Roman rules? The introduction of board games to Britain and Ireland

Abstract

Competitive board games, played on the ground, on the floor or on wooden boards, provide entertainment, distraction and exercise for the mind — it is hard to believe that north-west Europe was ever without them. But the authors here make a strong case that the introduction of such games was among the fruits of Roman contact, along with literacy and wine. In Britain and Ireland games were soon renamed, but belonged like children's jokes to a broad underworld of fast-moving cultural transmission, largely unseen till now.

Agnieszka Stempin, ed. Magia Gry: Sztuka rywalizacji (The Magic of the Game: The Art of the Contest) (Poznań: Muzeum Archaeologiczne w Poznaniu, 2012, 136pp., 104 figs., pbk, ISBN 978-83-60109-23-6) - Mathieu Grandet and Jean-François Goret, eds. Échecs et Trictrac: Fabrication et u des jeux de tables au Moyen Âge. Catalogue de l'exposition présentée du 23 juin au 18 novembre 2012 au Musée du château de Mayenne (Paris: Editions Errance/Mayenne, Château de Mayenne, 2012, 159pp., 115 figs., pbk,

“…Its point of departure is contact with Rome and the movement of gaming sets across the German frontier into 'barbaricum'. The story here echoes that elucidated recently for the Roman origin and dissemination of board games in Europe (Hall & Forsyth, 2011). Spread across two rooms, the exhibition brought together an exciting range of material little known in the West of Europe and fully deserving of wider recognition.…”

Board Games in Boat Burials: Play in the Performance of Migration and Viking Age Mortuary Practice

“…Jacobsen & Wiener, 2013). In non-Roman hands ludus latrunculorum developed into the tafl group of games, including hnefatafl (see below) (Hall & Forsyth, 2011;Solberg, 2007;Whittaker, 2006). The argument presented here suggests that through their occurrence in burial contexts board games helped to cite the social order and privilege of the living.…”

“…The Celtic and Germanic/Scandinavian worlds clearly enjoyed the materiality of the Roman game of ludus latrunculorum ('the game of little soldiers', a strategic capture game; see Hall & Forsyth, 2011) judging from the numerous boards and playing pieces recovered from Late Roman/Iron Age graves (e.g. Jacobsen & Wiener, 2013).…”

Facilitating Interaction: Board Games as Social Lubricants in the Ancient Near East

“…Within the literature of social lubricants (Bieliński and Taracha ; Hall and Forsyth ) board games are situated as tools that facilitate interaction between people across social boundaries (kinship, ethnicity, gender, etc. ), functioning similarly to the consumption of alcohol and other psychoactive substances in their ability to create liminoid spaces.…”