Reassessing Roman and Late Antique ‘Marbles Lanes’

One Game or Many

Datos Bibliográficos

ID22017679
AutoresTim Penn (0000-0003-4472-9031, University of Oxford), Summer Court (0000-0002-6450-2929, University of Reading), Ulrich Schädler (0000-0002-9528-5402, University of Fribourg)
Año2023
Volumen17
Número1
Páginas105-165
Fecha de publicación2023-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaBoard Game Studies Journal (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2183-3311 • E-ISSN: 2183-3311
EditorialWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.2478/bgs-2023-0004
OpenAlexW4387784183
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas11

Characterised by the presence of multiple depressions or pockets in a variety of arrangements, and, in some cases, the presence of a single, double, or triple ‘start line’ carved into horizontal stone surfaces, marble lanes in their variety of forms open a window onto ancient play that few have looked through. Thought to be a playing surface for some kind of throwing or rolling game which involved the use of glass or ceramic spheres, Roman marble lanes have received comparatively little attention in the recent upswing of scholarship on ancient play, partially as a result of the relative dearth of textual and iconographic sources discussing or depicting their usage, but these playing surfaces nevertheless represent a major corpus of ludic material. This contribution summarises past work on marble lanes before exploring the limited textual and iconographic source material related to playing with marbles. It offers a tentative new typology by which to categorise marble lanes and a non-exhaustive list of these playing surfaces recorded at archaeological sites around the Mediterranean. It then moves onto a discussion of the game/games that may be played on these boards, arguing that the wide variations in the different layouts for marble lanes may indicate that they were used not for one tightly-defined game, but more likely facilitated the playing of a loosely connected family of games, with implicaitons for how we think about communities of play in the past

Antique · Archaeology · Art · Multimedia · Scholarship · Typology · Video game · Visual arts · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Computer Science · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History