Exhuming Atari, or Punk Archaeology Levels Up
A guest blog by Andrew Reinhard, Punk Archaeologist without Borders
There’s vintage, and then there’s old, but time is flexible, relative. If we travel the speed of light on a return orbit back to Earth, we haven’t aged much within ourselves, but the culture of the planet has changed hundreds of times over. Or has it? Maybe it takes an archaeologist to know. Archaeologists travel through space-time continuously, inhaling that mélange of trench-spice putting us simultaneously in the present and the past. We fold space every meter we go down. We rescue the old from the past, view it in the present, and preserve it for the future. Our trench is the singularity tying everything together, a convergence of all time to a single focus. The material artifacts we recover are important only in what they tell of that is of cultural value, both then and now. We cannot predict what the future will think, or what it will believe.
We study our history and our primary sources: Heinrich Schliemann identified the site of Troy from reading Homer. We talk to living primary sources, too: Yannis Lolos talked to locals in tavernas throughout the region of Sikyonia to identify hundreds of sites unknown to anyone outside the villages. Thousands of years have passed, and still the living know where to look, if only you know how (and whom) to ask.
As the legend grew, so did the mystery, and so did the technology. Atari and its early console brethren (Intellivision, Colecovision, others) ultimately begat the Nintendo Entertainment System, and later consoles and games by Sega, Sony, Microsoft. Games and gaming systems from the 1970s and 1980s began steeping in nostalgia. (Notably, Punk bands like Atari Teenage Riot and The Ataris formed in 1992 and 1995, respectively.) What Atari and others created ultimately became a part of real history, not just of technology and entertainment, but of a humanity that has become increasingly wired over time.
Archaeologists traditionally study things that are quite old (chronologically speaking). After all, “Archaeology” comes from the Greek αρχαίος meaning “ancient”. This is a qualifier, and when considering the history of games, 30 years might as well be 2,000. Technology condenses time and requires an entirely new way to consider the fourth dimension.
Thirty years after the Atari deposit, a Canadian company, Fuel Entertainment, purchased the rights from the city of Alamogordo to excavate the landfill. The news leaked in June 2013, and I began writing about the legend on my Archaeogaming blog while emailing Fuel to learn what their plan was for excavation. To my mind, these games are part of our cultural heritage, and the dig should not just be about proving if the legend is true. Archaeologists had the chance to properly excavate a landfill, to document the strata and condition of rubbish in the desert, and to place whatever would be found in the Atari level into its own context. What was the surrounding trash? What was the condition of the games? Were there just E.T. games, or were there other titles? Was there hardware? What about prototypes and corporate documents? What if there was nothing? The story was so good, and the questions so interesting, that Fuel contacted Lightbox (the content studio for Xbox original programming) for a documentary series on moments in technology history. Atari: Game Over, directed by Zak Penn (writer of the Avengers, X2, The Incredible Hulk), was to be the first film.
Punk archaeologists, from left: Andrew Reinhard, Richard Rothaus and Bill Caraher
I began receiving a series of phone calls, first from Fuel, and later from Lightbox about the archaeology of the project, and was later invited to participate in the actual excavation. As an archaeologist and as a gamer who adored Atari as a kid, I couldn’t believe my luck. I was a 21st-century Charlie Bucket. And I could bring a team. We would bring our collective experience (combined decades in the field) with us, along with considerable library research, tools, cameras, sifting boxes, and our own technology. The team included archaeologist Dr. Richard Rothaus who owns his own CRM firm, Trefoil Cultural and Environmental, archaeologist Prof. Bill Caraher of the University of North Dakota, archaeologist Lindsay Eaves who recently completed the Rising Star expedition with the National Geographic Society, University of North Dakota historian Bret Weber to support the team, and video game historian, Prof. Raiford Guins of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. I would lead the team, having an M.A. in archaeology from the University of Missouri at Columbia, now working as the Director of Publications for the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. All of us had archaeological experience in the Americas, and most had excavated extensively in the Mediterranean. We met via Google Hangouts and exchanged dozens of emails to discuss the game plan for the dig, everything from remote sensing to data recording to thoughts on publication and distribution of data. As all of us are Punk Archaeologists (and Raiford and Bret are Punk Historians), we felt as ready as we could be for such an unusual project, unique in the history of media archaeology, and rare when considering garbology as pioneered by William Rathje. We were about to conduct one of the first excavations into our recent past, apply an archaeological method to it, treating the project for what it was regardless of whether or not there was an Atari level to be reached: a salvage mixed with a good old-fashioned pottery dump.
Punk Archaeology applies real-world archaeological methods in a fluid way, maintaining a scientific rigor even in the face of adverse conditions. Punk Archaeology explores the archaeology at the very fringes of the discipline often overlooked (intentionally or otherwise) by other professionals. For the Punk Archaeologist, the fact that artifacts are sometimes younger than 50 years is immaterial; what is important is that these finds have cultural value and contribute to a broader understanding of the society which placed them in the rubbish heap. Punk Archaeology thrives when confined with tight (or non-existent budgets) and time constraints, relying on donations and volunteers who are willing to give their passion and energy to a project with no guarantee of success, the possibility of failure, and the likeliness of hardship.
The details of the actual days of excavation and data recording must remain shrouded in a mystery of their own. The entire project was filmed, and that documentary will be released later in 2014 for owners of Xbox 360 and Xbox One, at which point the embargo will be lifted, and we can share as much detail as we are able to professional and armchair archaeologists alike. As the news media has already reported worldwide, the games were found including loads of E.T. cartridges, many still in their boxes along with instructions, catalogues, and inserts almost perfectly preserved under the desert floor. We were not responsible for pinpointing the location of where to dig. That was provided by a local solid waste management expert familiar with the site, and by the scavengers, now in their 30s and 40s, who recollected with pride their adventures in looting the landfill. We were also not responsible for the major digging which was done by heavy machinery by city contractors, experts at their jobs. We worked with them so that we could have access to various levels of trash, otherwise unsafe for human diggers, and they were happy to comply. Prior to the game level being reached, we photographed and noted the trench and trash from different levels. Following techniques pioneered by Rathje’s Garbology Project, we took random samples with our buckets, and followed evidence for assigning dates as we went down. When the Atari level was reached, we changed our methods and workflow to deal with the extreme volume of material while coping with the worst sandstorm of the year and fading afternoon hours. Safety became a real concern, and it was our mission then to collect and record as much data as we could in the field, knowing that time was short. Lindsay was hospitalized for the entire day of digging at the Atari level, and Raiford called an ambulance for himself on Sunday night. Both team members have recovered, but I did begin to wonder if this Atari tomb was cursed.
Punk Archaeology actively engages the public, understanding that archaeology is a team sport and should be completed in full view of curious (and even doubtful) observers. We had over 300 people from all over the United States watching us throughout the day and from various media outlets. This was our time to show the world that what we were doing was archaeology. One visitor approached the safety fence with an Atari joystick handle that he found on the ground by the portable toilets. I was able to explain what a surface find was, and how it might have gotten there. He was thrilled at his discovery. We were able to show the crowd right away what we had found, and ultimately the gallery had an unobstructed view into the trench and its sides as more Atari material was retrieved. They watched us work, and I hope we were able to inspire people while also demonstrating that we were neither looters nor tomb raiders, but were taking the utmost care to document the excavation and what we found within.
Now that the trench has been backfilled and the landfill has reverted to its closed status, our work continues as we organize and examine the hundreds and hundreds of photographs we shot, as well as video and audio, plus all of our catalogue and notes either taken on paper or on our tablets and Toughbook. The games remain the property of the city of Alamogordo while the council decides what to do with them. It is our hope that some of the material will be either loaned or given to various museums for both conservation and for display. Non-Atari material that was recovered for the purpose of understanding context has also been photographed and documented. We plan to put our data and media online as Open Access once we have published our preliminary report, and an article for the general public, as well as an article for a peer-reviewed journal. The writing will happen between now and the film’s release for publication afterwards.
It is our hope that upon publication the archaeological community can review how we handled the excavation and what was recovered. We did the best that we could within the confines of an aggressively short digging window driven by both safety and cost, and hope to have sampled enough to make sense out of the larger Atari assemblage. We had to make judgment calls on-the-fly, and had to continually modify our workflow as conditions worsened on the ground, especially being down one person from the start. Should future archaeologists wish to return to the site to continue what we began, there is more than enough material remaining to launch 100 theses and dissertations. Ours was a complex machine with many moving parts, requiring money, local and state government approval, excavators and bucket loaders, safety officials on-site throughout the digging season all day every day, and time (which is billable by the hour). We were lucky to get our shot at the material, and are thankful to Fuel, Lightbox, Alamogordo, and all of the people with whom we cooperated to make this project a success.
There is plenty more to report once the film has been released. Who knows? Perhaps the film contains other clues and data that we missed, and we’ll be watching frame-by-frame to check our work, and add to the corpus of data already collected.
Read more about the legendary Atari Excavations and the project team:
'Atari video game burial' on Wikipedia
'Film crew finds Atari ET games in New Mexico archaeological dig', 26 April 2014, The Guardian
Archaeogaming blog by Andrew Reinhard
The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World blog by Bill Caraher
Lightbox Entertainment
Fuel Entertainment
For more news on the documentary, follow @ataridigdoc on Twitter
