Bad Behavior and Good Guidelines: Applying the Society for American Archaeology’s Principles of Archaeological Ethics to the Performance of Archaeology in Videogames

Summary

Within videogames, archaeology is often not itself a focus, but provides a flavor or character-defining style based on pre-existing stereotypes of the discipline as presented in other forms of popular culture. This frequently results in utilizing the practice of archaeology as a form of secondary content, designed to provide a financial or game-play bonus to the player character, while allowing access to objects of cultural patrimony and license to commodify those objects. Through an application of SAA ethical guidelines to current examples of archaeological practice in videogames, public perceptions of how archaeology and archaeologists function can be analyzed, and potential mitigations can be devised.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

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