Andrew Reinhard is the Director of Publications for the American Numismatic Society and is currently working towards his PhD in archaeology at the University of York's (UK) Centre for Digital Heritage. He coined the term "archaeogaming" and runs the archaeogaming.com blog and twitter. In 2014, he and a team of archaeologists helped excavate the Atari Burial Ground in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1. Real-World Archaeogaming
Chapter 2. Playing as Archaeologists
Chapter 3. Video Games as Archaeological Sites
Chapter 4. Material Culture of the Immaterial

Conclusion

Appendix: No Man's Sky Archaeological Survey (NMSAS) Code of Ethics

Works Cited
Games Cited
Index

A general introduction to archeogaming describing the intersection of archaeology and video games and applying archaeological method and theory into understanding game-spaces.
"[T]he author's clarity of style makes it accessible to all readers, with or without an archaeological background. Moreover, his personal anecdotes and gameplay experiences with different game titles, from which his ideas often develop, make it very enjoyable reading."-Antiquity
Video games exemplify contemporary material objects, resources, and spaces that people use to define their culture. Video games also serve as archaeological sites in the traditional sense as a place, in which evidence of past activity is preserved and has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology, and which represents a part of the archaeological record.
From the introduction:
Archaeogaming, broadly defined, is the archaeology both in and of digital games... As will be described in the following chapters, digital games are archaeological sites, landscapes, and artifacts, and the game-spaces held within those media can also be understood archaeologically as digital built environments containing their own material culture... Archaeogaming does not limit its study to those video games that are set in the past or that are treated as "historical games," nor does it focus solely on the exploration and analysis of ruins or of other built environments that appear in the world of the game. Any video game-from Pac-Man to Super Meat Boy-can be studied archaeologically.