We Have A Winner!

Game pieces and entertainment leftovers are often ignored in archaeology, because they are often considered unimportant or less exciting than artifacts that explore day to day life.  Well, what of it when the city being excavated is the Las Vegas of 4,000 years ago?

Play is not generally studied for its significance to ancient peoples. Rogersdotter says that archaeologists do often find game-related relics at dig sites, but they’re usually discounted as unimportant or considered a ritual object. But at this site, almost every tenth find was related to leisure—dice or gaming pieces.


And they’re not uniformly scattered. The artifacts are clustered together in what might have been ancient, say, gaming halls or courtyards. Rogersdotter says that these games may have had real social significance and might be used to give us a better view of the lives of these Bronze Age individuals. Who very well might have hoped to roll double-sixes four millennia ago.

It certainly changes the image I had of how people lived during those times.  We absorb what we're shown, which are usually agricultural tools and crafts of the period.  It's kind of cool to realize that before modern civilizations existed, they were already throwing them bones and wagering money.