ABSTRACT
Many kinds of media are engaged in the representation of archaeology, and most of them are more widely popular than those provided by archaeologists themselves. While analysis of these representations has become quite commonplace among some sectors of the discipline, there are still many areas of popular culture that remain neglected, and one of these is video or computer games. Some attention has certainly been given to the role of well-known game characters (particularly Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider series) in constructing stereotypes of the archaeologist/explorer, as part of the study of popular images of archaeological practice in the present (e.g., Holtorf 2005a: 42–45). However, with a handful of exceptions (see, especially, Watrall 2002a , 2002b), games have generally been ignored as modes of representation of the past, and thus the part they might play in shaping public understandings of specific periods or cultures is not well understood. This paper aims to tackle this problem in some detail, and to explore how games do what archaeologists themselves purport to do: construct working models of past worlds and narrate stories about them.
