Journal articles on the topic 'Esquiline Treasure (British Museum)'

The ‘Esquiline Treasure’ is one of the prize exhibits in the British Museum; two small objects from it are to be found in Paris and Naples. A contemporary account of its discovery in 1793 was published by the leading antiquarian of the day, Ennio Quirinio Visconti. He described the operation as a chance excavation near the monastery of the Minims on the Esquiline with a further footnote specifying that the site was a little beyond the Subura in the remains of some ancient rooms of good construction but filled later with ruins.

Treasure seems to be a popular subject in Britain at the moment. The BBC was first out with the television series Hidden Treasure, controversially focussing on the monetary value of archaeological finds, to the predictable and appropriate dismay of archaeologists. The programme is supported by an accompanying book (Faulkner 2003) and website (www.bbc.co.uk/history/archaeology/treasure) that fortunately both take a more balanced view. A professional offering on the same subject appeared almost simultaneously, in the shape of a conference at the British Museum and what the same institution has described as the first major exhibition of national archaeology for fifteen years.

Discovered at the height of the Second World War, the Mildenhall treasure has been a cornerstone of the national collections of the British Museum ever since its acquisition in 1946. But the circumstances behind its discovery have always been problematical. Although it is indisputable that it was found by tractor-worker Gordon Butcher, and then hidden away by Sydney Ford, is there more to the story? Archaeologists such as Tom Lethbridge and Gordon Fowler certainly thought so. A fascinating set of documents in the archives of the British Museum, discussed here for the first time, helps to provide the answers.

AbstractAn account is offered of the discovery of the Oxus treasure in 1877 and the recovery in 1993 of part of it, now conserved in the Mihon Museum in Japan. Descriptions and analyses are given of 17 sculptures and 48 ritual vessels in the Mihon Museum collection. Comparison of these items with those of the British Museum Treasure point to their provenance as votive objects held in the treasury of a Zoroastrian temple of the Achaemenid period and confirm the identity of finds from the treasure with finds from the now excavated shrine of the Oxus.

AbstractFound in 1897, the important collection of Late Antique silverware known as the first Lambousa treasure (to distinguish it from a second find of Lambousa treasure made in 1902) was acquired in part by the British Museum in 1899. This paper reconstructs the history of the discovery of the first Lambousa treasure and the circumstances of its removal from Cyprus. Research for the paper has brought to light hitherto unknown documents, and throws new light on the collection of antiquities in the early modern era and the politics, attitudes and personalities involved.

In late 1996 a heraldic parcel-gilt badge (fig 1) was found during a metal detecting rally by Mr Martin Hay of Horley, Surrey, in a field just to the north of Chelsham Court Farm, near Chelsham, Surrey (National Grid Ref: TQ 388 586). The badge was subsequently brought by Mr David Williams of Reigate, Surrey, to the Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities at the British Museum for identification. It was established that the find had been made on land belonging to Earl Compton of Castle Ashby, Northamptonshire. The Chelsham estate was acquired by the Sixth Marquess of Northampton in 1943 and passed on via family Trustees to The Earl Compton in 1994. As this single find was made before the Treasure Act came into force on 24 September 1997, it does not qualify as Treasure under the terms of the new legislation. As a casual loss under the old regulations of Treasure Trove, ownership of the object was claimed by the landowner who has generously agreed to lend it to the British Museum for display purposes.

The Staffordshire (Ogley Hay) hoard was found on the 5–10 July 2009 by Mr Terry Herbert while metal-detecting on arable land at a site in south Staffordshire in the English Midlands (Figure 1).Mr Herbert contacted Duncan Slarke, the Portable Antiquities Scheme's Finds Liaison Officer for Staffordshire and the West Midlands, who visited the finder at his home and prepared an initial list of 244 bags of finds. These were then taken to Birmingham Museum and HM Coroner was informed. Duncan Slarke also contacted the relevant archaeological authorities including English Heritage, the Staffordshire Historic Environment Record, the Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and the Portable Antiquities & Treasure Department at the British Museum. A meeting was held in Birmingham on 21 July at which it was agreed that the controlled recovery of the remaining objects of the hoard and an archaeological investigation of the findspot was a priority. It was also agreed that one of the Portable Antiquities Scheme's National Advisors, Dr Kevin Leahy, should compile a hand-list of finds in preparation for the Coroner's Inquest.

Exhibition Review Essay:Exhibition without Boundaries. teamLab Borderless and the Digital Evolution of Gallery Space by Emily Stokes-Rees Exhibition Reviews:The Colmar Treasure: A Medieval Jewish Legacy. The Met Cloisters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York by Blaire M. MoskowitzShanghai Museum of Glass, Shanghai; Suzhou Museum, Suzhou; and PMQ, Hong Kong by Moira SunThe Story Box: Franz Boas, George Hunt and the Making of Anthropology. Exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in New York City (14 February–7 July 2019) and the U’mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay, British Columbia (20 July–24 October 2019) by Jordan Wilson

In 1962, an important hoard of Christian late Roman silver was found at Canterbury and declared Treasure Trove. The assemblage, which dates to the end of the fourth century A.D. or the first decade of the fifth, and includes ingots and inscribed spoons, was published in 1965. In 1982, a spoon appeared on the London antiquities market which on investigation proved to be one of five objects (with two stamped ingots and two siliquae) that had formed part of the 1962 discovery, but had not been declared; they were pronounced Treasure Trove in 1983. This paper is an illustrated catalogue and discussion of all the items now known to constitute the Canterbury treasure. Two further sets of late Roman silver spoons are also catalogued, an unprovenanced group in private hands which displays marked links with the Canterbury treasure, and the Dorchester-on-Thames hoard, found in the late nineteenth century and typologically and chronologically closely related to Canterbury. X-ray fluorescence analyses of all the items have been carried out in the British Museum Research Laboratory, and the results are discussed.

On 2nd February 1962, a group of crushed silver objects was found by Mr. W. F. Curtis at Blackdyke Farm, Hockwold-cum-Wilton, on the south-eastern edge of the Fens (TL 687883, see fig. 1). Though severely damaged and fragmented by deliberate breakage in antiquity and by the effects of burial, the objects were recognizable as Roman silver drinking-cups, some elaborately decorated. They were declared Treasure Trove on 20th February 1962, and were subsequently acquired by the British Museum.

What should professional archaeologists do about objects discovered by amateurs? The best known cases involve metal-detectorists who, under the English 'Treasure Act (1996), are permitted to make agreements with land-owners to search for antiquities and keep them, although the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS; set up to complement the Act's provisions) encourages them to have their finds registered by an archaeologist. There is no doubt that this has greatly increased knowledge of artefacts discovered in England where, in the past decade, the annual number of 'portable antiquities formally reported has risen steeply (Bland 2008: 71). The British Museum is now promoting a code of practice (Bland 2008: 81–2); and, at pains to avoid counterposing professional archaeologists and amateurs, it is encouraging the opportunities for outreach and 'community archaeology' (British Museum n.d.: 16–18). Thus Bland (2008: 80) welcomes collective knowledge . . . founded on public . . . participation' rather than . . . research . . . conceived and executed by professionals'. Yet there are now fresh anxieties about preservation at detectorists' sites (Pestell & Ulmschneider 2003: 9–10; Wilson 2009; Plouviez 2010).

Since the Treasure Act (1996) came into force in England and Wales, museums have been able to acquire whole new categories of artefacts. One such category consists of sixteenth-century silver and silver-gilt dress-hooks, which have until now been poorly represented in public collections. In volume 82 of the Antiquaries Journal, Gaimster, Hayward, Mitchell and Parker presented a classification of these ornamental hooks and, through analysis of contemporary inventories and documents, suggested how they were used. In this note, the authors publish three further finds, two recently acquired by the British Museum for its type series, and a further hook, one of only two so far recorded to feature a maker's mark.

This little book is a beguiling collection of Persian love poems drawn fromboth classical and modern poetry, but united by the theme of love in its myriadinterpretations. Included are poems that explore the spiritual lovebetween humans and God, the magical love between lovers or spouses, theaffectionate love between family members and between friends, and eventhe patriotic love for one’s homeland. Each poem is accompanied with a preciousPersian chef d’oeuvre from the British Museum and, in particular, numerous illustrations of Persian miniatures. The editors come to this subjectwith vast expertise: Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis is curator of Islamic andIranian coins in the British Museum, and Sheila R. Canby is an assistantkeeper in the British Museum specializing in Islamic Iran. Both have publishedon Persian art, art history, archaeology, and myths, among other topics.Their aim is not to produce a well-researched and exhaustive collectionof Persian love poetry, but rather “to encourage readers to delve further intothe wealth of Persian literature” (p. 5). With its modest aim of capturing theinterest of novice western readers, theirs is a delightful book that charms itsway to success.As explained in the “Introduction,” Iranians and other Persian (Farsi)speakers treasure poetry not only because of the beauty of the poetic languageitself, but also because they derive joy and comfort from the poets’ perspectivetoward the world. The most famous Persian poets often have a mystical(Sufi) viewpoint toward life, whereby passion is a path to reach God and thetruth. Interwoven into the people’s social consciousness, poetry holds arevered place in Persian culture. A single verse from the best-known Persianpoems can capture an idea with elegant brevity. Iranians and other Persian(Farsi) speakers still recite poetry as a succinct and powerful way to expressa point, thought, or emotion. To explain how deeply embedded poetry is inthe Persian psyche, many oft-quoted proverbs draw much of their meaningand message from Persian poetry ...

The article is devoted to the analysis of zoomorphic images on a spiral gold bracelet from the Sarmatian burial of the 1st century AD in Salamatino village in Volgograd region, as well as the problem of interpreting the image of a fantastic animal on the bracelet ends. The stylistic and technological peculiarities of the jewelry can serve as indicators of cultural identity of the subject. The bracelet is made, most likely, by a barbarian craftsman modeled after some kind of non-locally made jewelry. The closest dupe in compositional and pictorial characteristics to the incomprehensible animal on the ends of the Salamatino bracelet is a fantastic creature on the pair of bracelets from the Oxus Treasure (British Museum), stylistically different from the images of Iranian art of the Achaemenid era. The origin of this pair of bracelets is unknown, however, some stylistic features allow for non-exclusion of the assumptions of Chinese or Central Asian jewelry production or the existence of certain jewelry workshops in a region affected by the cultural influence of both Iran and China. Another distant analogy in style for the pair of bracelets from the Oxus Treasure is represented by images of predatory animals on gold torcs from the Stavropol treasure. The chronological gap between the Salamatino bracelet and the jewelry from the Oxus and Stavropol treasures does not allow one to link them unequivocally, but the similarity features certainly indicate the presence of common cultural roots. Identifying a fantastic hybrid animal on the ends of the Salamatino bracelet as any specific mythological creature is not yet possible.

The paper gives the review of epistolary materials for the biography of two archaeologists — Dr. Anastasia Mantsevych from Leningrad (1899—1982) and Dr. Maria Viazmitina from Kyiv (1896—1994). The documents are retained in Maria Viazmitina’s personal fund (N 34) in the Scientific Archive of the Institute of Archaeology of NASU. Among 126 letters from A. Mantsevych to M. Viazmitina 43 are selected for fragmentary publishing. These letters show us the personality of Anastasiia Mantsevych during the time period from 1952 to 1982. Letters demonstrate what thoughts, ideas and reflections stayed behind her published papers, behind her confidence at the scientific conferences during public polemics. Letters discover a strong individual and a sensitive human being at the same time, making essential addition to her scientific portrait. Through the letters the article also gives a review of scientific life in the State Hermitage Museum (Leningrad) and in the Institute of Archaeology (Kyiv). Correspondents point and discuss the significant museum exhibitions and sensational archaeological discoveries, share their plans about visiting main scientific conferences and congresses. Among the discussed topics are «Treasures of Tutankhamun tomb» in Leningrad (1974) and in Kyiv (1975); exhibition exchange between British Museum and State Hermitage in 1979 («The Siberian Collection of Peter I» and «The Oxus treasure»); Dr. Yuri Boltryk’s excavations of Oguz tomb in 1980, Borys Mozolevski’s and Halyna Kovpanenko’s findings of that period, Oleksandr Leskov’s findings in the tombs of the North Caucasus. There are also reflections about Professor Manolis Andronikos’ findings — the tomb of Macedonian kings near Vergina settlement in Northern Greece and Viktor Sarianidi’s findings of «Bactrian Gold» in Afghanistan.

A recent discovery on the island of Aegina by Professor H. Walter (University of Salzburg) throws a new light on the origins of the so-called Aegina Treasure in the British Museum.In 1982 the Austrians were excavating the Bronze Age settlement on Cape Kolonna, to the north-west of Aegina town. Immediately to the east of the ruined Temple of Apollo, and close to the South Gate of the prehistoric Lower Town, they found an unrobbed shaft grave containing the burial of a warrior. The gravegoods (now exhibited in the splendid new Museum on the Kolonna site) included a bronze sword with a gold and ivory hilt, three bronze daggers, one with gold fittings, a bronze spear-head, arrowheads of obsidian, boar's tusks from a helmet, and fragments of a gold diadem (plate Va). The grave also contained Middle Minoan, Middle Cycladic, and Middle Helladic (Mattpainted) pottery. The pottery and the location of the grave in association with the ‘Ninth City’ combine to give a date for the burial of about 1700 BC; and the richness of the grave-goods would suggest that the dead man was a king.

A recent discovery on the island of Aegina by Professor H. Walter (University of Salzburg) throws a new light on the origins of the so-called Aegina Treasure in the British Museum.In 1982 the Austrians were excavating the Bronze Age settlement on Cape Kolonna, to the north-west of Aegina town. Immediately to the east of the ruined Temple of Apollo, and close to the South Gate of the prehistoric Lower Town, they found an unrobbed shaft grave containing the burial of a warrior. The gravegoods (now exhibited in the splendid new Museum on the Kolonna site) included a bronze sword with a gold and ivory hilt, three bronze daggers, one with gold fittings, a bronze spear-head, arrowheads of obsidian, boar's tusks from a helmet, and fragments of a gold diadem (plate Va). The grave also contained Middle Minoan, Middle Cycladic, and Middle Helladic (Mattpainted) pottery. The pottery and the location of the grave in association with the ‘Ninth City’ combine to give a date for the burial of about 1700 BC; and the richness of the grave-goods would suggest that the dead man was a king.

Late last year, the British Museum showed a new Thracian treasure from Rogozen in Bulgaria (Fol et al. 1986), including over 150 silver-gilt vessels and a superb discovery in itself. Here the evidence of Rogozen is taken as another clue in finding the origin of perhaps the most famed single find from later prehistoric Europe.

Introduction: Technology EnthusiasmEnthusiasts are people who have a passion, keenness, dedication or zeal for a particular activity or hobby. Today, there are enthusiasts for almost everything, from genealogy, costume dramas, and country houses, to metal detectors, coin collecting, and archaeology. But to be described as an enthusiast is not necessarily a compliment. Historically, the term “enthusiasm” was first used in England in the early seventeenth century to describe “religious or prophetic frenzy among the ancient Greeks” (Hanks, n.p.). This frenzy was ascribed to being possessed by spirits sent not only by God but also the devil. During this period, those who disobeyed the powers that be or claimed to have a message from God were considered to be enthusiasts (McLoughlin).Enthusiasm retained its religious connotations throughout the eighteenth century and was also used at this time to describe “the tendency within the population to be swept by crazes” (Mee 31). However, as part of the “rehabilitation of enthusiasm,” the emerging middle-classes adopted the word to characterise the intensity of Romantic poetry. The language of enthusiasm was then used to describe the “literary ideas of affect” and “a private feeling of religious warmth” (Mee 2 and 34). While the notion of enthusiasm was embraced here in a more optimistic sense, attempts to disassociate enthusiasm from crowd-inciting fanaticism were largely unsuccessful. As such enthusiasm has never quite managed to shake off its pejorative connotations.The 'enthusiasm' discussed in this paper is essentially a personal passion for technology. It forms part of a longer tradition of historical preservation in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the world. From preserved railways to Victorian pumping stations, people have long been fascinated by the history of technology and engineering; manifesting their enthusiasm through their nostalgic longings and emotional attachment to its enduring material culture. Moreover, enthusiasts have been central to the collection, conservation, and preservation of this particular material record. Technology enthusiasm in this instance is about having a passion for the history and material record of technological development, specifically here industrial archaeology. Despite being a pastime much participated in, technology enthusiasm is relatively under-explored within the academic literature. For the most part, scholarship has tended to focus on the intended users, formal spaces, and official narratives of science and technology (Adas, Latour, Mellström, Oldenziel). In recent years attempts have been made to remedy this imbalance, with researchers from across the social sciences examining the position of hobbyists, tinkerers and amateurs in scientific and technical culture (Ellis and Waterton, Haring, Saarikoski, Takahashi). Work from historians of technology has focussed on the computer enthusiast; for example, Saarikoski’s work on the Finnish personal computer hobby:The definition of the computer enthusiast varies historically. Personal interest, pleasure and entertainment are the most significant factors defining computing as a hobby. Despite this, the hobby may also lead to acquiring useful knowledge, skills or experience of information technology. Most often the activity takes place outside working hours but can still have links to the development of professional expertise or the pursuit of studies. In many cases it takes place in the home environment. On the other hand, it is characteristically social, and the importance of friends, clubs and other communities is greatly emphasised.In common with a number of other studies relating to technical hobbies, for example Takahashi who argues tinkerers were behind the advent of the radio and television receiver, Saarikoski’s work focuses on the role these users played in shaping the technology in question. The enthusiasts encountered in this paper are important here not for their role in shaping the technology, but keeping technological heritage alive. As historian of technology Haring reminds us, “there exist alternative ways of using and relating to technology” (18). Furthermore, the sociological literature on audiences (Abercrombie and Longhurst, Ang), fans (Hills, Jenkins, Lewis, Sandvoss) and subcultures (Hall, Hebdige, Schouten and McAlexander) has also been extended in order to account for the enthusiast. In Abercrombie and Longhurst’s Audiences, the authors locate ‘the enthusiast’ and ‘the fan’ at opposing ends of a continuum of consumption defined by questions of specialisation of interest, social organisation of interest and material productivity. Fans are described as:skilled or competent in different modes of production and consumption; active in their interactions with texts and in their production of new texts; and communal in that they construct different communities based on their links to the programmes they like. (127 emphasis in original) Based on this definition, Abercrombie and Longhurst argue that fans and enthusiasts differ in three ways: (1) enthusiasts’ activities are not based around media images and stars in the way that fans’ activities are; (2) enthusiasts can be hypothesized to be relatively light media users, particularly perhaps broadcast media, though they may be heavy users of the specialist publications which are directed towards the enthusiasm itself; (3) the enthusiasm would appear to be rather more organised than the fan activity. (132) What is striking about this attempt to differentiate between the fan and the enthusiast is that it is based on supposition rather than the actual experience and observation of enthusiasm. It is here that the ethnographic account of enthusiasm presented in this paper and elsewhere, for example works by Dannefer on vintage car culture, Moorhouse on American hot-rodding and Fuller on modified-car culture in Australia, can shed light on the subject. My own ethnographic study of groups with a passion for telecommunications heritage, early British computers and industrial archaeology takes the discussion of “technology enthusiasm” further still. Through in-depth interviews, observation and textual analysis, I have examined in detail the formation of enthusiast societies and their membership, the importance of the material record to enthusiasts (particularly at home) and the enthusiastic practices of collecting and hoarding, as well as the figure of the technology enthusiast in the public space of the museum, namely the Science Museum in London (Geoghegan). In this paper, I explore the culture of enthusiasm for the industrial past through the example of the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society (GLIAS). Focusing on industrial sites around London, GLIAS meet five or six times a year for field visits, walks and a treasure hunt. The committee maintain a website and produce a quarterly newsletter. The title of my paper, “If you can walk down the street and recognise the difference between cast iron and wrought iron, the world is altogether a better place,” comes from an interview I conducted with the co-founder and present chairman of GLIAS. He was telling me about his fascination with the materials of industrialisation. In fact, he said even concrete is sexy. Some call it a hobby; others call it a disease. But enthusiasm for industrial archaeology is, as several respondents have themselves identified, “as insidious in its side effects as any debilitating germ. It dictates your lifestyle, organises your activity and decides who your friends are” (Frow and Frow 177, Gillespie et al.). Through the figure of the industrial archaeology enthusiast, I discuss in this paper what it means to be enthusiastic. I begin by reflecting on the development of this specialist subject area. I go on to detail the formation of the Society in the late 1960s, before exploring the Society’s fieldwork methods and some of the other activities they now engage in. I raise questions of enthusiast and professional knowledge and practice, as well as consider the future of this particular enthusiasm.Defining Industrial ArchaeologyThe practice of 'industrial archaeology' is much contested. For a long time, enthusiasts and professional archaeologists have debated the meaning and use of the term (Palmer). On the one hand, there are those interested in the history, preservation, and recording of industrial sites. For example the grandfather figures of the subject, namely Kenneth Hudson and Angus Buchanan, who both published widely in the 1960s and 1970s in order to encourage publics to get involved in recording. Many members of GLIAS refer to the books of Hudson Industrial Archaeology: an Introduction and Buchanan Industrial Archaeology in Britain with their fine descriptions and photographs as integral to their early interest in the subject. On the other hand, there are those within the academic discipline of archaeology who consider the study of remains produced by the Industrial Revolution as too modern. Moreover, they find the activities of those calling themselves industrial archaeologists as lacking sufficient attention to the understanding of past human activity to justify the name. As a result, the definition of 'industrial archaeology' is problematic for both enthusiasts and professionals. Even the early advocates of professional industrial archaeology felt uneasy about the subject’s methods and practices. In 1973, Philip Riden (described by one GLIAS member as the angry young man of industrial archaeology), the then president of the Oxford University Archaeology Society, wrote a damning article in Antiquity, calling for the subject to “shed the amateur train drivers and others who are not part of archaeology” (215-216). He decried the “appallingly low standard of some of the work done under the name of ‘industrial archaeology’” (211). He felt that if enthusiasts did not attempt to maintain high technical standards, publish their work in journals or back up their fieldwork with documentary investigation or join their county archaeological societies then there was no value in the efforts of these amateurs. During this period, enthusiasts, academics, and professionals were divided. What was wrong with doing something for the pleasure it provides the participant?Although relations today between the so-called amateur (enthusiast) and professional archaeologies are less potent, some prejudice remains. Describing them as “barrow boys”, some enthusiasts suggest that what was once their much-loved pastime has been “hijacked” by professional archaeologists who, according to one respondent,are desperate to find subjects to get degrees in. So the whole thing has been hijacked by academia as it were. Traditional professional archaeologists in London at least are running head on into things that we have been doing for decades and they still don’t appreciate that this is what we do. A lot of assessments are handed out to professional archaeology teams who don’t necessarily have any knowledge of industrial archaeology. (James, GLIAS committee member)James went on to reveal that GLIAS receives numerous enquiries from professional archaeologists, developers and town planners asking what they know about particular sites across the city. Although the Society has compiled a detailed database covering some areas of London, it is by no means comprehensive. In addition, many active members often record and monitor sites in London for their own personal enjoyment. This leaves many questioning the need to publish their results for the gain of third parties. Canadian sociologist Stebbins discusses this situation in his research on “serious leisure”. He has worked extensively with amateur archaeologists in order to understand their approach to their leisure activity. He argues that amateurs are “neither dabblers who approach the activity with little commitment or seriousness, nor professionals who make a living from that activity” (55). Rather they pursue their chosen leisure activity to professional standards. A point echoed by Fine in his study of the cultures of mushrooming. But this is to get ahead of myself. How did GLIAS begin?GLIAS: The GroupThe 1960s have been described by respondents as a frantic period of “running around like headless chickens.” Enthusiasts of London’s industrial archaeology were witnessing incredible changes to the city’s industrial landscape. Individuals and groups like the Thames Basin Archaeology Observers Group were recording what they could. Dashing around London taking photos to capture London’s industrial legacy before it was lost forever. However the final straw for many, in London at least, was the proposed and subsequent demolition of the “Euston Arch”. The Doric portico at Euston Station was completed in 1838 and stood as a symbol to the glory of railway travel. Despite strong protests from amenity societies, this Victorian symbol of progress was finally pulled down by British Railways in 1962 in order to make way for what enthusiasts have called a “monstrous concrete box”.In response to these changes, GLIAS was founded in 1968 by two engineers and a locomotive driver over afternoon tea in a suburban living room in Woodford, North-East London. They held their first meeting one Sunday afternoon in December at the Science Museum in London and attracted over 130 people. Firing the imagination of potential members with an exhibition of photographs of the industrial landscape taken by Eric de Maré, GLIAS’s first meeting was a success. Bringing together like-minded people who are motivated and enthusiastic about the subject, GLIAS currently has over 600 members in the London area and beyond. This makes it the largest industrial archaeology society in the UK and perhaps Europe. Drawing some of its membership from a series of evening classes hosted by various members of the Society’s committee, GLIAS initially had a quasi-academic approach. Although some preferred the hands-on practical element and were more, as has been described by one respondent, “your free-range enthusiast”. The society has an active committee, produces a newsletter and journal, as well as runs regular events for members. However the Society is not simply about the study of London’s industrial heritage, over time the interest in industrial archaeology has developed for some members into long-term friendships. Sociability is central to organised leisure activities. It underpins and supports the performance of enthusiasm in groups and societies. For Fine, sociability does not always equal friendship, but it is the state from which people might become friends. Some GLIAS members have taken this one step further: there have even been a couple of marriages. Although not the subject of my paper, technical culture is heavily gendered. Industrial archaeology is a rare exception attracting a mixture of male and female participants, usually retired husband and wife teams.Doing Industrial Archaeology: GLIAS’s Method and PracticeIn what has been described as GLIAS’s heyday, namely the 1970s to early 1980s, fieldwork was fundamental to the Society’s activities. The Society’s approach to fieldwork during this period was much the same as the one described by champion of industrial archaeology Arthur Raistrick in 1973:photographing, measuring, describing, and so far as possible documenting buildings, engines, machinery, lines of communication, still or recently in use, providing a satisfactory record for the future before the object may become obsolete or be demolished. (13)In the early years of GLIAS and thanks to the committed efforts of two active Society members, recording parties were organised for extended lunch hours and weekends. The majority of this early fieldwork took place at the St Katherine Docks. The Docks were constructed in the 1820s by Thomas Telford. They became home to the world’s greatest concentration of portable wealth. Here GLIAS members learnt and employed practical (also professional) skills, such as measuring, triangulations and use of a “dumpy level”. For many members this was an incredibly exciting time. It was a chance to gain hands-on experience of industrial archaeology. Having been left derelict for many years, the Docks have since been redeveloped as part of the Docklands regeneration project.At this time the Society was also compiling data for what has become known to members as “The GLIAS Book”. The book was to have separate chapters on the various industrial histories of London with contributions from Society members about specific sites. Sadly the book’s editor died and the project lost impetus. Several years ago, the committee managed to digitise the data collected for the book and began to compile a database. However, the GLIAS database has been beset by problems. Firstly, there are often questions of consistency and coherence. There is a standard datasheet for recording industrial buildings – the Index Record for Industrial Sites. However, the quality of each record is different because of the experience level of the different authors. Some authors are automatically identified as good or expert record keepers. Secondly, getting access to the database in order to upload the information has proved difficult. As one of the respondents put it: “like all computer babies [the creator of the database], is finding it hard to give birth” (Sally, GLIAS member). As we have learnt enthusiasm is integral to movements such as industrial archaeology – public historian Raphael Samuel described them as the “invisible hands” of historical enquiry. Yet, it is this very enthusiasm that has the potential to jeopardise projects such as the GLIAS book. Although active in their recording practices, the GLIAS book saga reflects one of the challenges encountered by enthusiast groups and societies. In common with other researchers studying amenity societies, such as Ellis and Waterton’s work with amateur naturalists, unlike the world of work where people are paid to complete a task and are therefore meant to have a singular sense of purpose, the activities of an enthusiast group like GLIAS rely on the goodwill of their members to volunteer their time, energy and expertise. When this is lost for whatever reason, there is no requirement for any other member to take up that position. As such, levels of commitment vary between enthusiasts and can lead to the aforementioned difficulties, such as disputes between group members, the occasional miscommunication of ideas and an over-enthusiasm for some parts of the task in hand. On top of this, GLIAS and societies like it are confronted with changing health and safety policies and tightened security surrounding industrial sites. This has made the practical side of industrial archaeology increasingly difficult. As GLIAS member Bob explains:For me to go on site now I have to wear site boots and borrow a hard hat and a high visibility jacket. Now we used to do incredibly dangerous things in the seventies and nobody batted an eyelid. You know we were exploring derelict buildings, which you are virtually not allowed in now because the floor might give way. Again the world has changed a lot there. GLIAS: TodayGLIAS members continue to record sites across London. Some members are currently surveying the site chosen as the location of the Olympic Games in London in 2012 – the Lower Lea Valley. They describe their activities at this site as “rescue archaeology”. GLIAS members are working against the clock and some important structures have already been demolished. They only have time to complete a quick flash survey. Armed with the information they collated in previous years, GLIAS is currently in discussions with the developer to orchestrate a detailed recording of the site. It is important to note here that GLIAS members are less interested in campaigning for the preservation of a site or building, they appreciate that sites must change. Instead they want to ensure that large swathes of industrial London are not lost without a trace. Some members regard this as their public duty.Restricted by health and safety mandates and access disputes, GLIAS has had to adapt. The majority of practical recording sessions have given way to guided walks in the summer and public lectures in the winter. Some respondents have identified a difference between those members who call themselves “industrial archaeologists” and those who are just “ordinary members” of GLIAS. The walks are for those with a general interest, not serious members, and the talks are public lectures. Some audience researchers have used Bourdieu’s metaphor of “capital” to describe the experience, knowledge and skill required to be a fan, clubber or enthusiast. For Hills, fan status is built up through the demonstration of cultural capital: “where fans share a common interest while also competing over fan knowledge, access to the object of fandom, and status” (46). A clear membership hierarchy can be seen within GLIAS based on levels of experience, knowledge and practical skill.With a membership of over 600 and rising annually, the Society’s future is secure at present. However some of the more serious members, although retaining their membership, are pursuing their enthusiasm elsewhere: through break-away recording groups in London; active membership of other groups and societies, for example the national Association for Industrial Archaeology; as well as heading off to North Wales in the summer for practical, hands-on industrial archaeology in Snowdonia’s slate quarries – described in the Ffestiniog Railway Journal as the “annual convention of slate nutters.” ConclusionsGLIAS has changed since its foundation in the late 1960s. Its operation has been complicated by questions of health and safety, site access, an ageing membership, and the constant changes to London’s industrial archaeology. Previously rejected by professional industrial archaeology as “limited in skill and resources” (Riden), enthusiasts are now approached by professional archaeologists, developers, planners and even museums that are interested in engaging in knowledge exchange programmes. As a recent report from the British think-tank Demos has argued, enthusiasts or pro-ams – “amateurs who work to professional standards” (Leadbeater and Miller 12) – are integral to future innovation and creativity; for example computer pro-ams developed an operating system to rival Microsoft Windows. As such the specialist knowledge, skill and practice of these communities is of increasing interest to policymakers, practitioners, and business. So, the subject once described as “the ugly offspring of two parents that shouldn’t have been allowed to breed” (Hudson), the so-called “amateur” industrial archaeology offers enthusiasts and professionals alike alternative ways of knowing, seeing and being in the recent and contemporary past.Through the case study of GLIAS, I have described what it means to be enthusiastic about industrial archaeology. I have introduced a culture of collective and individual participation and friendship based on a mutual interest in and emotional attachment to industrial sites. As we have learnt in this paper, enthusiasm is about fun, pleasure and joy. The enthusiastic culture presented here advances themes such as passion in relation to less obvious communities of knowing, skilled practices, material artefacts and spaces of knowledge. Moreover, this paper has been about the affective narratives that are sometimes missing from academic accounts; overlooked for fear of sniggers at the back of a conference hall. Laughter and humour are a large part of what enthusiasm is. Enthusiastic cultures then are about the pleasure and joy experienced in doing things. Enthusiasm is clearly a potent force for active participation. I will leave the last word to GLIAS member John:One meaning of enthusiasm is as a form of possession, madness. Obsession perhaps rather than possession, which I think is entirely true. It is a pejorative term probably. The railway enthusiast. But an awful lot of energy goes into what they do and achieve. Enthusiasm to my mind is an essential ingredient. If you are not a person who can muster enthusiasm, it is very difficult, I think, to get anything out of it. On the basis of the more you put in the more you get out. In terms of what has happened with industrial archaeology in this country, I think, enthusiasm is a very important aspect of it. The movement needs people who can transmit that enthusiasm. ReferencesAbercrombie, N., and B. Longhurst. Audiences: A Sociological Theory of Performance and Imagination. London: Sage Publications, 1998.Adas, M. Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989.Ang, I. Desperately Seeking the Audience. London: Routledge, 1991.Bourdieu, P. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge, 1984.Buchanan, R.A. Industrial Archaeology in Britain. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1972.Dannefer, D. “Rationality and Passion in Private Experience: Modern Consciousness and the Social World of Old-Car Collectors.” Social Problems 27 (1980): 392–412.Dannefer, D. “Neither Socialization nor Recruitment: The Avocational Careers of Old-Car Enthusiasts.” Social Forces 60 (1981): 395–413.Ellis, R., and C. Waterton. “Caught between the Cartographic and the Ethnographic Imagination: The Whereabouts of Amateurs, Professionals, and Nature in Knowing Biodiversity.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 23 (2005): 673–693.Fine, G.A. “Mobilizing Fun: Provisioning Resources in Leisure Worlds.” Sociology of Sport Journal 6 (1989): 319–334.Fine, G.A. Morel Tales: The Culture of Mushrooming. Champaign, Ill.: U of Illinois P, 2003.Frow, E., and R. Frow. “Travels with a Caravan.” History Workshop Journal 2 (1976): 177–182Fuller, G. Modified: Cars, Culture, and Event Mechanics. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Western Sydney, 2007.Geoghegan, H. The Culture of Enthusiasm: Technology, Collecting and Museums. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of London, 2008.Gillespie, D.L., A. Leffler, and E. Lerner. “‘If It Weren’t for My Hobby, I’d Have a Life’: Dog Sports, Serious Leisure, and Boundary Negotiations.” Leisure Studies 21 (2002): 285–304.Hall, S., and T. Jefferson, eds. Resistance through Rituals: Youth Sub-Cultures in Post-War Britain. London: Hutchinson, 1976.Hanks, P. “Enthusiasm and Condescension.” Euralex ’98 Proceedings. 1998. 18 Jul. 2005 ‹http://www.patrickhanks.com/papers/enthusiasm.pdf›.Haring, K. “The ‘Freer Men’ of Ham Radio: How a Technical Hobby Provided Social and Spatial Distance.” Technology and Culture 44 (2003): 734–761.Haring, K. Ham Radio’s Technical Culture. London: MIT Press, 2007.Hebdige, D. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen, 1979.Hills, M. Fan Cultures. London: Routledge, 2002.Hudson, K. Industrial Archaeology London: John Baker, 1963.Jenkins, H. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. London: Routledge, 1992.Latour, B. Aramis, or the Love of Technology. London: Harvard UP, 1996.Leadbeater, C., and P. Miller. The Pro-Am Revolution: How Enthusiasts Are Changing Our Economy and Society. London: Demos, 2004.Lewis, L.A., ed. The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media. London: Routledge, 1992.McLoughlin, W.G. Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607-1977. London: U of Chicago P, 1977.Mee, J. Romanticism, Enthusiasm, and Regulation: Poetics and the Policing of Culture in the Romantic Period. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003.Mellström, U. “Patriarchal Machines and Masculine Embodiment.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 27 (2002): 460–478.Moorhouse, H.F. Driving Ambitions: A Social Analysis of American Hot Rod Enthusiasm. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1991.Oldenziel, R. Making Technology Masculine: Men, Women and Modern Machines in America 1870-1945. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 1999.Palmer, M. “‘We Have Not Factory Bell’: Domestic Textile Workers in the Nineteenth Century.” The Local Historian 34 (2004): 198–213.Raistrick, A. Industrial Archaeology. London: Granada, 1973.Riden, P. “Post-Post-Medieval Archaeology.” Antiquity XLVII (1973): 210-216.Rix, M. “Industrial Archaeology: Progress Report 1962.” The Amateur Historian 5 (1962): 56–60.Rix, M. Industrial Archaeology. London: The Historical Association, 1967.Saarikoski, P. The Lure of the Machine: The Personal Computer Interest in Finland from the 1970s to the Mid-1990s. Unpublished PhD Thesis, 2004. ‹http://users.utu.fi/petsaari/lure.pdf›.Samuel, R. Theatres of Memory London: Verso, 1994.Sandvoss, C. Fans: The Mirror of Consumption Cambridge: Polity, 2005.Schouten, J.W., and J. McAlexander. “Subcultures of Consumption: An Ethnography of the New Bikers.” Journal of Consumer Research 22 (1995) 43–61.Stebbins, R.A. Amateurs: On the Margin between Work and Leisure. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1979.Stebbins, R.A. Amateurs, Professionals, and Serious Leisure. London: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1992.Takahashi, Y. “A Network of Tinkerers: The Advent of the Radio and Television Receiver Industry in Japan.” Technology and Culture 41 (2000): 460–484.

Introduction In October 2008, the UK’s National Videogame Archive became a reality and after years of negotiation, preparation and planning, this partnership between Nottingham Trent University’s Centre for Contemporary Play research group and The National Media Museum, accepted its first public donations to the collection. These first donations came from Sony’s Computer Entertainment Europe’s London Studios who presented the original, pre-production PlayStation 2 EyeToy camera (complete with its hand-written #1 sticker) and Harmonix who crossed the Atlantic to deliver prototypes of the Rock Band drum kit and guitar controllers along with a slew of games. Since then, we have been inundated with donations, enquiries and volunteers offering their services and it is clear that we have exciting and challenging times ahead of us at the NVA as we seek to continue our collecting programme and preserve, conserve, display and interpret these vital parts of popular culture. This essay, however, is not so much a document of these possible futures for our research or the challenges we face in moving forward as it is a discussion of some of the issues that make game preservation a vital and timely undertaking. In briefly telling the story of the genesis of the NVA, I hope to draw attention to some of the peculiarities (in both senses) of the situation in which videogames currently exist. While considerable attention has been paid to the preservation and curation of new media arts (e.g. Cook et al.), comparatively little work has been undertaken in relation to games. Surprisingly, the games industry has been similarly neglectful of the histories of gameplay and gamemaking. Throughout our research, it has became abundantly clear that even those individuals and companies most intimately associated with the development of this form, do not hold their corporate and personal histories in the high esteem we expected (see also Lowood et al.). And so, despite the well-worn bluster of an industry that proclaims itself as culturally significant as Hollywood, it is surprisingly difficult to find a definitive copy of the boxart of the final release of a Triple-A title let alone any of the pre-production materials. Through our journeys in the past couple of years, we have encountered shoeboxes under CEOs’ desks and proud parents’ collections of tapes and press cuttings. These are the closest things to a formalised archive that we currently have for many of the biggest British game development and publishing companies. Not only is this problematic in and of itself as we run the risk of losing titles and documents forever as well as the stories locked up in the memories of key individuals who grow ever older, but also it is symptomatic of an industry that, despite its public proclamations, neither places a high value on its products as popular culture nor truly recognises their impact on that culture. While a few valorised, still-ongoing, franchises like the Super Mario and Legend of Zelda series are repackaged and (digitally) re-released so as to provide continuity with current releases, a huge number of games simply disappear from view once their short period of retail limelight passes. Indeed, my argument in this essay rests to some extent on the admittedly polemical, and maybe even antagonistic, assertion that the past business and marketing practices of the videogames industry are partly to blame for the comparatively underdeveloped state of game preservation and the seemingly low cultural value placed on old games within the mainstream marketplace. Small wonder, then, that archives and formalised collections are not widespread. However antagonistic this point may seem, this essay does not set out merely to criticise the games industry. Indeed, it is important to recognise that the success and viability of projects such as the NVA is derived partly from close collaboration with industry partners. As such, it is my hope that in addition to contributing to the conversation about the importance and need for formalised strategies of game preservation, this essay goes some way to demonstrating the necessity of universities, museums, developers, publishers, advertisers and retailers tackling these issues in partnership. The Best Game Is the Next Game As will be clear from these opening paragraphs, this essay is primarily concerned with ‘old’ games. Perhaps surprisingly, however, we shall see that ‘old’ games are frequently not that old at all as even the shiniest, and newest of interactive experiences soon slip from view under the pressure of a relentless industrial and institutional push towards the forthcoming release and the ‘next generation’. More surprising still is that ‘old’ games are often difficult to come by as they occupy, at best, a marginalised position in the contemporary marketplace, assuming they are even visible at all. This is an odd situation. Videogames are, as any introductory primer on game studies will surely reveal, big business (see Kerr, for instance, as well as trade bodies such as ELSPA and The ESA for up-to-date sales figures). Given the videogame industry seems dedicated to growing its business and broadening its audiences (see Radd on Sony’s ‘Game 3.0’ strategy, for instance), it seems strange, from a commercial perspective if no other, that publishers’ and developers’ back catalogues are not being mercilessly plundered to wring the last pennies of profit from their IPs. Despite being cherished by players and fans, some of whom are actively engaged in their own private collecting and curation regimes (sometimes to apparently obsessive excess as Jones, among others, has noted), videogames have, nonetheless, been undervalued as part of our national popular cultural heritage by institutions of memory such as museums and archives which, I would suggest, have largely ignored and sometimes misunderstood or misrepresented them. Most of all, however, I wish to draw attention to the harm caused by the videogames industry itself. Consumers’ attentions are focused on ‘products’, on audiovisual (but mainly visual) technicalities and high-definition video specs rather than on the experiences of play and performance, or on games as artworks or artefact. Most damagingly, however, by constructing and contributing to an advertising, marketing and popular critical discourse that trades almost exclusively in the language of instant obsolescence, videogames have been robbed of their historical value and old platforms and titles are reduced to redundant, legacy systems and easily-marginalised ‘retro’ curiosities. The vision of inevitable technological progress that the videogames industry trades in reminds us of Paul Duguid’s concept of ‘supersession’ (see also Giddings and Kennedy, on the ‘technological imaginary’). Duguid identifies supersession as one of the key tropes in discussions of new media. The reductive idea that each new form subsumes and replaces its predecessor means that videogames are, to some extent, bound up in the same set of tensions that undermine the longevity of all new media. Chun rightly notes that, in contrast with more open terms like multimedia, ‘new media’ has always been somewhat problematic. Unaccommodating, ‘it portrayed other media as old or dead; it converged rather than multiplied; it did not efface itself in favor of a happy if redundant plurality’ (1). The very newness of new media and of videogames as the apotheosis of the interactivity and multimodality they promise (Newman, "In Search"), their gleam and shine, is quickly tarnished as they are replaced by ever-newer, ever more exciting, capable and ‘revolutionary’ technologies whose promise and moment in the limelight is, in turn, equally fleeting. As Franzen has noted, obsolescence and the trail of abandoned, superseded systems is a natural, even planned-for, product of an infatuation with the newness of new media. For Kline et al., the obsession with obsolescence leads to the characterisation of the videogames industry as a ‘perpetual innovation economy’ whose institutions ‘devote a growing share of their resources to the continual alteration and upgrading of their products. However, it is my contention here that the supersessionary tendency exerts a more serious impact on videogames than some other media partly because the apparently natural logic of obsolescence and technological progress goes largely unchecked and partly because there remain few institutions dedicated to considering and acting upon game preservation. The simple fact, as Lowood et al. have noted, is that material damage is being done as a result of this manufactured sense of continual progress and immediate, irrefutable obsolescence. By focusing on the upcoming new release and the preview of what is yet to come; by exciting gamers about what is in development and demonstrating the manifest ways in which the sheen of the new inevitably tarnishes the old. That which is replaced is fit only for the bargain bin or the budget-priced collection download, and as such, it is my position that we are systematically undermining and perhaps even eradicating the possibility of a thorough and well-documented history for videogames. This is a situation that we at the National Videogame Archive, along with colleagues in the emerging field of game preservation (e.g. the International Game Developers Association Game Preservation Special Interest Group, and the Keeping Emulation Environments Portable project) are, naturally, keen to address. Chief amongst our concerns is better understanding how it has come to be that, in 2009, game studies scholars and colleagues from across the memory and heritage sectors are still only at the beginning of the process of considering game preservation. The IGDA Game Preservation SIG was founded only five years ago and its ‘White Paper’ (Lowood et al.) is just published. Surprisingly, despite the importance of videogames within popular culture and the emergence and consolidation of the industry as a potent creative force, there remains comparatively little academic commentary or investigation into the specific situation and life-cycles of games or the demands that they place upon archivists and scholars of digital histories and cultural heritage. As I hope to demonstrate in this essay, one of the key tasks of the project of game preservation is to draw attention to the consequences of the concentration, even fetishisation, of the next generation, the new and the forthcoming. The focus on what I have termed ‘the lure of the imminent’ (e.g. Newman, Playing), the fixation on not only the present but also the as-yet-unreleased next generation, has contributed to the normalisation of the discourses of technological advancement and the inevitability and finality of obsolescence. The conflation of gameplay pleasure and cultural import with technological – and indeed, usually visual – sophistication gives rise to a context of endless newness, within which there appears to be little space for the ‘outdated’, the ‘superseded’ or the ‘old’. In a commercial and cultural space in which so little value is placed upon anything but the next game, we risk losing touch with the continuities of development and the practices of play while simultaneously robbing players and scholars of the critical tools and resources necessary for contextualised appreciation and analysis of game form and aesthetics, for instance (see Monnens, "Why", for more on the value of preserving ‘old’ games for analysis and scholarship). Moreover, we risk losing specific games, platforms, artefacts and products as they disappear into the bargain bucket or crumble to dust as media decay, deterioration and ‘bit rot’ (Monnens, "Losing") set in. Space does not here permit a discussion of the scope and extent of the preservation work required (for instance, the NVA sets its sights on preserving, documenting, interpreting and exhibiting ‘videogame culture’ in its broadest sense and recognises the importance of videogames as more than just code and as enmeshed within complex networks of productive, consumptive and performative practices). Neither is it my intention to discuss here the specific challenges and numerous issues associated with archival and exhibition tools such as emulation which seek to rebirth code on up-to-date, manageable, well-supported hardware platforms but which are frequently insensitive to the specificities and nuances of the played experience (see Newman, "On Emulation", for some further notes on videogame emulation, archiving and exhibition and Takeshita’s comments in Nutt on the technologies and aesthetics of glitches, for instance). Each of these issues is vitally important and will, doubtless become a part of the forthcoming research agenda for game preservation scholars. My focus here, however, is rather more straightforward and foundational and though it is deliberately controversial, it is my hope that its casts some light over some ingrained assumptions about videogames and the magnitude and urgency of the game preservation project. Videogames Are Disappearing? At a time when retailers’ shelves struggle under the weight of newly-released titles and digital distribution systems such as Steam, the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Marketplace, WiiWare, DSiWare et al bring new ways to purchase and consume playable content, it might seem strange to suggest that videogames are disappearing. In addition to what we have perhaps come to think of as the ‘usual suspects’ in the hardware and software publishing marketplace, over the past year or so Apple have, unexpectedly and perhaps even surprising themselves, carved out a new gaming platform with the iPhone/iPod Touch and have dramatically simplified the notoriously difficult process of distributing mobile content with the iTunes App Store. In the face of this apparent glut of games and the emergence and (re)discovery of new markets with the iPhone, Wii and Nintendo DS, videogames seem an ever more a vital and visible part of popular culture. Yet, for all their commercial success and seemingly penetration the simple fact is that they are disappearing. And at an alarming rate. Addressing the IGDA community of game developers and producers, Henry Lowood makes the point with admirable clarity (see also Ruggill and McAllister): If we fail to address the problems of game preservation, the games you are making will disappear, perhaps within a few decades. You will lose access to your own intellectual property, you will be unable to show new developers the games you designed or that inspired you, and you may even find it necessary to re-invent a bunch of wheels. (Lowood et al. 1) For me, this point hit home most persuasively a few years ago when, along with Iain Simons, I was invited by the British Film Institute to contribute a book to their ‘Screen Guides’ series. 100 Videogames (Newman and Simons) was an intriguing prospect that provided us with the challenge and opportunity to explore some of the key moments in videogaming’s forty year history. However, although the research and writing processes proved to be an immensely pleasurable and rewarding experience that we hope culminated in an accessible, informative volume offering insight into some well-known (and some less-well known) games, the project was ultimately tinged with a more than a little disappointment and frustration. Assuming our book had successfully piqued the interest of our readers into rediscovering games previously played or perhaps investigating games for the first time, what could they then do? Where could they go to find these games in order to experience their delights (or their flaws and problems) at first hand? Had our volume been concerned with television or film, as most of the Screen Guides are, then online and offline retailers, libraries, and even archives for less widely-available materials, would have been obvious ports of call. For the student of videogames, however, the choices are not so much limited as practically non-existant. It is only comparatively recently that videogame retailers have shifted away from an almost exclusive focus on new releases and the zeitgeist platforms towards a recognition of old games and systems through the creation of the ‘pre-owned’ marketplace. The ‘pre-owned’ transaction is one in which old titles may be traded in for cash or against the purchase of new releases of hardware or software. Surely, then, this represents the commercial viability of classic games and is a recognition on the part of retail that the new release is not the only game in town. Yet, if we consider more carefully the ‘pre-owned’ model, we find a few telling points. First, there is cold economic sense to the pre-owned business model. In their financial statements for FY08, ‘GAME revealed that the service isn’t just a key part of its offer to consumers, but its also represents an ‘attractive’ gross margin 39 per cent.’ (French). Second, and most important, the premise of the pre-owned business as it is communicated to consumers still offers nothing but primacy to the new release. That one would trade-in one’s old games in order to consume these putatively better new ones speaks eloquently in the language of obsolesce and what Dovey and Kennedy have called the ‘technological imaginary’. The wire mesh buckets of old, pre-owned games are not displayed or coded as treasure troves for the discerning or completist collector but rather are nothing more than bargain bins. These are not classic games. These are cheap games. Cheap because they are old. Cheap because they have had their day. This is a curious situation that affects videogames most unfairly. Of course, my caricature of the videogame retailer is still incomplete as a good deal of the instantly visible shopfloor space is dedicated neither to pre-owned nor new releases but rather to displays of empty boxes often sporting unfinalised, sometimes mocked-up, boxart flaunting titles available for pre-order. Titles you cannot even buy yet. In the videogames marketplace, even the present is not exciting enough. The best game is always the next game. Importantly, retail is not alone in manufacturing this sense of dissatisfaction with the past and even the present. The specialist videogames press plays at least as important a role in reinforcing and normalising the supersessionary discourse of instant obsolescence by fixing readers’ attentions and expectations on the just-visible horizon. Examining the pages of specialist gaming publications reveals them to be something akin to Futurist paeans dedicating anything from 70 to 90% of their non-advertising pages to previews, interviews with developers about still-in-development titles (see Newman, Playing, for more on the specialist gaming press’ love affair with the next generation and the NDA scoop). Though a small number of publications specifically address retro titles (e.g. Imagine Publishing’s Retro Gamer), most titles are essentially vehicles to promote current and future product lines with many magazines essentially operating as delivery devices for cover-mounted CDs/DVDs offering teaser videos or playable demos of forthcoming titles to further whet the appetite. Manufacturing a sense of excitement might seem wholly natural and perhaps even desirable in helping to maintain a keen interest in gaming culture but the effect of the imbalance of popular coverage has a potentially deleterious effect on the status of superseded titles. Xbox World 360’s magnificently-titled ‘Anticip–O–Meter’ ™ does more than simply build anticipation. Like regular features that run under headings such as ‘The Next Best Game in The World Ever is…’, it seeks to author not so much excitement about the imminent release but a dissatisfaction with the present with which unfavourable comparisons are inevitably drawn. The current or previous crop of (once new, let us not forget) titles are not simply superseded but rather are reinvented as yardsticks to judge the prowess of the even newer and unarguably ‘better’. As Ashton has noted, the continual promotion of the impressiveness of the next generation requires a delicate balancing act and a selective, institutionalised system of recall and forgetting that recovers the past as a suite of (often technical) benchmarks (twice as many polygons, higher resolution etc.) In the absence of formalised and systematic collecting, these obsoleted titles run the risk of being forgotten forever once they no longer serve the purpose of demonstrating the comparative advancement of the successors. The Future of Videogaming’s Past Even if we accept the myriad claims of game studies scholars that videogames are worthy of serious interrogation in and of themselves and as part of a multifaceted, transmedial supersystem, we might be tempted to think that the lack of formalised collections, archival resources and readily available ‘old/classic’ titles at retail is of no great significance. After all, as Jones has observed, the videogame player is almost primed to undertake this kind of activity as gaming can, at least partly, be understood as the act and art of collecting. Games such as Animal Crossing make this tendency most manifest by challenging their players to collect objects and artefacts – from natural history through to works of visual art – so as to fill the initially-empty in-game Museum’s cases. While almost all videogames from The Sims to Katamari Damacy can be considered to engage their players in collecting and collection management work to some extent, Animal Crossing is perhaps the most pertinent example of the indivisibility of the gamer/archivist. Moreover, the permeability of the boundary between the fan’s collection of toys, dolls, posters and the other treasured objects of merchandising and the manipulation of inventories, acquisitions and equipment lists that we see in the menus and gameplay imperatives of videogames ensures an extensiveness and scope of fan collecting and archival work. Similarly, the sociality of fan collecting and the value placed on private hoarding, public sharing and the processes of research ‘…bridges to new levels of the game’ (Jones 48). Perhaps we should be as unsurprised that their focus on collecting makes videogames similar to eBay as we are to the realisation that eBay with its competitiveness, its winning and losing states, and its inexorable countdown timer, is nothing if not a game? We should be mindful, however, of overstating the positive effects of fandom on the fate of old games. Alongside eBay’s veneration of the original object, p2p and bittorrent sites reduce the videogame to its barest. Quite apart from the (il)legality of emulation and videogame ripping and sharing (see Conley et al.), the existence of ‘ROMs’ and the technicalities of their distribution reveals much about the peculiar tension between the interest in old games and their putative cultural and economic value. (St)ripped down to the barest of code, ROMs deny the gamer the paratextuality of the instruction manual or boxart. In fact, divorced from its context and robbed of its materiality, ROMs perhaps serve to make the original game even more distant. More tellingly, ROMs are typically distributed by the thousand in zipped files. And so, in just a few minutes, entire console back-catalogues – every game released in every territory – are available for browsing and playing on a PC or Mac. The completism of the collections allows detailed scrutiny of differences in Japanese versus European releases, for instance, and can be seen as a vital investigative resource. However, that these ROMs are packaged into collections of many thousands speaks implicitly of these games’ perceived value. In a similar vein, the budget-priced retro re-release collection helps to diminish the value of each constituent game and serves to simultaneously manufacture and highlight the manifestly unfair comparison between these intriguingly retro curios and the legitimately full-priced games of now and next. Customer comments at Amazon.co.uk demonstrate the way in which historical and technological comparisons are now solidly embedded within the popular discourse (see also Newman 2009b). Leaving feedback on Sega’s PS3/Xbox 360 Sega MegaDrive Ultimate Collection customers berate the publisher for the apparently meagre selection of titles on offer. Interestingly, this charge seems based less around the quality, variety or range of the collection but rather centres on jarring technological schisms and a clear sense of these titles being of necessarily and inevitably diminished monetary value. Comments range from outraged consternation, ‘Wtf, only 40 games?’, ‘I wont be getting this as one disc could hold the entire arsenal of consoles and games from commodore to sega saturn(Maybe even Dreamcast’ through to more detailed analyses that draw attention to the number of bits and bytes but that notably neglect any consideration of gameplay, experientiality, cultural significance or, heaven forbid, fun. “Ultimate” Collection? 32Mb of games on a Blu-ray disc?…here are 40 Megadrive games at a total of 31 Megabytes of data. This was taking the Michael on a DVD release for the PS2 (or even on a UMD for the PSP), but for a format that can store 50 Gigabytes of data, it’s an insult. Sega’s entire back catalogue of Megadrive games only comes to around 800 Megabytes - they could fit that several times over on a DVD. The ultimate consequence of these different but complementary attitudes to games that fix attentions on the future and package up decontextualised ROMs by the thousand or even collections of 40 titles on a single disc (selling for less than half the price of one of the original cartridges) is a disregard – perhaps even a disrespect – for ‘old’ games. Indeed, it is this tendency, this dominant discourse of inevitable, natural and unimpeachable obsolescence and supersession, that provided one of the prime motivators for establishing the NVA. As Lowood et al. note in the title of the IGDA Game Preservation SIG’s White Paper, we need to act to preserve and conserve videogames ‘before it’s too late’.ReferencesAshton, D. ‘Digital Gaming Upgrade and Recovery: Enrolling Memories and Technologies as a Strategy for the Future.’ M/C Journal 11.6 (2008). 13 Jun 2009 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/86›.Buffa, C. ‘How to Fix Videogame Journalism.’ GameDaily 20 July 2006. 13 Jun 2009 ‹http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/how-to-fix-videogame-journalism/69202/?biz=1›. ———. ‘Opinion: How to Become a Better Videogame Journalist.’ GameDaily 28 July 2006. 13 Jun 2009 ‹http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/opinion-how-to-become-a-better-videogame-journalist/69236/?biz=1. ———. ‘Opinion: The Videogame Review – Problems and Solutions.’ GameDaily 2 Aug. 2006. 13 Jun 2009 ‹http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/opinion-the-videogame-review-problems-and-solutions/69257/?biz=1›. ———. ‘Opinion: Why Videogame Journalism Sucks.’ GameDaily 14 July 2006. 13 Jun 2009 ‹http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/opinion-why-videogame-journalism-sucks/69180/?biz=1›. Cook, Sarah, Beryl Graham, and Sarah Martin eds. Curating New Media, Gateshead: BALTIC, 2002. Duguid, Paul. ‘Material Matters: The Past and Futurology of the Book.’ In Gary Nunberg, ed. The Future of the Book. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996. 63–101. French, Michael. 'GAME Reveals Pre-Owned Trading Is 18% of Business.’ MCV 22 Apr. 2009. 13 Jun 2009 ‹http://www.mcvuk.com/news/34019/GAME-reveals-pre-owned-trading-is-18-per-cent-of-business›. Giddings, Seth, and Helen Kennedy. ‘Digital Games as New Media.’ In J. Rutter and J. Bryce, eds. Understanding Digital Games. London: Sage. 129–147. Gillen, Kieron. ‘The New Games Journalism.’ Kieron Gillen’s Workblog 2004. 13 June 2009 ‹http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?page_id=3›. Jones, S. The Meaning of Video Games: Gaming and Textual Strategies, New York: Routledge, 2008. Kerr, A. The Business and Culture of Digital Games. London: Sage, 2006. Lister, Martin, John Dovey, Seth Giddings, Ian Grant and Kevin Kelly. New Media: A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Lowood, Henry, Andrew Armstrong, Devin Monnens, Zach Vowell, Judd Ruggill, Ken McAllister, and Rachel Donahue. Before It's Too Late: A Digital Game Preservation White Paper. IGDA, 2009. 13 June 2009 ‹http://www.igda.org/wiki/images/8/83/IGDA_Game_Preservation_SIG_-_Before_It%27s_Too_Late_-_A_Digital_Game_Preservation_White_Paper.pdf›. Monnens, Devin. ‘Why Are Games Worth Preserving?’ In Before It's Too Late: A Digital Game Preservation White Paper. IGDA, 2009. 13 June 2009 ‹http://www.igda.org/wiki/images/8/83/IGDA_Game_Preservation_SIG_-_Before_It%27s_Too_Late_-_A_Digital_Game_Preservation_White_Paper.pdf›. ———. ‘Losing Digital Game History: Bit by Bit.’ In Before It's Too Late: A Digital Game Preservation White Paper. IGDA, 2009. 13 June 2009 ‹http://www.igda.org/wiki/images/8/83/IGDA_Game_Preservation_SIG_-_Before_It%27s_Too_Late_-_A_Digital_Game_Preservation_White_Paper.pdf›. Newman, J. ‘In Search of the Videogame Player: The Lives of Mario.’ New Media and Society 4.3 (2002): 407-425.———. ‘On Emulation.’ The National Videogame Archive Research Diary, 2009. 13 June 2009 ‹http://www.nationalvideogamearchive.org/index.php/2009/04/on-emulation/›. ———. ‘Our Cultural Heritage – Available by the Bucketload.’ The National Videogame Archive Research Diary, 2009. 10 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.nationalvideogamearchive.org/index.php/2009/04/our-cultural-heritage-available-by-the-bucketload/›. ———. Playing with Videogames, London: Routledge, 2008. ———, and I. Simons. 100 Videogames. London: BFI Publishing, 2007. Nutt, C. ‘He Is 8-Bit: Capcom's Hironobu Takeshita Speaks.’ Gamasutra 2008. 13 June 2009 ‹http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3752/›. Radd, D. ‘Gaming 3.0. Sony’s Phil Harrison Explains the PS3 Virtual Community, Home.’ Business Week 9 Mar. 2007. 13 June 2009 ‹http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/mar2007/id20070309_764852.htm?chan=innovation_game+room_top+stories›. Ruggill, Judd, and Ken McAllister. ‘What If We Do Nothing?’ Before It's Too Late: A Digital Game Preservation White Paper. IGDA, 2009. 13 June 2009. ‹http://www.igda.org/wiki/images/8/83/IGDA_Game_Preservation_SIG_-_Before_It%27s_Too_Late_-_A_Digital_Game_Preservation_White_Paper.pdf›. 16-19.