A De Voogt
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 34643 |
|---|---|
| NOME | A De Voogt |
| PRENOMES | A |
| SOBRENOME | De Voogt |
| ASSINATURA | DE VOOGT A |
| AFILIAÇÕES | American Museum of Natural History |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1763-2288 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 38 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 63 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 38 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2002 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
A Paleographic Analysis of Swahili-Arabic Script through Thirteen Poems
A paleographic analysis of a set of thirteen poems composed by Muyaka bin Haji (1776–1840) but written in Swahili-Arabic script by Mwalimu Sikujua in the 1890s reveals a consistent preference in the placement of script-specific diacritics and in the use of certain letterform combinations, but variation in the choice of graphic forms, particularly those for kāf . Sikujua places miniature consonant signs between a consonant letterform and a potenti…
A Cultural Transmission Model for the Origins of Westerwanna
Westerwanna are four-sided dice first produced among the Frisii people in the northern Netherlands and Germany during the late Iron Age and Imperial Roman period. We report analyses on a set of 27 Westerwanna and 15 oblong four-sided dice from this region to examine their cultural origin. While some attributes, such as Sevens configuration, conform strongly to patterns in Roman six-sided dice, others, such as pip orientation and layout, more clos…
Cultural Transmission in Printed Games of Cupid
The Game of Cupid is a simple dice-based race game derived from the Game of the Goose in about 1600. Twelve different examples, covering the period to about 1850 and drawn from France, the Low Countries and Britain, are analysed according to distinctive markers that include rules, game board configuration and decorative elements, showing that the evolution of the game can be described by a single tree of descent. The forces governing this evoluti…
Research note
The Jul'hoan people from lXaelxae, Botswana, have an active repertoire of songs accompanied by leg rattles and hand clapping that are part of what is known as a trance dance. It was found that a specific group of Jul'hoan people, who used a finite set of 12 songs, was able to identify a song in the majority of the cases by listening only to hand clapping. The participants suggested that 'speed' or 'relative pace' was diagnostic. This suggestion w…
Sikujua’s Writing of Muyaka’s Poetry in Arabic Script
Muyaka’s poetry as it is known today was first recorded in the 1890s, mainly written down by Mwalimu Sikujua who used Arabic script as well as an adapted Swahili-Arabic writing system to document the language. Sikujua’s versatility when using the Arabic script as well as his use of variant spellings suggest a writing practice that embraces rather than avoids orthographic variation. His use of diacritics including the shadda and hamza is particula…
A spectral moments analysis of Tsua and Ju|'hoan alveolar and palatal click consonants
Tsua is a critically-endangered language of the Eastern Kalahari Khoe languages where the historical processes of click replacement and click loss are relatively common. An acoustic analysis of Tsua’s remaining alveolar and palatal click consonants that have not undergone click loss reveals that on three statistical spectral moments — center of gravity, skew and kurtosis — the Tsua alveolar and palatal click bursts do not markedly differ from eac…
Nasal clicks and glottalized clicks with syllabic velar nasals in Ju|’hoan
The |Xae|xae dialect of Ju|’hoan as it is spoken in western Botswana features a series of nasal clicks and glottalized clicks that are combined with a syllabic velar nasal into a single morphological unit. An acoustic analysis of these clicks shows that the vowel [a] is not present in the |Xae|xae variants and that only a syllabic velar nasal remains. This was found for all four click articulations with minimal pairs for high and low tone as well…
Extending !Xun dialect comparisons with a Ju|’hoan variety spoken in |Xae|xae, Botswana
Dialect clusters in Africa and specifically those of Khoisan languages are relatively underdocumented. !Xun can be described as a complex or a cluster of lects and the Ju|’hoan speakers of |Xae|xae, Botswana, are part of the (eastern) E1 dialect cluster of the !Xun language. Their closest neighbors in Tsum!kwe, Namibia, also speakers of Ju|’hoan, have been the subject of extensive linguistic study. A comparison based on lexical items affiliates s…
Why are Roman-period dice asymmetrical? An experimental and quantitative approach
Roman-period six-sided dice are common in archaeological sites across Europe. While some dice approach true cubes, many are visibly non-cubic (i.e., asymmetric/lopsided) and favor certain rolls, especially the numbers 1 and 6. It is unclear if such dice were intentional and distinctive "types" used in specific games or activities, represent "cheaters" dice, or are simply part of a continuum of variation in die shape and configuration. To explore …
Misconceptions in the History of Mancala Games
Mancala games are commonly defined by the appearance of the boards and mode of moving the pieces. The similarities have led to the belief that most mancala games are historically related or that they may be identified by appearances alone. Their ubiquity in Africa and their occurrence as graffiti boards on ancient monuments has created speculation about their antiquity. To this date their ancient status cannot be confirmed by archaeological or hi…
Making Sense of Abstract Board Games
The frequent absence of culturally specific, figurative, or decorative markings in abstract board games has challenged theorizations that assume a meaningful representation in the study of games. In accepting this challenge, this article theorizes the historical phenomenon of abstract board games whose nonrepresentational board design and formal rules have transmitted with little change over millennia and across vast expanse. A theoretical framew…
The Role of Graffiti Game Boards in the Understanding of an Archaeological Site
Graffiti game boards attest to the presence of historical populations at an archaeological site and, in some cases, assist in dating an archaeological context. While games suggest the presence of a social activity, their contextual significance compared to the graffiti of texts and images, pottery finds, and other diagnostic tools of archaeology is open to further enquiry. The presence of multiple board game traditions at Gebel el-Silsila in Egyp…
The Role of Checkers (Jekab) in the Marshall Islands
The Marshall Islands have an active community of competitive players of checkers (jekab) who use a rule set that is particular to the region. This game is featured in tournaments held during cultural celebrations on multiple islands in the archipelago, while the activity is considered an integral part of public life as it is witnessed on the islands. Marshallese checkers is shown to create a liminoid space in which a diversity of players in terms…
Cultural transmission of architectural traits
Early childhood diets on the Nile
We explore early childhood dietary patterns in a Late Meroitic (first-fourth century CE) population (N = 11) from Sai Island, Sudan, using stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in serial samples from permanent first molar dentin. Results suggest an average age of weaning of 2.7 years, but with significant interindividual variation in the timing of weaning, with evidence for a later age at weaning for two females (average 3.5 years) compared with fo…
Meroitic Graves with Roman Games
Alex de Voogt, Vincent Francigny, Pieter Baas, Meroitic Graves with Roman Games: Elites Moving the Borders of Play, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Vol. 167, No. 1 (2017), pp. 23-33
The Evolution of Cubic Dice
Cubic dice were brought by the Romans to the Low Countries, and are found in small numbers at many archaeological sites dating to the last 2000 years. We report on a systematic analysis of 110 well-dated dice from the Netherlands, showing that shape, pip configuration, and pip style changed significantly for bone and antler dice from the Roman to the recent historical period. Dice predating 650 CE are highly variable in all attributes, those dati…
The absence of games in the presence of claims. Reply to Garry Chick
"The absence of games in the presence of claims. Reply to Garry Chick." International Journal of Play, 6(3), pp. 322–323
The History and Distribution of ṭāb
Previous articleNext article FreeThe History and Distribution of ṭāb: A Survey of Petra's Gaming BoardsAlex de Voogt, Ahmad B. A. Hassanat, and Mahmoud B. AlhasanatAlex de VoogtAmerican Museum of Natural History Search for more articles by this author , Ahmad B. A. HassanatMuʾtah University, Jordan Search for more articles by this author , and Mahmoud B. AlhasanatAl-Hussein Bin Talal University, Jordan Search for more articles by this author PDFP…
Strategic games in society
The hypothesis presented in anthropology that games of strategy are more likely to be found in complex societies appears not to be informed by historical research on board and card games. The geographic distribution of games points to a history of trade and migration rather than a preference expressed by complex societies. Strategy games are primarily played by adults, while anthropological research on play has been primarily focused on children.…
Individual expression, cultural specificity and production bias in Ju|'hoan jewelry-making
Few ethnographers have documented the personal experiences of Khoisan communities and even more obscure are perceptions about San individualism and self-expression. Yet anthropologist Richard Lee, in his book The Dobe !Kung (1984), suggested that !Kung (also known as Zu|'hoasi, Ju|'hoansi or Ju|'hoan) women use different colored beads to create intricately patterned headbands whose designs are named and should be regarded as an original art form.…
Facilitating Interaction
This re‐evaluation of existing data on board games from the Near Eastern Bronze Age demonstrates their function as social lubricants in cross‐cultural interaction. Board games are situated theoretically as liminoid practices, which lie outside the bounds of normative social behaviour and allow for interaction across social boundaries. Utilizing double‐sided game boards, with an indigenous game on one side and a newly introduced game on the other,…
Duru Calculations and the Understanding of Mancala Expertise
Duru or rounds are a central aspect of calculating moves in a group of mancala games. It is shown that the ability to calculate multiple duru is a prerequisite to mancala (bao) expertise in Zanzibar, while duru-related optimization strategies explain the accomplishments of Maldivian mancala (ohvalhu) players. Since bao masters define duru calculation skills as part of bao expertise, their performance on duru calculation tasks is contrasted with t…
Production bias in cultural evolution
Jeux De La Nature En Dépôts Votifs ET Funéraires Dans Les Royaumes Nubiens
In the Nile valley and since the Neolithic period, ritual offerings and deposits have included oddly-shaped stones whose meaning is still little understood. Both unusually shaped stones and fossils are attested in the Nubian kingdoms, where their presence was thought to be limited to royal graves and temples. Recent finds at Sai Island and Sedeinga show that, in the kingdom of Meroe, such curiosities could be associated with other non-royal conte…
Cultural transmission in the ancient Near East
Facilitating Interaction
This re‐evaluation of existing data on board games from the Near Eastern Bronze Age demonstrates their function as social lubricants in cross‐cultural interaction. Board games are situated theoretically as liminoid practices, which lie outside the bounds of normative social behaviour and allow for interaction across social boundaries. Utilizing double‐sided game boards, with an indigenous game on one side and a newly introduced game on the other,…
Early childhood diets on the Nile
We explore early childhood dietary patterns in a Late Meroitic (first-fourth century CE) population (N = 11) from Sai Island, Sudan, using stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in serial samples from permanent first molar dentin. Results suggest an average age of weaning of 2.7 years, but with significant interindividual variation in the timing of weaning, with evidence for a later age at weaning for two females (average 3.5 years) compared with fo…
Intra- and inter-individual variation in δ13C and δ15N in human dental calculus and comparison to bone collagen and apatite isotopes
Mancala players at Palmyra
Playing mancala-type games was an addictive pastime of antiquity and leaves its archaeological imprint on steps and ledges in the form of rows of little scoops. Here the author examines the traces of the game at Palmyra and shows that the Roman game of the third century (with five holes a side) was superseded when Palmyra's Temple of Baal was refashioned as a fort in the seventh century or later. The new Syrian game, with seven holes a side, was …
The Evolution of Cubic Dice
Cubic dice were brought by the Romans to the Low Countries, and are found in small numbers at many archaeological sites dating to the last 2000 years. We report on a systematic analysis of 110 well-dated dice from the Netherlands, showing that shape, pip configuration, and pip style changed significantly for bone and antler dice from the Roman to the recent historical period. Dice predating 650 CE are highly variable in all attributes, those dati…
Strategic games in society
The hypothesis presented in anthropology that games of strategy are more likely to be found in complex societies appears not to be informed by historical research on board and card games. The geographic distribution of games points to a history of trade and migration rather than a preference expressed by complex societies. Strategy games are primarily played by adults, while anthropological research on play has been primarily focused on children.…
Production bias in cultural evolution
Games on the seashore of Salalah
During the 2013 fieldwork of the French archaeological mission along the shores of the Arabian Sea, mancala games were discovered on the seashore of Salalah at the site of Ad-Dahariz. They are cup-hole carvings made directly into rock slabs and distributed in six distinct zones of the site. They usually consist of fourteen cup-holes aligned in two lines of seven, two supplementary holes being sometimes present on each side. They are the first of …
Why are Roman-period dice asymmetrical? An experimental and quantitative approach
Roman-period six-sided dice are common in archaeological sites across Europe. While some dice approach true cubes, many are visibly non-cubic (i.e., asymmetric/lopsided) and favor certain rolls, especially the numbers 1 and 6. It is unclear if such dice were intentional and distinctive "types" used in specific games or activities, represent "cheaters" dice, or are simply part of a continuum of variation in die shape and configuration. To explore …
Research note
The Jul'hoan people from lXaelxae, Botswana, have an active repertoire of songs accompanied by leg rattles and hand clapping that are part of what is known as a trance dance. It was found that a specific group of Jul'hoan people, who used a finite set of 12 songs, was able to identify a song in the majority of the cases by listening only to hand clapping. The participants suggested that 'speed' or 'relative pace' was diagnostic. This suggestion w…
The absence of games in the presence of claims. Reply to Garry Chick
"The absence of games in the presence of claims. Reply to Garry Chick." International Journal of Play, 6(3), pp. 322–323
The History and Distribution of ṭāb
Previous articleNext article FreeThe History and Distribution of ṭāb: A Survey of Petra's Gaming BoardsAlex de Voogt, Ahmad B. A. Hassanat, and Mahmoud B. AlhasanatAlex de VoogtAmerican Museum of Natural History Search for more articles by this author , Ahmad B. A. HassanatMuʾtah University, Jordan Search for more articles by this author , and Mahmoud B. AlhasanatAl-Hussein Bin Talal University, Jordan Search for more articles by this author PDFP…
Individual expression, cultural specificity and production bias in Ju|'hoan jewelry-making
Few ethnographers have documented the personal experiences of Khoisan communities and even more obscure are perceptions about San individualism and self-expression. Yet anthropologist Richard Lee, in his book The Dobe !Kung (1984), suggested that !Kung (also known as Zu|'hoasi, Ju|'hoansi or Ju|'hoan) women use different colored beads to create intricately patterned headbands whose designs are named and should be regarded as an original art form.…
Opening a Grave in Antiquity – Formation and Interpretation in the Kingdom of Meroe
During Late Antiquity in the Middle Nile Valley, the cemeteries of the Kingdom of Meroe had their graves visited many times after the first burial took place. Even if robbers left a burial chamber open, it could still be reused soon after for another individual accompanied by a regular funerary ceremony. The term “grave activity” is introduced here to describe any human intervention likely to modify the environment of a tomb. It includes any (re-…
Mancala at the pyramids of Meroe
Game-boards carved on monuments offer an intriguing opportunity to track a certain mindset in time and space. In an earlier Antiquity article, the author showed us that mancala boards were carved on the Roman plinths at Palmyra by Arab soldiers. Here he takes us into Sudan, finding new mancala boards on the first-millennium pyramids at Meroe. With adroit detective work, he shows that these too are probably owed to military visitors, this time a g…
Sa'īd B. Gubayr
Muyaka's poetry in the history of Bao
Literary and archaeological evidence date mancala playing rules to the seventeenth century and mancala game boards at least to the sixth century A.D. Individual mancala games are rarely identified since different rules may be used on identical boards. The mancala game of Bao is a possible exception since its board often has distinctive square holes in the centre which also require characteristic rules. Muyaka bin Haji composed a poem on Bao in th…
Digital Exhibition and Media Reviews
A sketch of Afitti phonology
Political conflict in the Sudan and the spread of Arabic are threatening Afitti, a North Eastern Sudanic language that has received relatively little scholarly attention. In addition to presenting original data on the language, this paper shows that Afitti is markedly different from Nyimang, its nearest linguistic neighbor, in respect to the absence of a third tone, the lack of a contrast between dentals and alveolars, the absence of distinctive …
Mancala players at Palmyra
Playing mancala-type games was an addictive pastime of antiquity and leaves its archaeological imprint on steps and ledges in the form of rows of little scoops. Here the author examines the traces of the game at Palmyra and shows that the Roman game of the third century (with five holes a side) was superseded when Palmyra's Temple of Baal was refashioned as a fort in the seventh century or later. The new Syrian game, with seven holes a side, was …
The Meroitic script and the understanding of alpha-syllabic writing
At the time of its decipherment by Griffith (1911), the Meroitic writing system was considered an alphabet. This alphabet was found to have a rather limited vowel notation. It was not until 1970 that the system was understood to have a more complex vowel notation. This system of vowel notation is comparable to what is found in an alpha-syllabary, a term used to describe the scripts of the Indian sub-continent, such as Brahmi and Devanagari. Since…
Dual marking and kinship terms in Afitti
Afitti is part of the Eastern Sudanic branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. It features dual and plural forms as part of its kinship terminology that have not been attested elsewhere in the language family. Kinship terminology in which possessive pronouns have merged with kinship terms is also known for a series of Eastern Sudanic languages. Nyimang, Afitti’s closest linguistic neighbor, features a dual form but it is limited to its verbal …
Opening a Grave in Antiquity – Formation and Interpretation in the Kingdom of Meroe
During Late Antiquity in the Middle Nile Valley, the cemeteries of the Kingdom of Meroe had their graves visited many times after the first burial took place. Even if robbers left a burial chamber open, it could still be reused soon after for another individual accompanied by a regular funerary ceremony. The term “grave activity” is introduced here to describe any human intervention likely to modify the environment of a tomb. It includes any (re-…
Cultural transmission in the ancient Near East
Mancala at the pyramids of Meroe
Game-boards carved on monuments offer an intriguing opportunity to track a certain mindset in time and space. In an earlier Antiquity article, the author showed us that mancala boards were carved on the Roman plinths at Palmyra by Arab soldiers. Here he takes us into Sudan, finding new mancala boards on the first-millennium pyramids at Meroe. With adroit detective work, he shows that these too are probably owed to military visitors, this time a g…
Indian ocean crossroads
The Maldives are an 850 km‐long string of atolls located centrally in the northern Indian Ocean basin. Because of this geographic situation, the present‐day Maldivian population has potential for uncovering genetic signatures of historic migration events in the region. We therefore studied autosomal DNA‐, mitochondrial DNA‐, and Y‐chromosomal DNA markers in a representative sample of 141 unrelated Maldivians, with 119 from six major settlements. …
Jeux De La Nature En Dépôts Votifs ET Funéraires Dans Les Royaumes Nubiens
In the Nile valley and since the Neolithic period, ritual offerings and deposits have included oddly-shaped stones whose meaning is still little understood. Both unusually shaped stones and fossils are attested in the Nubian kingdoms, where their presence was thought to be limited to royal graves and temples. Recent finds at Sai Island and Sedeinga show that, in the kingdom of Meroe, such curiosities could be associated with other non-royal conte…
Games on the seashore of Salalah
During the 2013 fieldwork of the French archaeological mission along the shores of the Arabian Sea, mancala games were discovered on the seashore of Salalah at the site of Ad-Dahariz. They are cup-hole carvings made directly into rock slabs and distributed in six distinct zones of the site. They usually consist of fourteen cup-holes aligned in two lines of seven, two supplementary holes being sometimes present on each side. They are the first of …
Intra- and inter-individual variation in δ13C and δ15N in human dental calculus and comparison to bone collagen and apatite isotopes
Duru Calculations and the Understanding of Mancala Expertise
Duru or rounds are a central aspect of calculating moves in a group of mancala games. It is shown that the ability to calculate multiple duru is a prerequisite to mancala (bao) expertise in Zanzibar, while duru-related optimization strategies explain the accomplishments of Maldivian mancala (ohvalhu) players. Since bao masters define duru calculation skills as part of bao expertise, their performance on duru calculation tasks is contrasted with t…
Production bias in cultural evolution
Facilitating Interaction
This re‐evaluation of existing data on board games from the Near Eastern Bronze Age demonstrates their function as social lubricants in cross‐cultural interaction. Board games are situated theoretically as liminoid practices, which lie outside the bounds of normative social behaviour and allow for interaction across social boundaries. Utilizing double‐sided game boards, with an indigenous game on one side and a newly introduced game on the other,…
Meroitic Graves with Roman Games
Alex de Voogt, Vincent Francigny, Pieter Baas, Meroitic Graves with Roman Games: Elites Moving the Borders of Play, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Vol. 167, No. 1 (2017), pp. 23-33
The Evolution of Cubic Dice
Cubic dice were brought by the Romans to the Low Countries, and are found in small numbers at many archaeological sites dating to the last 2000 years. We report on a systematic analysis of 110 well-dated dice from the Netherlands, showing that shape, pip configuration, and pip style changed significantly for bone and antler dice from the Roman to the recent historical period. Dice predating 650 CE are highly variable in all attributes, those dati…
The absence of games in the presence of claims. Reply to Garry Chick
"The absence of games in the presence of claims. Reply to Garry Chick." International Journal of Play, 6(3), pp. 322–323
The History and Distribution of ṭāb
Previous articleNext article FreeThe History and Distribution of ṭāb: A Survey of Petra's Gaming BoardsAlex de Voogt, Ahmad B. A. Hassanat, and Mahmoud B. AlhasanatAlex de VoogtAmerican Museum of Natural History Search for more articles by this author , Ahmad B. A. HassanatMuʾtah University, Jordan Search for more articles by this author , and Mahmoud B. AlhasanatAl-Hussein Bin Talal University, Jordan Search for more articles by this author PDFP…
Strategic games in society
The hypothesis presented in anthropology that games of strategy are more likely to be found in complex societies appears not to be informed by historical research on board and card games. The geographic distribution of games points to a history of trade and migration rather than a preference expressed by complex societies. Strategy games are primarily played by adults, while anthropological research on play has been primarily focused on children.…
Individual expression, cultural specificity and production bias in Ju|'hoan jewelry-making
Few ethnographers have documented the personal experiences of Khoisan communities and even more obscure are perceptions about San individualism and self-expression. Yet anthropologist Richard Lee, in his book The Dobe !Kung (1984), suggested that !Kung (also known as Zu|'hoasi, Ju|'hoansi or Ju|'hoan) women use different colored beads to create intricately patterned headbands whose designs are named and should be regarded as an original art form.…
Early childhood diets on the Nile
We explore early childhood dietary patterns in a Late Meroitic (first-fourth century CE) population (N = 11) from Sai Island, Sudan, using stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in serial samples from permanent first molar dentin. Results suggest an average age of weaning of 2.7 years, but with significant interindividual variation in the timing of weaning, with evidence for a later age at weaning for two females (average 3.5 years) compared with fo…
Cultural transmission of architectural traits
History (25 obras) · Computer Science (15 obras) · Art (14 obras) · Archaeology (11 obras) · Philosophy (11 obras) · History (10 obras) · Sociology (10 obras) · Ancient Egypt and Archaeology (9 obras) · Geography (9 obras) · Ancient history (8 obras)