World of Warcraft Introduces Archaeology Profession

World of Warcraft, the world's largest online multiplayer role playing game (MMORPG), will soon release the third expansion pack for the game, 'Cataclysm'. In Cataclysm, players revisit WoW's world of Azeroth after it's been scrambled by cataclysms brought on by the advent of a dragon lord. The über-dramatic trailer shows a post-apocalyptic atmosphere and radical climate change, while magazine previews suggest a number of gameplay tweaks.

WoW Cataclysm: there be dragons.

One of the tweaks has implications for those of us who love old stuff. Though the core of WoW is monster-killing and questing, players can also add professions that allow them to earn money, create artifacts, and experience the virtual world in different ways. In 'Cataclysm' archaeology joins alchemy, blacksmithing, fishing, mining, first aid, and other skills as a possible profession for players.

This addition fits with the premise of Cataclysm: since much of the old world of Azeroth was transformed or destroyed by the advent of the dragon, there will be ample areas to search for ancient artifacts. eurogamer.net got a preview of the expansion:

WOW's landscape is studded with ruins, and you'll be able to search these for artefacts - narrowing down your search within marked regions, rather than using nodes like mining. You'll uncover fragments which can be assembled into artefacts for the pure pleasure of collection and completion, as well as - for lore-junkies - filling in gaps in Azeroth's history. You'll get some loot too... But the main point is to add texture to the world and a new avenue for box-ticking comfort gaming - as well as, quite appropriately, to document the past of a virtual world that has begun to change before our eyes.

The idea of documenting the past of a virtual world from within it is really intriguing. Normally I would be critical of this old-fashioned stochastic model of social change (one big event changes everything), but I think dragon attacks get a pass. This is what the 'Archeology Journal' where you record your finds will look like:

(WoWarchaeology.net)

WoWwiki summarizes what you can do as a World of Warcraft archaeologist:

• Intended as a casual profession for players to enjoy in their "downtime".
• Focused on locating, piecing together, and appraising artifacts unearthed by the Cataclysm.
• Interacting with an artifact you find is similar to other gathering professions. It has been specifically stated that you will be able to track both Artifacts and your regular "tracking" for gathering professions. Instead of tracking individual nodes, you will instead search marked regions.
• Artifacts will go into a new artifact journal instead of your inventory.
• Placing an artifact in your journal will allow you to "study" it and progressively unlock new rewards.
• Unlocks unique rewards such as vanity pets, mounts, and other "toys", with occasional rare quality weapons or armor.
• Players will be able to read ancient runes found amidst ruins and in dungeons to provide themselves and other players with buffs.
• Some items and discoveries will be heavily geared towards expanding the game's lore, filling in plot holes, and documenting the history of the world as it was before the Cataclysm. Players will reportedly be able to compile what amounts to a lore database.
• A mock-up of the Archaeology interface is presented as a hand-written journal, with a listing of artifacts, relics, and related reagents and tasks, as well as artwork and a description for each relic. Artifacts are also given a "black market value", indicating that they can perhaps be sold for profit. There has been an indication that your journal may come with some form of "mini-game" to study findings.

Over at Blizzard Games, there seems to have been an internal struggle about the 'social relevance' of archaeology. Archaeology was originally intended for release with the now-defunct 'Paths of the Titans' expansion (scrapped late last year), where it was going to be more integral to the storyline and to character development. In 'Cataclysm' its role has been reduced to more of a collecting game independent of the plot, which drew a mixed review from IGN UK:

Originally, Archaeology was going to help advance players along the Path of the Titans, but with that gone, it is now a profession more keyed towards the casual player base. It functions as a collectible meta-game that rewards players with mostly cosmetic items. We were told, though, that players would be able to sometimes get something not only functional, but powerful from the profession. We're not sure how we feel about the change it has undergone quite yet.

To translate a little bit: in the original conception, collecting artifacts was the key to understanding past events. Players would need it to advance, in other words to achieve their goals in the game's present tense. The Cataclysm version, by contrast, seems to be centered around collecting and trading interesting objects for the fun of it, with limited career applications - a hobby, rather than a profession. Here's a Blizzard employee talking about the original version:


Don't worry, I don't understand the bizarre WoW-speak either (the free trial was really fun, but I never got deeper than that), but it shows you how deeply concepts derived from archaeology are embedded in the game's specific culture.

Of course, the details are scarce as yet, since Cataclysm won't be released until this fall. But it's clear that contemporary debates between archaeologists and collectors are being reflected a strange mirror here as Blizzard decides whether archaeology is a way of understanding the present by telling stories about the past, or just a collection of pretty things that can be sold on the black market.

Of course, you might be asking why archaeologists should care about a video game. First, the numbers: WoW has almost 12 million players worldwide. If a significant number of them are going to spend time looking for artifacts in ruins and putting together puzzles about the past, that's hundreds of thousands of people doing archaeology - or thinking they're doing archaeology. What they're doing, and the way the discipline is portrayed, has a long-term public significance.

Second: videogames have been one of the world's main cultural activities for a generation now. A lot of people - youth, but also adults - spend as much or more time playing games as they do reading, listening to music, or socializing with friends. Whether you like that fact or not doesn't matter. If thinking about videogames tempts you to deliver a pious lecture about the superiority of books and board games, you're willfully ignoring reality. Videogames will become more pervasive - the relevant question is what people are learning in games and how it affects real-world attitudes and behaviors. For archaeologists, it matters if players think that looting relics out of ruins is all the profession is about, and carries no consequences.

So, when will we see a real collaboration between archaeologists and videogame designers? Or do readers know of any successful examples? When will UNESCO add videogames to the intangible heritage list?

Ancient Thing Store

What we all dream of. H/T engrish.com.

James Cuno Wants to Party Like It's 1899

Some yellow rag called Science News just put up this op-ed from James Cuno, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, in which he advocates the abolition of the 1970 UNESCO treaty, the return of the colonial-era partage system, and removal of restrictions on museums purchasing looted antiquities. Cuno is flogging his new book, Who Owns Antiquities?, and has also recently appeared on WBUR Boston promoting his views. (Disclaimer: I have not yet read the book.)

Let me take a break from my head exploding and eyes popping out of my head to explain the jargony stuff:

• The 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property is the basic international law dealing with looted artifacts. Put simply, it says that before you can buy an artifact or work of art, you have to a) have evidence that it was legally exported from its country of origin, or b) was publicly known prior to the convention entering into force.

• ‘Partage’ refers to the old custom of divvying up antiquities found on excavation sites between the excavator and the host government – I get to pick one, you get to pick one, and so on. As soon as countries like Egypt or Turkey got out from under the thumb of the European powers, they got rid of this system and passed laws keeping all artifacts found in their country.
  

Resuming my head explosion, we return to the op-ed, which for some reason is disguised as an interview. The opening header says what his critique is really about: ‘treaty on antiquities hinders access for museums’. Already we can tell that Cuno is more interested in getting goodies for his museum than he is in stopping looting.

He relies on some familiar but weak arguments, like the notion that the 1970 UNESCO treaty has not eliminated looting, and that looting is inevitable. This is an old saw trotted out by people who want to make it easier to buy illicit antiquities. Laws, by themselves, don't do anything - the real conversation has to be about effective enforcement and harm reduction. The Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species has not stopped people killing tigers or rhinos – does that mean we should get rid of it, and go buy us some tiger skins? (For ‘research’, of course.)

Moving on to the downright offensive, Cuno argues that modern nation-states are not direct descendants of ancient peoples, so they don’t have any right to control artifacts of ancient cultures on their territory.

Talk about glass houses. For centuries, European and American collectors and museums plundered and stole everything they could get their hands on to build their collections – which is why the Parthenon Marbles are in London and the bust of Nefertiti in Berlin. These artifacts were acquired to feed the nationalist ambitions of European nations. For Europeans or Americans to turn around and complain about nationalism when it doesn’t suit their interests is – how to put it politely? – ironic. Cuno fantasizes about a return to the good old days when white guys in pith helmets and knee socks got to decide who should own the world's antiquities. Thankfully, those days are not coming back.

He closes with a whopper: partage is “the only reasonable way to protect the legacy of antiquities and promote a global understanding of what they represent”. Let’s be real here. Partage is a symbol of colonial domination. Egypt is likelier to invite the Israelis back into Sinai than to adopt this system again. But beyond that, it’s a bullshit argument. We can all think of a dozen successful exhibitions of antiquities that have toured the world to great acclaim, with support of the governments that own them. There is a new trend toward bi-lateral agreements that could make such loans easier and more frequent: the US and Italy just made a deal to allow more Italian art and artifacts to come to the US, in return for the a crackdown on the import of illicit antiquities. These are reasonable ways of promoting global understanding. Dispersing finds around the world to feed the ego of museum directors, not so much.

It’s annoying to hear vapid ideas from an intelligent man. But more frustrating than that is that comments like Cuno’s are a distraction from the real conversations we need to be having – archaeologists and collectors alike – about what to do about the looting issue. There is an ongoing demand for antiquities, while some countries have a huge surplus of artifacts that languish in warehouses for decades. A regulated, licit antiquities market could quell demand for looted artifacts while providing cash where it is needed for conservation. By the same token, the nation-state sometimes plays a negative role in cultural heritage issues. But what we need is a nuanced discussion in an atmosphere of respect, not the self-interested musings of a frustrated would-be collector.

In deense of Science News, they’ve also published a good article profiling recent research on looting by Morag Kersel, Christina Luke, and others. I should also give a nod to some fellow archaeology bloggers. Paul Barford has his own comments on the Cuno article and recent tightening of Egyptian laws. Derek Fincham notes the importance of openness and transparency in the antiquities trade, something which collectors avoid like plague-ridden vampires. Finally, David Gill points out that we need to look at ethics as well as expediency in our approach to the looting issue.

Cai Mingchao: Civil Disobedience at Christie's

Today’s news from the antiquities trade involves a fashion designer, the Opium Wars, Jackie Chan, political blackmail, and a creative act of civil disobedience. The biggest private art auction in world history concluded in Paris at Christie’s last Wednesday, as the collection of fashion designers Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé sold for $484.6 million (the catalogue alone ran 1,800 pages).

The biggest stir was caused by an anonymous telephone bidder who purchased two Qing dynasty bronze fountainheads for $20 million each. The heads were among a dozen looted in October 1860 by from Beijing’s Old Summer Palace by Anglo-French troops during the Second Opium War. The palace was stripped of artwork prior to its destruction on the orders of Lord Elgin, then British High Commissioner to China. (And, ironically, son of the Elgin of Parthenon Marbles fame). Since the Christie’s sale was announced, the Chinese government has been demanding the return of the bronzes as stolen property. Actor Jackie Chan was quoted in the Times Online as saying “They remain looted items, no matter whom they were sold to. Whoever took it out [of China] is himself a thief. It was looting yesterday. It is still looting today.”

Cai Mingchao reads his statement (Photo Brothersoft).

The mystery bidder was revealed today as Cai Mingchao, a Shanghai collector and dealer and consultant for China’s National Treasure Fund, a government organization which purchases looted and stolen relics on behalf of the state. There was, however, a catch: Cai declared that he has no intention of paying for the heads, and that he placed the bid in order to sabotage the auction. He excused his action as an act of patriotic civil disobedience: "every Chinese would have done the same as I did. It's just that I got the opportunity. I have fulfilled my duty." He also noted that because the Chinese government had deemed the sale illegal, he would not have been able to take delivery of the heads within China anyhow.

While it is unclear whether Cai’s scuttling of the auction was in any way sanctioned by the Chinese government, it fits with the tenor of its recent statements. The French decision to allow sale of the bronzes caused “serious damage to Chinese people's cultural rights, interests and national sentiments,” according to the China State Administration of Cultural Heritage.

On the surface, it is easy to admire Cai Mingchao for risking his reputation as a dealer and collector in pursuit of historical justice. Among the more repulsive episodes in European colonialism, the Opium Wars were fought to defend unregulated narco-trafficking in China by government-sponsored British and French cartels. Beijing’s Summer Palace was looted and burned as a gesture of revenge, and Chinese still smart from the humiliation.

I am generally sympathetic toward repatriation demands. I also see how useful civil disobedience at auctions could be as a strategy for derailing the sale of obviously looted antiquities. (I have heard of other examples, which I will track down for a different post.) Some further context, however, makes the story a little murkier. Of the original twelve heads, five are missing and five are back in China, making the two YSL heads the only two left on the market. While they are interesting and significant as artifacts, they are not particularly ancient. Nor they even particularly important compared to other looted Chinese treasures floating around the antiquities market. And China already owns most of the extant pieces! I suspect the government has chosen to pursue these particular artifacts in order to whip up nationalist and anti-colonialist sentiment both at home and to sympathetic audiences abroad.

The play of meaning around these artifacts is fascinating. While they were clearly collected by Bergé and Saint Laurent as pure objets d’art, no one involved in the auction pretends that they are only that. Cai and the Chinese government have made them into patriotic symbols, while Bergé used them to snub China with a facile statement about human rights. According to the Daily Telegraph, Bergé offered to give China the heads in return for human rights concessions:

"I acquired them and I am completely protected by the law, so what the Chinese are saying is a bit ridiculous," he said. "But I am prepared to offer this bronze head to the Chinese straight away.

“All they have to do is to declare they are going to apply human rights, give the Tibetans back their freedom and agree to accept the Dalai Lama on their territory.

"If they do that, I would be very happy to go myself and bring these two Chinese heads to put them in the Summer Palace in Beijing. It's obviously blackmail but I accept that."

The amount of real charity behind this “offer” is, of course, nil. As Bergé surely knows, this particular piece of “obvious blackmail” had a 100% chance of strongly offending the Chinese government and zero chance of success. His gesture has the odor of colonialist smugness: the uppity natives might be allowed to have their baubles back if they meet the rational demands of the white man. But of course they won’t because, after all, they’re not very civilized, now are they, old chap?

It is important, however, that Bergé acknowledges, in principle, that the heads are not simply art objects. Dealers in stolen antiquities often insist that the value of the objects is truly to be found in their inner aesthetic aura, so that their lack of provenance (and the destroyed archaeological sites the looters leave behind), are unimportant. This case exposes a revealing chink in the armor of that argument.

Link roundup:

Portfolio on the auction
Portfolio on Cai's announcement
The story in the Times Online
Danwei on Cai
The Daily Telegraph on Bergé's "offer"
Some AP photos of the bronzes