Foundations of Digital Archæoludology
This work addresses the problem of understanding ancient games and their cultural significance for historians and researchers, but it is foundational and incremental as it focuses on establishing a new field rather than presenting specific results.
The paper tackles the challenge of analyzing and reconstructing ancient games from incomplete evidence using computational techniques, aiming to establish a new interdisciplinary field called Digital Archaeoludology to support game historians and researchers.
Digital Archaeoludology (DAL) is a new field of study involving the analysis and reconstruction of ancient games from incomplete descriptions and archaeological evidence using modern computational techniques. The aim is to provide digital tools and methods to help game historians and other researchers better understand traditional games, their development throughout recorded human history, and their relationship to the development of human culture and mathematical knowledge. This work is being explored in the ERC-funded Digital Ludeme Project. The aim of this inaugural international research meeting on DAL is to gather together leading experts in relevant disciplines - computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, computational phylogenetics, mathematics, history, archaeology, anthropology, etc. - to discuss the key themes and establish the foundations for this new field of research, so that it may continue beyond the lifetime of its initiating project.