In this manner your Folk will not die if you forget to feed them, and you can grow your population if you desire! As your population grows or dwindles, adjust the number of Folk allocated to Bread production accordingly to keep your population stable.

3) To produce Bread, click or hover over the CLAN menu (at the top of the page, just above the game area). Select BAKE, from the drop-down menu. On the right hand side of the screen, adjust the amount of folk you wish to allocate to baking bread. When you’re sure of your decision, click on the SUBMIT button to perform the action. It will then be added to your Actions Log at the bottom of the screen.

4) In addition to Folk, Tools and Water can also each be applied towards Bread production in order to increase the amount produced. You start off with 500 Tools, so why not allocate them to Bread production for now? To do this, follow the instructions above mentioned for producing Bread, and then also allocate Tools before clicking the SUBMIT button. And remember, unlike most other resources, Tools are not lost when used, so you can re-allocate them again on the next turn.

IMPORTANT!!! Once you have created Bread, you must actually feed it to your Folk! Remember that the automatic actions will feed enough of it to your population to sustain it, but you want to grow more folk, you must do it manually. To do this, once again open the CLAN menu. From the menu, select FEED and then allocate the desired amount of Bread to keep your population alive. After you input the desired amount of Bread, look below the submit button. There you will see a report of your population change based on the number of Bread you have entered.

5) Once you get a feel for the share of Folk you must allocate for maintaining your population, start experimenting with the Folk that are left over. Extract resources, Build more Folk or Tools. Your population will be easier to maintain and expand if they have Houses to rest in at night. Once you get a big enough population, you may even try to take the first step in empire-building: Settling into an adjacent hex. All of these actions are available through the drop-down menus at the top of the game screen.

There, now you’ll be ruling like a pro! May your folk be prosperous and your empire strong! And remember, if you have any concerns not addressed here, feel free to visit the Greenland Forums (http://forum.swiprojects.com) to post your questions.

Your First turns: You will start with 500 Folk, 500 Houses, and 500 Tools. Click on any hex that you currently occupy or any hex adjacent to an occupied hex and select available actions from the drop-down menu. TIP: Folk with Houses require less Bread, as Houses are built your population will grow and you will be able to allocate your Folk to harvesting resources surrounding your hex or to building Houses.

Settling: When settling you should send at least 300 Folk in order to colonize a new hex. Be careful, if your hex falls below 100 Folk, it will be abandoned. There is also a 1000 Folk limit, as well as a limit of 1000 of each resource per hex; overflow will be discarded.TIP: It is important to bring bread and, if possible, materials with you when you settle a new hex. Settling a new hex is dangerous and difficult, so you do not want to waste time and Folk harvesting what you already have in surplus.

Resources: Different terrain hexes yield different resources. To extract a resource, click on the resource hex and select “Harvest Resources” from the Production drop-down menu. While not always necessary, Resources increase productivity when creating Refined Resources or extracting other Resources. Water is used in making Bread. Wood is used for nearly everything (including Houses, Tools, Paths, and combat forces). Stone is used for making Paths, Ditches and Tools. Ore is used for making weapons and can also make Tools.

TIP: The only required resource when extracting and creating in your first few turns are Folk. The other optional resources increase the amount yielded from the extraction or allow you to create more efficiently. For a complete list of required and optional ingredients please consult the “Resources” section of the game manual.

Player-to-Player Interaction: It is up to you how you choose to interact with the other prospective nations being forged in Greenland. Resources are finite: forests die, mines dry up. Resources replenish if managed properly, but you will need to cooperate or compete against nearby players in order to share resources, if you want to avoid a skirmish that is… When violent conflicts arise, it is important to have an army built up to guard your kingdom or to invade those of other players.

Not all players will prefer the bloody route of war, however. The market will allow you to buy and sell resources to other players, an important way to acquire goods and resources that you may not have access to in your territory. Without proper pathways connecting your kingdom and the seller’s kingdom the carting cost will increase. Such a cost increases the price to buy the desired goods, while also decreasing the amount that will safely get to your hex. A healthy balance between trade and martial strength will ensure the brightest future for your burgeoning kingdom!

My lord, please consult the Game Manual for further information about all the advanced aspects of Greenland!

So, archaeologists: run, don’t walk, to Greenland and sign up now!

Greek and Roman Games in the Computer Age

February 13, 2009 10:59 am / 1 Comment

If you’re going to be anywhere near Trondheim in the next while, you might want to take in ‘Greek and Roman Games in the Computer Age‘. If you go, steal all the handouts & powerpoints you can, and send them to me…

I’ve had the pleasure of correspondence with some of the presenters, so I know it’ll be a stimulating programme; I note that Caesar IV is under discussion too – I play way too much of that game… I have mused elsewhere on its possibilities as a counterfactual approach to Roman economics. Ah to be in Trondheim in February…

Programme:

FRIDAY 20th – SATURDAY 21st of February at Campus Dragvoll, Trondheim, Norway

Friday:

Auditorium DL33 (’Låven’)

10-10.20 Welcome address and introduction by Dean Kathrine Skretting and Staffan Wahlgren

Session 1: Chair: Marek Kretschmer

10.20-11.00 Martin Dinter, (King’s College London, Classics): ‘Ludological Approaches to Virtual Gaming’

11.00-11.40 Frank Furtwängler, (Universität Konstanz, Media): ‘”God of War” and the Mythology of New Media’

11.40-12.00 Coffee break

12.00-12.40 Stephen Kidd, (New York University, Classics): ‘Herodotus and the New Historiography of Virtual Gaming’

12.40-13.20 Dunstan Lowe, (Reading University, Classics): ‘Always Already Ancient. Ruins in the Virtual World’

13.40-14.20 Lunch

Session 2: Chair: Jan Frode Hatlen

14.20-15.30 Richard Beacham, (King’s College London, School of Theatre Studies) and Hugh Denard, (King’s College London, Computing in the Humanities): ‘Observations on Staging the Ludi Virtuales’

15.30-16.10 Thea Selliaas Thorsen, (NTNU, Classics): ‘Virtually There? Women in Ovid, Tatian and the 3D Theatre of Pompey’

16.10-16.30 Coffee break

16.30-17.10 Gian Paolo Castelli, (Rome, Classics): ‘The Emperor’s Seal. On Producing a Roman Computer Game’

17.10-17.50 Adam Lindhagen, (University of Lund, Archaeology): ‘Constructing and Governing a Province – between Fact and Fiction in Caesar IV’

20.00 Dinner

Saturday:

Auditorium D3

Session 3: Chair: Thea Selliaas Thorsen

10.00-10.40 Andrew Gardner, (University College London, Archaeology): ‘Entertainment and Empire. A Critical Engagement with Roman Themed Strategy Games’

10.40-11.20 Leif Inge Petersen, (NTNU, History): ‘Siege Warfare in Computer Games. Problems and Possibilities’

11.20-11.40 Coffee break

11.40-12.20 Kristine Ask, (NTNU, Technological Studies): ‘Technology in Games and Games of Technology’

12.20-13.00 Jan Frode Hatlen, (NTNU, History): ‘Students of Rome: Total War. A Socio-Educational Approach’

13.00-14.00 Lunch

Session 4: Chair: Staffan Wahlgren

14.00-15.00 Daniel Jung, (University of Bergen, Computing in the Humanities) and Barbara McManus, (The College of New Rochelle, NY, Classics): ‘Latina Ludens. Educational Gaming in VRoma’

15.00-15.40 Andrew Reinhard, (Bolchazy-Carducci, eLearning, USA): ‘eLearning Latin’

15.40 ConcLVSIOns (Thea Sellias Thorsen)

17.00 Guided Tour of the City Centre

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