Graham (2016) suggests that a concept does not have to be explicitly stated for it to be internalized and understood, using the examples of game rules which individuals have internalized, possibly without realizing it.įor example, in Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018), Lara Croft provides an interpretation of the artifacts in a way that is more realistic of how archaeologists and historians might think than she does in previous games. Applying landscape archaeology concepts to videogames is demonstrate, by Reinhard’s No Man’s Sky archaeological project. This way of understanding what landscape archaeologists do and how they think is important for representing archaeological concepts to the public and to other archaeologists. Archaeogamers point out the usefulness of landscape archaeology in games and the representations of landscape archaeology to the public through games like walking simulators. IntroductionĪrchaeological survey in digital games lends itself to an understanding of how people in the physical space think about cultures and cultural development.

In future posts, I will examine archaeology in Horizon Zero Dawn further. In this post, I will briefly look at how was can examine archaeology in Horizon Zero Dawn and introduce some concepts and contexts that will be important in this analysis. This game does not expressly discuss or address archaeology and archaeological theory but, from the eyes of an archaeologist, presents and produces a discussion of artifacts and landscapes. This is the first of several posts on Horizon Zero Dawn by Guerrilla Games as a facilitator of archaeological thinking and serves as a brief introduction to the game and the game components for those who have not necessarily played the game recently (or at all).

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