Published in Games from Antiquity to Baroque

Keywords: Keywords: Abstractionism and representationalism, Ancient and medieval board games, Board and card games, Early card games, Perceptions of play, Properties of a game, Race games, Traditional and proprietary games, War games.

The perception of game pieces and boards as actors and theatres of play is a natural human propensity and has been expressed in many ways throughout the history of games. This paper explores some of the ways, with particular reference to chess and card games, that enable us to appreciate how people of the Past drew on themselves and their surroundings to breathe life into otherwise abstract procedures of formal games.