Try your hand at this archaeology game made by the BBC.

The game puts you in the shoes of an archaeologist searching for an ancient burial site with a limited budget and under time pressure from developers. You need to do research at the local records office, take aerial photos of the land, and choose what methods to use in your excavation.

The game is quite unusual, in that it puts CRM archaeology in context and allows the player to see the “big picture” in an archaeology project- that which takes place outside of the actual excavation. I lost the game (and the quarry company destroyed my site) on my first try because I was too slow and careful with digging and went over budget.

In a basic search of online archaeology games out there, you’ll probably find that most aren’t really games at all, but “clickable” animations or quizzes. However, the best educational games (and Hunt the Ancestor only begins to scratch the surface of possibilities here) are immersive and immediate- you learn not by being asked to read facts, but by living a virtual life and having virtual “hands-on” experience. Actually making decisions and dealing with results makes programs like this one much more compelling and therefore better instruments of public archaeology.