A Corpus of Gaming Boards from Roman Britain

Tim Penn; Summer Courts

A Corpus of Gaming Boards from Roman Britain

Tim Penn andSummer Courts and more

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Abstract

This contribution draws together a corpus of c.100 gaming boards from Roman Britain cataloged by type. The data show that three types of games were played in Britain during the Roman period with a heavy emphasis on game playing among military communities, though board gaming also took place to a lesser degree in rural and urban civilian contexts. PDF available upon request.

Key takeaways

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The corpus catalogs approximately 100 gaming boards from Roman Britain, emphasizing military gaming activities.
Ludus latrunculorum represents 59% of identified boards, indicating its popularity.
Military sites account for 64% of gaming boards, suggesting a strong connection to military leisure.
The study challenges the urban-centric view of gaming in Roman Britain, highlighting rural participation as well.
Data collection utilized multiple archaeological databases and crowdsourcing for comprehensive coverage.

Figures

Fig. 1. Stone Ludus Latrunocolorum board,

squares (Bell 1979, 84). At this juncture, we would like to stress that the designations used here do not reflect any differentiation in grid-size as so few complete grids remain. Furthermore, any adjustments to grid- size probably did not reflect a substantial difference in game mechanics or underlying rules but would presumably help to tailor the time taken to complete an individual play through, with larger boards leading to lengthier gameplay. Type 1A is the simplest type of ludus latrunculorum board, comprising a series of vertical and horizontal lines arranged in a perpendicular fashion to form the playing squares (see Fig. 1). These boards are the most common in our dataset, with at least 54 examples (or 55 percent of our corpus) securely identified. Type 1B (Figs. 2-3) is differentiated from type 1A by two diagonal lines which bisect the playing squares into four triangles, though it is unclear whether this represents any difference in the playing of the game itself. This may reflect the possibility of diagonal moves, though the available textual evidence provides no support for this hypothesis. Alternatively, this variation may have been purely decorative. In general, this slightly more elaborate type of gaming board is less common with a total of 4 examples attested (4 percent). Boards for playing ludus latruncolorum are known in

However, the easy recognizability and simplistic design of Ludus Latrunculorum boards may cause confusion. For instance, items from Venta Icenorum (Fig. 4), Balmuildy Fort, East Dunbartonshire (not illustrated), and a stray find from Ravenglass (not illustrated) all feature grids formed from lines scored into the surface of tiles. All of these items were reported as being possible gaming boards based on the presence of scored chequerboard

Fig. 4. Inscribed ceramic fragment, possibly a game board corresponding to our type 1A. Found at Venta Icenorum. TNeenane TT wel awn, ONTO 2. 410 Le Wl

At this stage, we can make some preliminary remarks on the distribution of these boards (Fig. 8). First, as the information contained in the appendix shows, that the vast majority of gaming boards identified in Roman Britain come from military contexts; while we are hesitant to undertake detailed quantitative analysis before we have finalized all of our data, of the 51 known sites with boards, 29 (56.8 percent) are either forts and fortlets on or near the frontiers, military vict or other sites explicitly linked to the army. The number of rural settlements (11, or 21.5 percent) or urban sites (8 or 5.6 percent) with boards is considerably smaller. Two gaming boards cannot presently be associated with any findspot, though in practice it is likely that these were from a rural context. The same patterns still hold true if we analyse the number of individual boards, rather than the number of unique sites at which they appear. Two boards (8 percent) cannot be associated with a specific site, but military sites account for 63 boards (64 percent), rural sites for 12 boards (12 percent) and urban contexts for 21 boards (21.4 percent). Of these boards, eight boards were found in burial contexts — seven of these were associated with urban centres and one with a rural context. This represents a substantial part of the sample known from Roman Britain and we hope to explore the significance of this trend in our future research. The current state of the data suggests that the number of boards from contexts with a military nature is, if anything, underrepresented. The wider communities linked to the army were certainly familiar with gaming, as is shown by the find spot of the South Shields gaming board in the civilian vicus, which we have grouped with our military sites (Allason-Jones & Miket 1984, 349, no. 12.1). See Appendix 1 for notes on site designations. Similarly, although we have classified the town of Corbridge as an urban site, its close proximity to Hadrian’s Wall indicates strong military connections for this community. The same can be said of the mining works at Bryn Y Castell, which may have Fig. 8. Chart showing the number of sites with gaming ards grouped according to site type (data from Appendix 1

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