In October, UCI anthropologist Christopher Lowman was a featured speaker at the annual “Tomb Raider” convention, "TR28." Hosted in Derby, England, the event celebrated 28 years since the release of the first video game in 1996. Drawing from his anthropological expertise, Lowman was the convention's "real-life" archaeologist, and his talk covered what the game got right (and wrong) about archaeology, as well as some of the real artifacts and sites that inspired elements of the video games. 

"I made the point that while the game does not represent good practices for real archaeologists and is situated within archaeology's legacy of colonialism, the way the game designers incorporated real art from ancient Toltec, Greek, Egyptian, and other archaeological cultures leads to gamers recognizing archaeology in the world around them," he says. 

Listen in to his talk via YouTube, and learn more about the event and speakers online.