The Deep Prehistory of Indian Gaming: The Perspective from Mesoamerica

Although it was not until the early 1980s that high stakes Indian Gaming was permitted in the United States, at the time of the arrival of Europeans in North America high stakes gambling was widespread among indigenous peoples. This is particularly well documented in Mesoamerica where 16th century historians describe a variety of games of chance (e.g., dice games) and games of skill (e.g., rubber ball game, bowling, checkers). At least some of these games involved heavy gambling on the part of both players and onlookers. Archaeologists have been able to trace the origins of some of these games back into deep prehistory. In this presentation Dr. Voorhies will present an overview of Mesoamerican games and her recent discovery of a probably scoreboard for a dice game dating back to around 2400 B.C.
Prof. Barbara Voorhies is Professor Emerita in the Department of Anthropology at UCSB. She is a leading scholar of Mesoamerican Prehistory, including the prehistory of Mexico and the northern Central American countries from first settlement to the arrival of peoples from the Old World. She has also investigated how people over time have met the challenges of living along the world’s coastlines and the transition from foraging to farming in tropical coastal habitats, specifically how mobile foragers shifted their lifeways to settled village farmers in the tropical lowlands, especially on the south Pacific coast of Mexico.

Sponsored by the IHC Archaeology Research Focus Group.

jwil 27.iv.2010