After presenting and workshopping this paper since 2023, I’m so happy to finally see it in (open access) print in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal. It comes after being fairly disenchanted with the current focus on storytelling in archaeological interpretation, a craft that is rarely effectively deployed and doesn’t adequately exercise the collective nature of assembling and prescencing data in archaeology.
I used examples from past and more recent research, including Çatalhöyük in Second Life, Other Eyes, and the Avebury Papers project to demonstrate how playful, creative questions can transform our research questions and understanding of the past.
The article benefitted from excellent feedback from Dawn Hadley, Gabe Moshenska, Catherine Frieman, Kathryn Killackey, the editors and proofreader and the anonymous peer reviewers. I was also able to discuss some of the concepts with the fab new materialists at Leicester, though much of the relationship of worldbuilding with assemblage theory was lost through the editing process. I’m still (forever) working on a book that is a more comprehensive exploration of some of these concepts, so perhaps it will come out there.
Finally, I’m very excited that I am working on a Worldbuilding game with Aris Politopolous, Kathryn Killackey and Stu Eve to be played at the upcoming TAG 2025 meeting in York.
The citation, until it makes it off online to print:
Morgan C. Archaeology as Worldbuilding. Cambridge Archaeological Journal. Published online 2025:1-10. doi:10.1017/S0959774325100164
Colleen Morgan 