This volume has its genesis in the 21st Conference of the International Society for Board Game Studies (BGS) 1 held in Athens in April 2018, entitled "Dialogues and Interactions". Organized by Barbara Carè, it was hosted by the Italian School of Archaeology and the Benaki Museum. 28 years after Irving Finkel's path breaking conference Ancient Board Games in

‘Where are the Children?’ In the title of a contribution edited in 1994: J. Sofaer Derevenski raised this question drawing scholars’ attention to the low consideration given to the study of children in archaeological research. For a long time, in fact, infants have been ignored in view of their marginal, incomplete and passive role in ancient society. Confined in ‘a category of disempowered’, due to the man-centred perspective leading current methodologies of investigation, young deceased have traditionally represented an invisible category within the frame of funerary studies as well, in contrast to adults, more representative as social agents. However, a surge of interest has recently occurred in the subject of childhood in antiquity.

No abstract

The paper aims to offer significant new additions to the record of pavements designs known from archaeological contexts in the ancient Mediterranean, giving an overview of the patterns carved on marble steeps and floors in public spaces of ancient Athens. Given the problematic interpretation of carved outlines in ancient public spaces, the contribution focuses on features and locations of these patterns in the attempt to provide identification of actual game boards, contextualize them and propose their plausible chronological setting. The need to more fully understand the social and cultural dimension of play in ancient societies is now crucial to archaeological research; this paper is also offered as a contribution to approaching that understanding.