Summary. This re-evaluation of existing data on board games from the Near Eastern Bronze Age demonstrates their function as social lubricants in crosscultural interaction. Board games are situated theoretically as liminoid practices, which lie outside the bounds of normative social behaviour and allow for interaction across social boundaries. Utilizing double-sided game boards, with an indigenous game on one side and a newly introduced game on the other, the games of senet, mehen and twenty squares provide evidence for social interactions. Cypriots had adopted Egyptian mehen and senet by the third millennium BC, and indigenized the games. This lies in contrast to the game of twenty squares, which had a particular role among elites in the Late Bronze Age interaction sphere. This anthropological discussion of evidence relating to gaming seeks to inspire further research on the role of board games in society. BOARD GAMES IN ARCHAEOLOGYThe study of board games in the archaeological record has traditionally focused on identifying origins of certain games

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This report summarises the discussions and conclusions of a recent Dagstuhl research meeting, in which the foundations of the new research field of Digital Archaeoludology were established. Starting with the ERC-funded Digital Ludeme Project, research in this field aims to use techniques from the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and other computational and data-driven techniques, to study traditional games. The primary goals include gaining improved insight into the ways games may have been played throughout history, and how they influenced and transferred between different civilisations. Additional expected contributions of the Digital Ludeme Project include advances in General Game Playing and related areas of research in AI.

The 2 nd Digital Ludeme Project (DLP) Workshop, on the topic of Game AI Applications for Historical Games Research, was held at Maastricht University's Department of Data Science and Knowledge Engineering (DKE) over 11-14 April 2022. The aims of this workshop were twofold: 1. To bring together experts on both the historical/cultural study of games as well as the computational study of games and Game AI, in order to foster discussion and the exchange of ideas between fields that do not often meet. 2. To educate participants in the use of the Ludii general game system (Piette et al. ( 2020)) through lectures and practical hands-on tutorials, and solicit feedback on what functionality might be added to Ludii to increase its usefulness for practioners in the field.This workshop follows on from the earlier 1 st DLP Workshop on the topic of Foundations of Digital Archaeoludology (DAL) held at the Leibniz Centre, Schloss Dagstuhl, Saarbrücken, Germany, over 10-12 April 2019 (Browne et al. ( 2019)). The 1 st DLP Workshop was attended by 17 participants.The 2 nd DLP Workshop was held as a hybrid event due to Covid restrictions and travel difficulties, although most participants attended in person (see Fig. 1). There were a total of 36 participants from 17 countries, and 32 talks (in addition to round table and open discussions) from 22 speakers including 14 × invited speakers, 5 × DLP team members and 3 × DKE Honours students. 1 Each day covered a broad theme split into four specialised sessions, as follows.