(Re)Presenting the Past: Archaeological Influences on Historical Narratives in Video Games

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "(Re)Presenting the Past: Archaeological Influences on Historical Narratives in Video Games," at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Video games provide a means for the lay audience to engage with history and, in many cases, with archaeology; and archaeogaming serves as an avenue for scholars to investigate the archaeology of and within games. Through the lens of archaeogaming, this session explores the representation of archaeology in video games ranging from fantasy to historical fiction, and its resulting influence on the historical narratives present within these games. How do these games interrogate the past, and how do they use archaeology as a tool for doing so? Do they question or reinforce the biased narratives reflected in real-world history? We pay particular attention to the impacts of such narratives on racist, classist, and colonialist representations of the past and their relationships with the present, both in the game world(s) and the real world.