Two New Publications, Two Different Worlds
It’s always a good week when something you’ve worked on finally makes its way into the world. This week, I’m happy to share two new publications. Both of which I’ve been involved in (in different ways and at different stages of my academic life). One takes us to the markets of the Moroccan High Atlas. The other into the pixelated world of student-created video games in an archaeology seminar.
Both projects explore how we can access and communicate the past in unconventional ways: through ethnographic observation and material analysis in one case, and through creative game development and critical pedagogy in the other. Here’s a quick look at both — and why I think they matter.
Reading the Souk: Marketplaces as More-than-Human Networks
The first paper, led by Benjamin Sichert and a wonderful interdisciplinary team, appears in the latest issue of the Ethnographisch-Archaeologische Zeitschrift:
📄 Sichert, Benjamin M., Christine Pümpin, Abdellah Azizi, u. a. „Material Traces of Marketplaces and How to Read Them – Ethnoarchaeological Data from a Rural Weekly Market (Souk) in the High Atlas Mountains, Morocco“. Ethnographisch-Archaeologische Zeitschrift 59, Nr. 1 (2025). https://doi.org/10.54799/ZWAI3308.
The article presents detailed documentation of a contemporary souk. It uses it to reflect on how archaeologists might better recognize and interpret ancient marketplaces. It discusses three central themes:
- Market life as a social and economic network involving humans and non-humans,
- Material traces left behind by market activities (and how we might find them archaeologically), and
- Taphonomic processes that alter or erase those traces — sometimes frustratingly, sometimes revealingly.
During my time at the University of Cologne, I contributed Structure from Motion (SfM) models of the market architecture and layout. Only a small piece of a much larger puzzle. What I love about this paper is that it doesn’t romanticize the ethnographic data. Instead, it uses it as “food for archaeological imagination” to quote the authors.
Archaeogaming in the Classroom: “That belongs in a museum!”
The second paper is a much more personal one — and one I presented in early form at a conference in China last year. It’s now published in the Journal of Ancient Civilizations 40(2) under the title:
“Archaeogaming: Teaching Archaeology through Creating Video Games”
📄 Hageneuer, Sebastian. „Archaeogaming: Teaching Archaeology through Creating Video Games“. Journal of Ancient Civilizations 40, Nr. 2 (2025): 213–27.
This article reflects on an interdisciplinary seminar I taught at the University of Cologne, where students from archaeology, digital humanities, and computational archaeology teamed up to design and build their own games. Titled “That belongs in a museum!”, the course focused on using game development to foster collaboration, challenge stereotypes, and reflect on representations of the past.
From decolonial narratives to heritage ethics, the student projects tackled complex topics through interactive storytelling and hands-on experimentation. I argue that creating games doesn’t just teach content — it builds digital literacy, critical thinking, and teamwork. In other words, archaeogaming isn’t just a gimmick. It’s pedagogy with real impact.
Two Projects, One Shared Spirit
At first glance, these publications couldn’t be more different: one rooted in fieldwork, the other in a seminar room full of laptops and game ideas. But both highlight how archaeology is expanding — embracing digital tools, experimental formats, and interdisciplinary methods to explore and communicate the past in more nuanced, inclusive ways.
Whether it’s through aerial photogrammetry in a Moroccan marketplace or branching dialogue trees in a student-built game, both projects share a commitment to rethinking how we create, share, and imagine archaeological knowledge.