Archaeology: Collect Artifacts, Avoid Looters, and Sell to Museums...Right?

Archaeology: The Card Game is a variant of games like rummy and is fast-paced, fun, and easy to play.  In the game premise, players are archaeologists digging in the Egyptian desert.  I find this theme more than a little bit stereotypical for a game titled Archaeology, but at least with the sarcophagus on the cover of the box, no buyer could not possibly be confused as to what this game is about.  This charming game has simple rules and is light and entertaining for a whole range of audiences.

The main goal of the game is to collect complete sets of artifacts (ranging from parchment scraps to talismans to Pharaoh masks).  Actually, this is one of the more accurate versions of archaeology I’ve seen in games so far.  Archaeologists in this game have to work hard to find pieces of an artifact—instead of a perfectly preserved vase, there are shards of pottery for players to gather.  The more pieces unearthed, the more valuable the discovery.  Players then sell these sets to the museum for maximum profit.  I think this objective of the game is very revealing of the public’s general impressions of the role of archaeology—If archaeologists’ only purpose is to discover treasure and make money, then to me, they start to seem a little more like looters then qualified scientists. 

Speaking of looters, pillaging artifacts is actually a built-in feature of the game!  Mixed among the regular treasure cards (they’re actually called this in the instructions!) of the deck are six sandstorm chards and eight thief cards.  However both these robbers and natural disasters are viewed as dangers for archaeologists and are one of players’ main challenges.  Interestingly, although the Archaeology relies on sandstorms and thieves to make the game interesting and exciting, it also presents the issue of looting in a very negative light.  Perhaps, after battling to protect their valuable cards from the “thieves” Archaeology players will finish their game with a firm hatred of these artifact-destroyers, so archaeologists can hope.