by  Daniel García Raso ,  Independent Researcher The past has always been a great source of inspiration for different cultural and artistic genres such as cinema, literature, television and, of course, video games. We can always find mistakes or inaccuracies from a strictly heuristic point of view (after all, the number of works that accurately reflect the past can be counted on the fingers of one hand). In video games, Prehistory and History have been the starting point for numerous titles and, unlike other games in which the past has been used as context, it has occasionally been represented in a more than acceptable way (for example, in the Age of Empires series or in the saga Assasin's Creed ). However, most titles present a stereotypical portrayal of Prehistory where, to begin with, even dinosaurs appear! A work like Far Cry Primal , by the French producer Ubisoft, was necessary. The game puts us in the skin of Takkar, a member of the Wenja tribe, who i...

By Faidon Moudopoulos The 3rd IHC International Conference in Heritage Management (HerMa) took place in Elefsina, Attica, Greece, from the 30 th of September to the 2 nd of October. Organized by the Institute for Heritage Conservation , an NGO aiming to promote good practices in heritage management, the event was more than a conference, being part of the Aeschylea Festival , organized by the Municipality of Elefsina. The coexistence of the Festival with the conference combined with the fact that the city’s candidateship for European Cultural Capital of 2021 nomination was successful, transformed those three days to an inundation of diversified heritage practices. The old olive factory with the conference logo (credit: Sophia Zakoura) All those parameters provided a fertile ground for the development of the conference. Moreover, the broad topics covered by the various panels stimulated the interest of professionals in various disciplines and resulted to a diverse a...

by Daniel García Raso Would you abandon him now? Until very recently, Nintendo, one of the giants of video games, had refused flatly (quite incomprehensibly from a business point of view) to create games for smartphones and other mobile devices, or even to allow their classic games (Mario, Donkey Kong or sagas like Metroid) to be available on these platforms. But at a meeting of senior executives, someone had to bring Tatsumi Kimishima to reason because Miitomo , the first smartphone app of the Japanese company, was released on March 17 with terrific success: in less than a month it got 4 million downloads. In less than a month since its launch on July 7, Pokémon Go surpassed platforms like Twitter in terms of user numbers. Thanks to the fetishist momentum of casual gamers, some must be gloating in Tokyo... even recovering from the ‘bump’ of Wii U, until they stated a mere 32% of stocks in Niantic , the actual company that released the app.  Pokémon Go is not only t...

I did not expect such a good weather in Berlin. With a full program from Thursday to Sunday, I had limited time to see Berlin, so right after checking in at the hotel I run out for a walk. I usually see politics everywhere, but Berlin was overwhelming; the struggle between Communism and Capitalism is still more than evident anywhere you look. Curry at the Wall, Berlin I wanted to open the post with this photo, because it is, in a way, a perfect introduction to my thoughts on the conference. You can only see the sausage and a bit of a balloon right where the wall was, not that long ago. Of course, Coca Cola is there and the bear holds victoriously his sausage as a trophy. Communism is over and we are all so happy about it that the new planning of the city embraced Capitalism in a way few cities have done.  Meanwhile, in Checkpoint Charlie, a couple of guys in army uniforms  take photos  with happy tourists that just entered the USA quarter. I cannot pay my publ...

Review of the II International Conference on Best Practices in World Heritage: People and Communities (Mahón, April-May 2015) by Nekbet Corpas Cívicos Group photo of  the Conference  assistants  in the venue Some weeks after the 2nd International Conference on Best Practices in World Heritage , it is time to take stock. This second edition, which focused on People and Communities, would not have been possible without substantial development in research and continuous effort. Excitement and accumulated experience were essential for the Complutense University of Madrid’s research team of which the Conference’s directors, Alicia Castillo and Ángeles Querol, are part. Once again, Menorca’s Council supported the event in its search for support to the Talayotic Menorca’s nomination to UNESCO World Heritage. The topic of this second edition, held in Mahon (Menorca, Balearic Islands) from the 29th of March to the 2nd of April 2015, perfectly ref...

By Chiara Zuanni (University of Manchester) Last month I had the opportunity to participate in the annual conference of the DGUF (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ur- und Frühgeschichte e.V. – German Association for Pre- and Protohistory). This year’s theme focused on public archaeology and aimed to explore the possibilities and consequences of public involvement with the past. During the two days which comprised the academic programme, many different aspects of community archaeology, citizen science, and archaeological communication projects were explored. On Friday, Sylvia Crumbach unpacked the relationship between re-enactment groups and textile archaeologists: she argued that while both develop a great expertise in ancient clothing, it remains to be understood how museum reconstruction and images affect re-enactment costumes, and vice versa. The controversies raised by public approaches to archaeological work were highlighted in the afternoon, by two papers discussing metal detec...

Within the framework of a workshop for the “ Heritage Values ” project, the GAPP (Heritage and PublicArchaeology Group) at University of Barcelona organized an intense seminar about public interaction in archaeology. Intense, because we had the opportunity to share and debate projects and ideas with nearly 20 colleagues in one day, which started for me at 5 am to take the train from Madrid to Barcelona. The seminar consisted of three parts: sustainability and participation in heritage policy; cultural tourism and new technologies; and the role of public archaeology as a participation tool. The outcomes of the seminar will be published soon, so I will not make a traditional review of the different papers presented, but rather a general comment on the topics debated and will share some thoughts about them. Image: Seminar poster and programme (source: Universitat de Barcelona ) How do we interact with the public as professionals? How does the public interact with arc...