GAMES IN THE ANCIENT WORLD: PLACES, SPACES, ACCESSORIES, ALESSANDRO PACE, TIM PENN, ULRICH SCHÄDLER (EDS) | 63 Walter Crist Centre for the Arts in Society, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands wcrist@asu.edu Éric Piette ICTEAM, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium eric.piette@uclouvain.be Dennis J. N. J. Soemers Department of Advanced Computing Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands dennis.soemers@maastrichtuniversity.nl Matthew Stephenson College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia matthew.stephenson@flinders.ed.au Cameron Browne Department of Advanced Computing Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands cambolbro@googlemail.com Computational Approaches for Recognising and Reconstructing Ancient Games: The Case of Ludus Latrunculorum 1. INTRODUCTION THE DIGITAL LUDEME PROJECT 1.1 Approaches to Game Reconstruction T he existence of board games in the ancient world has been documented from the early days of archaeology, and along with the discovery of boards and their identification with games known from written texts, archaeologists and others interested in games have sought to produce playable rulesets to bring these ancient practices back to life. Some authors who have attempted to reconstruct the rules for ancient games have paid very close attention to the ancient sources, 1 while others have been more creative in their interpretations. 2 Usually, there is a degree of playtesting involved, to produce a game that seems to play well. Nevertheless, these reconstructions are subjective to varying degrees, and it is not always clear whether the rules that have been included in a particular reconstructed game are inspired from games that may be reasonably connected to their 1 e.g., Schädler (2001); Schädler (1994). 2 e.g, Becq de Fouquières (1869): 454–456; Bell (1979): 86–87. ancient counterparts or chosen for other reasons. is paper uses the example of the ancient Roman game Ludus Latrunculorum to demonstrate the ways that a computational approach can contribute to the processes of identifying games in the archaeological record and reconstructing playable rulesets. 3 1.2 The Digital Ludeme Project e Digital Ludeme Project is a five-year research project that seeks to improve our understanding of the development of (primarily) board games throughout recorded human history, through computational analyses of the available evidence. is task is made challenging by the paucity and incomplete nature of evidence for ancient games and the unreliable nature of much of the information that is available about them, which is oſten based on interpretations of the source material filtered through a modern (Western) lens. Another factor is that the rules for games are typically carefully craſted and fragile to change, and there is no guarantee that even well researched reconstructions of ancient rules that are entirely plausible within their historical and cultural contexts 3 Browne et al. (2019).