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

Abstract

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

Strategic interactions: Games of the Ju|’hoan

“…This study agrees that even board and card games are not present in each community and are not played by each member of a community, either, but this is not for reasons related to the complexity of their society. Indeed, the concept of social lubricant has more explanatory power (Crist et al, 2016). The independent development of a strategy game by the Ju|'hoan further confirms that societal complexity is no longer a tenable explanation for the distribution of strategy games.…”

“…Most card and board games in the world were introduced through contact with neighboring peoples. This is amply illustrated with examples from antiquity (Crist et al, 2016;de Voogt et al, 2013). Most board and card games are not necessarily culturally specific since only few adaptations of rules and board configurations take place, an observation also found with Roberts et al (1959) as part of their idea of the expressive nature of games in general.…”

“…Similar criticism was detailed in earlier publications (Townshend, 1980;de Voogt, in press) by examining the presence of strategy games in pastoral and hunter-gatherer societies, respectively. Indeed, theories on the history and distribution of board games demonstrate that such games are specifically suitable to facilitate social interaction across cultural boundaries (Crist, de Voogt, Dunn-Vaturi, 2016;de Voogt, Dunn-Vaturi, Eerkens, 2013). The abstract nature of the board and rules require little culturally specific knowledge so that people from different societies encounter a relatively low threshold for participating.…”

Eighteen Months of Meeple Like Us: An Exploration into the State of Board Game Accessibility

“…Where board games are discussed in the academic literature it is primarily as a byproduct of other research goals. They have been used to train artificial intelligences (Szita et al 2009;Taylor 2014); adopted for therapeutic benefits in play therapy (Matorin and McNamara 1996;Gotay 2013); explored for the historical and archaeological insights they provide Crist et al 2016;Hall 2016) and used as test cases for issues of game theory (Guhe and Lascarides 2014). There are numerous academic papers that explore board-games for their own intrinsic benefits (c.f.…”

Passing from the Middle to the New Kingdom: A Senet Board in the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum

“…Since senet was played in one form or another for such a long time, having been played from the Early Dynastic Period until at least the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, 17 it provides an opportunity to study long-term changes in games and practices related to play. There are many implications for this kind of research relating to social processes, such as cultural transmission, 18 foreign interaction, 19 and social complexity. 20 Any evidence that facilitates research on games and play, which has lagged behind theoretical and methodological advances in archaeological and anthropological work more broadly, will aid in broadening research into this ubiquitous aspect of human life.…”