Pavement Designs and Game Boards from Public Spaces of Ancient Athens: A Review Across the Board

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.