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A Dice Tower from Richborough
Abstract
The dice tower, or pyrgus, an ancient device for rolling dice, was an everyday object in the Roman world, but up to now only two towers, from Germany and Egypt, have been found. In re-examining a group of bone box-casings from Richborough Roman Fort, however, the author has found that some of these casings must have belonged to such a tower. This article shows how this dice tower may have been constructed. The author also summarises the literary and artistic evidence for dice towers, and shows how the rosette decoration on this tower links it to the Roman game of Duodecim Scripta.
... Of particular note is the game Duodecim Scripta which has been found across the Roman Empire and has also been discovered in domestic and religious contexts as depicted in Masukawa (2016). This game in particular is associated with the use of dice and archaeological evidence of dice towers, used to aid in rolling dice, have been found in military forts (Cobbett 2008). In Roman burials, Cobbett (2008) describes a burial dating to the 1st century BCE with a large number of colorful gaming pieces were found alongside other items the richly furnished tomb of a Briton elite. ...
... This game in particular is associated with the use of dice and archaeological evidence of dice towers, used to aid in rolling dice, have been found in military forts (Cobbett 2008). In Roman burials, Cobbett (2008) describes a burial dating to the 1st century BCE with a large number of colorful gaming pieces were found alongside other items the richly furnished tomb of a Briton elite. The authors also discuss another specific instance of gaming pieces and a board found in a lavish funerary context was discovered under a Romano-Celtic temple, nearby a Roman villa. ...
With 10 million copies sold and 500 million dollars of revenue, the 11th installment of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (2018), showed how a videogame based on ancient Greek history and archaeology can make a splash in popular culture and that the distant past can become an extinguishable source of infinite engaging gaming narratives. As pedagogic and research counterparts to videogames of this kind, serious games and archaeogames focusing on Greek and Roman civilizations move from different premises, though aspiring to the same level of success. Serious games, created for a primary purpose other than sole entertainment, have found their way into classrooms and museums to educate students in a variety of disciplines mostly relying on digital storytelling strategies. Archaeogaming, on the other hand, encompasses, among other things, the creation of video games by archaeologists, who create 3D representations of the ancient material culture subject of their study, initially for the purpose of testing hypotheses in simulated environment and later to popularize archaeology and cultural heritage studies, finding a more ‘serious’ use in higher education.
This dissertation deals with defining best practices in archaeogaming design and production focusing on two practical examples of re-use of digital archaeological data for the generation of game assets for teaching and public outreach. Both case studies explore the context of Late Roman Sicily on which I conducted most of the experimental work in the preparatory years of this research. The first case study will be the narrative game prototype for the Villa del Casale (Piazza Armerina) in Enna, Sicily, entitled In Ersilia’s Footsteps, featuring Ersilia Caetani-Lovatelli (1840-1925), the first female archaeologist in Italian history. The game, developed in collaboration with the University of Arkansas’ Tesseract and directed by Dr. David Fredrick and Dr. Rhodora Vennarucci, narrative follows her in the exploration of the Late Roman Imperial countryside residence and UNESCO World Heritage site. The game revolves around the use of 3D digitized assets, created employing digital photogrammetry and 3D laser-scanning to capture the archaeological site, that significantly contributed to increase the realism of the game environment influencing the game creation process towards telling stories of real historic characters in real historic places. The second game, Building by the River, is an a building and experimental archaeogame, aimed at both contextualized elements from the archaeological site as well as the ability aid researchers in understanding the relationship between space and flow in the Late Roman villa of Caddeddi on the Tellaro river (Noto). More specifically, it seeks to explore how the Villa di Caddeddi may have looked and how the rooms functioned during its time as an operating rural villa in the late 4th Century CE. Giving players the ability to pick from a list of 3D digitized assets of actual archaeological materials found both on site and in similar Sicilian Roman villas, the game seeks to engage with playful building and experimentation as seen in other popular digital game titles, like Sims 4, Subnautica, and Minecraft. The on-going work at adding assets to use in the game as well as learn more about the nature and history of the Villa di Caddeddi is discussed in terms of the second-life of digital data, archaeological interpretation, and investigation of spatial use by ancient Romans in their elite rural homes. These assets, in both In Ersilia’s Footsteps and Building by the River, represent at the same time an example in best practices in reusing 3D data, since, once used to achieve research goals, they are repurposed and in combination with an original narrative and a user-friendly interface and mechanics they become the core of an engaging and exciting exploration game.
Ultimately, the experimental work, the new data gathered and the production of two original media research tools have proven to be a strategic decision to advance the digital scholarship agenda on Roman archaeology of Sicily and to trace a path for incorporating archaeogaming as a methodological approach into a research framework. The ability to re-use scientific data for the purpose of public outreach, education, and research allows for archaeologists to address pseudoscience and dangerous representations of the field. As such, the need to provide assets for games can be served through the second life of 3D digital archaeological materials.
(The place of publication is London and the date 2008 unless otherwise stated.)
During the third century A.D., there was a series of barbarian invasions in Gaul. The last, in 276, was the most serious, for some fifty or sixty towns had fallen into enemy hands and had to be recaptured. Most Gallic towns had proved an easy prey to the Germanic invaders, for they were built in a spacious style, and for the most part without defensive walls. Dijon is said to have received its walls in the time of Aurelian, but positive evidence for the construction-date of the walls of the Gallic towns is in most cases not forthcoming, although it seems that these defences were constructed in the late third century and early fourth, probably as a result of the Germanic invasions. The style of building was what became the well-known style of the third century and after—thick walls, with exterior towers or bastions, tile bonding courses, and much re-use of earlier material.
A Roman game-board from Holt, Denbighshire
- Austin
Das frühchristliche Beinkästchen von Heilbronn
- Goessler
Objects of Animal Bone, Antler, Ivory and Teeth from Roman Britain, unpub
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Ein fränkisches Holzkästchen aus Weilbach
- Schoppa
Si per me misit, nil nisi vota feret. Ein römischer Spielturm aus Froitzheim
- Horn
- Bushe-Fox
- Wheeler