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UE graduate Andrew Reinhard publishes book on the archaeology of video games

Posted: Thursday, June 21, 2018

UE graduate Andrew Reinhard has just published a book on the archaeology of video games. The book, titled Archaeogaming: An Introduction to Archaeology in and of Video Games, was released by Berghahn Books.

Alan Kaiser, UE professor of archaeology, said that Reinhard’s research “is cutting-edge and reflects well on UE’s archaeology program and the University.”

Reinhard graduated from UE in 1994 with a double major in archaeology/art history and English (writing), and earned an M.A. in art history and archaeology from the University of Missouri-Columbia.  He is currently director of publications for the American Numismatic Society and is working toward his PhD in archaeology at the University of York’s Center for Digital Heritage.

Reinhard was one of the first "archaeogamers," archaeologists who bring their real-world methodologies into virtual spaces, treating games as archaeological sites. 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. This salvage project was the first archaeological dig of an assemblage of video games, in this case thousands of Atari cartridges buried by the company in 1983, quickly becoming an urban legend. Reinhard has also excavated at the Etruscan site of Poggio Civitate (Murlo) in Italy, at Isthmia in Greece, and in Kansas and Illinois.

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