tic worlds “perceive” their landscapes? For now, automatons unquestioningly operate within the constraints of a world’s rules. They “see” the landscape through software instructions. They engage with that space based on parameters, acting when acted upon. It’s little different than a human commuter in a rut.
Inhabiting synthetic landscapes can, over time, create a material record of that occupation through in-world crafting and building, through rubbish, but also through documentation of what came before. Players record and photograph their creations, share them, save them. It’s a rich record of space and time that the natural world will never see. It is perhaps easier to illustrate synthetic landscapes because they can be recorded during exploration, and can even “instanced” for exploration by others on their own hardware, helpful if one wishes to have results independently confirmed by others, something not normally possible in field archaeology, which can be a destructive process leaving only data but not the primary source(s) of that data (i.e., strata).
Speaking of visualization, how does the archaeologist-player map the landscape of a given synthetic world? Some games come with built-in maps, while others tease out their mapping only through a player’s progress. Other synthetic worlds have no maps at all, so players may either hand-draw their explorations, or rely on memory, the latter of which most non-human entities do. In many games, players rarely see their world from above, but frequently at eye-level. We remember how to get from one part of the forest to another through experience, or from following something, curious to see where it goes. We create a mental map, which is visual, at times aural, occasionally punctuated with memories of events that happen along the trail or traverse. We learn the game’s rules for wayfinding in the synthetic wilderness, and then lead others to what we’ve seen, or we write about it so others can follow in our footsteps. Some of these writings are literally called “walk-throughs.” With an active player community (or a preserved collective memory), we also have what can equate to “tavern archaeology” in the natural world. Yannis Lolos wrote about this Land of Sikyon, about approaching local Greeks in taverns and other gathering spots to share a drink and listen to stories. At times these stories would provide clues to where to look for previously undocumented archaeological sites, which were then compiled into a gazeteer for future archaeologists to use as they continue to understand the history of Sikyonia. Video game archaeologists should do well to spend time with player communities on reddit and elsewhere for the same reasons as Lolos. We can learn from indigenous populations, can work together with them, and can share what we find with them.
When an archaeologist explores the landscapes within a synthetic world, they notice both presence and absence in the archaeological record. The archaeologist applies filters, scanning for vegetation, animal life, water and other topographical features, and evidence of current or past use and occupation. One landscape flows into the next, synthetic biomes bleeding into each other. The archaeologist looks for boundaries, for patterns, whether confronting the landscape head-on, or floating above it in a flying vehicle or in a disembodied “photo mode” provided by the game. The archaeologist can ask why some spaces are neglected and others used, and if used, how frequently and why. It is a search for an underlying algorithm or a set of landscape behaviors as designed. In most synthetic worlds, landscapes are very much characters and have their own rules on how to act, which includes weather-making and resource-production. Landscapes in synthetic worlds have personalities, or at least that is how players perceive the spaces in which they occupy.
There is a haptic necessity to understanding landscapes. In order to write about landscape in an archaeological way, it must be experienced first-hand by the archaeologist. What applies in the natural w