Jeu et divination : un nouveau témoignage de l'époque romaine

Dans l’Antiquité, la frontière entre jeu et divination est souvent difficile à tracer. Lancer les dés ou les osselets constituent ainsi tantôt un jeu d’adresse et de compétition, tantôt un moyen de prédire l’avenir. Mais les dieux sont responsables de la manière dont les dés ou les astragales retombent, déterminant le succès ou l’échec... Une scène de jeu découverte à Angers pourrait constituer un nouveau témoignage de la pratiqu

Le jeu, révélateur des sociétés

Si le goût du jeu est aussi ancien que l’humanité, ses pratiques s’adaptent continuellement aux transformations des structures et des normes sociales dans l’espace et le temps. Hier comme aujourd’hui, les jeux sont à la fois un facteur de transmission et de construction des valeurs et des compétences qu’une société entend valoriser. Les jeux nous livrent en modèle réduit une certaine vision du monde, régie par des règles qui varient sans cesse. Leur étude permet de saisir une façon culturelle de penser les rapports de genre, entre garçons et filles, femmes et hommes, enfants et adultes, et plus largement l’organisation de la vie en société, dans toutes ses dimensions, politique, identitaire et religieuse. Les jeux sont donc des objets d’histoire à part entière, qui peuvent apparaître à un moment historique donné, connaître une vogue exceptionnelle, puis tomber dans l’oubli, ou persister et se transmettre au-delà des frontières de pays, de langues et de religions, tout en se transformant

Jouer dans l’Antiquité: identité et multiculturalité: Dossier thématique

Une approche pluridisciplinaire, croisant données archéologiques, écrites et iconographiques permet de saisir les modes de circulation des jeux en Méditerranée antique. Ce dossier ouvre plusieurs pistes de recherche sur les enjeux identitaires, réels ou imaginaires de la culture ludique antique dans la longue durée, de l’Égypte pharaonique à la fin de l’Antiquité.Abstract A pluridisciplinary approach, crossing archaeological, written and iconographic sources allows us to grasp the modes of circulation of play and games in the ancient Mediterranean. This special issue opens several avenues of research on the identity issues, real or imaginary, conveyed by ancient play culture, from pharaonic Egypt to the end of Antiquity

Reassessing Roman and Late Antique ‘Marbles Lanes’: one game or many?

Characterised by the presence of multiple depressions or pockets in a variety of arrangements, and, in some cases, the presence of a single, double, or triple ‘start line’ carved into horizontal stone surfaces, marble lanes in their variety of forms open a window onto ancient play that few have looked through. Thought to be a playing surface for some kind of throwing or rolling game which involved the use of glass or ceramic spheres, Roman marble lanes have received comparatively little attention in the recent upswing of scholarship on ancient play, partially as a result of the relative dearth of textual and iconographic sources discussing or depicting their usage, but these playing surfaces nevertheless represent a major corpus of ludic material. This contribution summarises past work on marble lanes before exploring the limited textual and iconographic source material related to playing with marbles. It offers a tentative new typology by which to categorise marble lanes and a non-exhaustive list of these playing surfaces recorded at archaeological sites around the Mediterranean. It then moves onto a discussion of the game/games that may be played on these boards, arguing that the wide variations in the different layouts for marble lanes may indicate that they were used not for one tightly-defined game, but more likely facilitated the playing of a loosely connected family of games, with implicaitons for how we think about communities of play in the past

Trends in extreme weather events in Europe: implications for national and European Union adaptation strategies

This report, based on a comprehensive collection of scientific data from the last 20 years, provides a rallying call for Europe’s policy makers to come together to devise common strategies to help mitigate the physical, human and economic costs of the rising number of extreme weather events in Europe, such as extreme heat and cold, extremes of precipitation, storms, winds and surges, and drought. Highlights refer to the nature of the evidence for climate-driven changes in extreme weather in the past, the potential impact of further climate change in altering the pattern of these extremes, and possible adaptation strategies for dealing with extreme weather impacts. It first provides information on extreme weather events and trends in recent decades as well as related impacts upon society. It is followed by an introduction to the scientific background on global warming and weather extremes, and the projections of future trends of meteorological extreme events that emerge from climate models under various scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, approaches to adaptation are introduced and recommendations provided. Readers wishing to obtain full source details for the figures, tables and references are recommended to consult the full report, which also includes more detailed analyses of the climatic conditions in various sub-regions of the EU

Foundations of Digital Arch{\ae}oludology

Digital Archaeoludology (DAL) is a new field of study involving the analysis and reconstruction of ancient games from incomplete descriptions and archaeological evidence using modern computational techniques. The aim is to provide digital tools and methods to help game historians and other researchers better understand traditional games, their development throughout recorded human history, and their relationship to the development of human culture and mathematical knowledge. This work is being explored in the ERC-funded Digital Ludeme Project. The aim of this inaugural international research meeting on DAL is to gather together leading experts in relevant disciplines - computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, computational phylogenetics, mathematics, history, archaeology, anthropology, etc. - to discuss the key themes and establish the foundations for this new field of research, so that it may continue beyond the lifetime of its initiating project.Comment: Report on Dagstuhl Research Meeting. Authored/edited by all participants. Appendices by Thierry Depauli

Scientific and human errors in a snow model intercomparison

International audienceTwenty-seven models participated in the Earth System Model - Snow Model Intercomparison Project (ESM-SnowMIP), the most data-rich MIP dedicated to snow modelling. Our findings do not support the hypothesis advanced by previous snow MIPs: evaluating models against more variables, and providing evaluation datasets extended temporally and spatially does not facilitate identification of key new processes requiring improvement to model snow mass and energy budgets, even at point scales. In fact, the same modelling issues identified by previous snow MIPs arose: albedo is a major source of uncertainty, surface exchange parametrizations are problematic and individual model performance is inconsistent. This lack of progress is attributed partly to the large number of human errors that led to anomalous model behaviour and to numerous resubmissions. It is unclear how widespread such errors are in our field and others; dedicated time and resources will be needed to tackle this issue to prevent highly sophisticated models and their research outputs from being vulnerable because of avoidable human mistakes. The design of and the data available to successive snow MIPs were also questioned. Evaluation of models against bulk snow properties was found to be sufficient for15 some but inappropriate for more complex snow models whose skills at simulating internal snow properties remained untested. Discussions between the authors of this paper on the purpose of MIPs revealed varied, and sometimes contradictory, motivations behind their participation. These findings started a collaborative effort to adapt future snow MIPs to respond to the diverse needs of the communit