Department of Anthropology, Economics and Political Science
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Browsing Department of Anthropology, Economics and Political Science by Author "Biittner, Katie"
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Item Chert raw material utilization at the Bark site (BbGp-12), Peterborough County, Southern Ontario(2006) Biittner, Katie; Jamieson, Susan M.To understand how specific cherts were used in stone tool manufacture at the fifteenth-century Bark site (BbGp-12), Peterborough County, Ontario, 164 artifacts from the chert assemblage are analysed for their raw material attributes. A combination of macroscopic, petrographic, and palynological analyses are used to identify the provenance of the most abundant chert types used by site inhabitants, assigning them to the Onondaga, Fossil Hill, and Upper Gull River Formations. We conclude, contraEley and von Bitter (1989), that acritarch genus identification is not required to discriminate among these chert types. Instead, relative abundance of different palynomorph subgroups (based on morphology), and relative abundance of acritarchs versus other microfossils (chitinozoan, graptolite, scolecodont, and trilete spore fragments) are more significant identifying characteristics. The attribution of cherts to distant sources allows us to explore ideas about local kin-based access to high quality, exotic materials.Item Fourteen years of archaeological and heritage research in the Iringa Region, Tanzania(2020) Miller, Jennifer M.; Werner, J. J.; Biittner, Katie; Willoughby, Pamela R.The Iringa Region is famous among archaeologists for the Acheulean site of Isimila, and among historians as the stronghold where Chief Mkwawa led the Hehe resistance against German colonial forces. However, our research reveals that Iringa has a rich archaeological record that spans the period from the Stone Age into the recent past. This article summarizes the results of 14 years of research by our team, the Iringa Region Archaeological Project (IRAP). Since 2006, IRAP members have recorded 67 sites, and this only scratches the surface of the archaeological potential in the area. These sites, some of which were recorded in conjunction with local participants, have archaeological component characteristic of the Early, Middle, and Later Stone Age, the Iron Age, and the recent past. We consider the archaeological and historical value of Iringa to be high and hope that this work inspires future research, tourism, and conservation efforts in the area.Item A German rifle casing and Chief Mkwawa of the Wahehe: the colonial and post-colonial significance of Mlambalasi rockshelter, Iringa Region, Tanzania(2019) Willoughby, Pamela R.; Biittner, Katie; Bushozi, Pastory M.; Miller, Jennifer M.During the 2010 excavations of Mlambalasi rockshelter, Iringa Region, Tanzania, a single rifle bullet casing was recovered. Analysis of this casing found that it was manufactured in 1877 at the munitions factory in Danzig for the German infantry’s Mauser 71 rifle. This casing is thus directly linked to the period of German colonization of Tanganyika, during which Iringa was a key centre of anti-colonial resistance. Mlambalasi was the location of the last stand of Chief Mkwawa of the Hehe people, and this bullet casing provides a tangible link to his uprising during the 1890s. In light of this colonial context and our ongoing research at Mlambalasi, this find is used to illustrate that a single artifact can reinforce multiple narratives about the past and the significance of an archaeological site.Item Inspecting the foundation of Mystery House(2019) Aycock, John; Biittner, KatieComputer games are recent artifacts that have had, and continue to have, enormous cultural impact. In this interdisciplinary collaboration between computer science and archaeology, we closely examine one such artifact: the 1980 Apple II game Mystery House, the first graphical adventure. We focus on implementation rather than gameplay, treating the game as a digital artifact. What can we learn about the game and its development process through reverse engineering and analysis of the code, data, and game image? Our exploration includes a technical critique of the code, examining the heretofore uncritical legacy of Ken Williams as a programmer. As game development is a human activity, we place it in a theoretical framework from archaeology, to show how a field used to analyze physical artifacts might adapt to shed new light on digital games.Item LeGACy code: studying how (amateur) game developers used Graphic Adventure Creator(2020) Aycock, John; Biittner, KatieHow did game programmers use early game development tools, and how does this fit into the bigger picture of how humans use tools and technology? To help answer these questions, we embark on an interdisciplinary collaboration between archaeology and computer science. Graphic Adventure Creator (GAC) was released in the mid-1980s for a number of microcomputers; we focus here on the 1986 version for the ZX Spectrum, a popular UK computer of that era. GAC was a game-development tool for creating text adventure games, optionally with graphic images. We have amassed a corpus of nearly all known GAC-produced games for the Spectrum – over 130 – and reverse-engineered the game format. We extracted out all the games’ data, and built a software framework to perform static and dynamic analysis of all these games at scale. This empirical data, plus contextual information from some interviews we conducted, gives us unique insight into the nature of how this tool was used to make games.Item LeGACy code: studying how (amateur) game developers used Graphic Adventure Creator(2020) Aycock, John; Biittner, KatieHow did game programmers use early game development tools, and how does this fit into the bigger picture of how humans use tools and technology? To help answer these questions, we embark on an interdisciplinary collaboration between archaeology and computer science. Graphic Adventure Creator (GAC) was released in the mid-1980s for a number of microcomputers; we focus here on the 1986 version for the ZX Spectrum, a popular UK computer of that era. GAC was a game-development tool for creating text adventure games, optionally with graphic images. We have amassed a corpus of nearly all known GAC-produced games for the Spectrum – over 130 – and reverse-engineered the game format. We extracted out all the games’ data, and built a software framework to perform static and dynamic analysis of all these games at scale. This empirical data, plus contextual information from some interviews we conducted, gives us unique insight into the nature of how this tool was used to make games.Item The middle and later stone age of the Iringa region southern Tanzania: an introduction(2007) Biittner, Katie; Bushozi, Pastory M.; Willoughby, Pamela R.is well known for the richness of its Stone Age past. But what we know about its early history comes from a limited number of northern sites such as Olduvai Gorge, as well as Nasera rockshelter and Mumba Cave near Lake Eyasi. The Iringa Region in the south, however, also contains a long Stone Age record. It begins with the Acheulean at Isimila Korongo and Mgongo, both located just outside of the modern regional capital of Iringa. But the Stone Age past continues in a series of granite rockshelters and caves. Pamela Willoughby first saw these sites in 2005, and directed brief test excavations of two of them in 2006. It became clear immediately that they may contain the entire post-Acheulean cultural record. This paper introduces three rockshelters from which archaeological material was recovered in July and August 2006. This research was done to test models of the emergence of modern humans in this part of Africa (Willoughby 2007). This article introduces new sites and presents preliminary results from the initial fieldwork. Pamela Willoughby describes the sites, the general framework of this research project, and the cultural history of Iringa. Her two PhD students, Katie Biittner and Pastory Bushozi, discuss their own research.Item Research recast(ed): S1E13 - Video games as artifacts with Dr. Katie Biittner(2022) Ekelund, Brittany; Cave, Dylan; Biittner, KatieToday we learn about Archeogaming - the archeology of video games. Here to introduce this emerging field of anthropology is Dr. Katie Biittner, an assistant professor of Anthropology at MacEwan University. Her research focuses broadly on technology, including the stone age and contemporary technologies like basket weaving and videogames! You can find Katie on Twitter and on Instagram at @kbiittner. You can also check out her archeo gaming collaborator, Dr. John Aycock on Twitter at @herrprofdr.Item The sincerest form of flattery: large-scale analysis of code re-use in Atari 2600 games(2022) Aycock, John; Ganesh, Shankar; Biittner, Katie; Newell, Paul Allen; Therrien, CarlThe Atari 2600 was a prominent early video game console that had broad cultural impact, and possessed an extensive catalog of games that undoubtedly helped shape the fledgling game industry. How were these games created? We examine one development practice, code re-use, across a large-scale corpus of 1,984 ROM images using an analysis system we have developed. Our system allows us to study code re-use at whole-corpus granularity in addition to finer grained views of individual developers and companies. We combine this corpus analysis with a case study: one of the co-authors was a third-party developer for Atari 2600 games in the early 1980s, providing insight into why code re-use could occur through both oral history and artifacts preserved for over forty years. Finally, we frame our results about this development practice with an interdisciplinary, bigger-picture archaeological view of humans and technology.Item Still entombed after all these years: The continuing twists and turns of a maze game(2022) Newell, Paul Allen; Aycock, John; Biittner, KatieThe Atari 2600 video game Entombed (1982) left open questions in the design and implementation of its efficient maze-generation algorithm that, through serendipity, we are able to address at last. We have analysed almost 500 artefacts that capture the development process leading up to Entombed, artefacts that have not been seen for decades, including a distinct, unreleased Atari 2600 game. This work is interdisciplinary between the fields of archaeology and computer science in the area of archaeogaming; computer science has allowed informed technical analysis of the artefacts, with processes from archaeology used to manage and organise the large number of artefacts, as well as view game development in a human, archaeological context. The deliberate inclusion of a co-author who was a first-hand participant in the game development additionally raises interesting questions about autoethnography, authorship, and objectivity.