To the archaeologist any board game appears as a tripartite set of data consisting of a gameboard, the material needed for playing and a set of rules. A number of methodological problems arise from such a viewpoint. This article is a preliminary attempt to contribute to the history of mancala from a classical archaeologist's perspective. Whether due to the afroethnological domination of mancala-related research or to the lack of a sufficient archaeological data-base concerning Greek and Roman board games, mancala has not been regarded as a game played in the Mediterranean during classical antiquity. The Greaco-Roman world on the other hand was left to classical archaeology as the traditional field of research. The history of the game in the long term was no primary concern. Based on observation and literary descriptions not earlier than the 17th century of the rules adopted in different areas of Africa (except northern Africa), the Near-East, Asia and the New World, distributional analyses of variants and different typologies have been applied to gather information about migrations of peoples or cultural inter-relationships (4). It must be stressed, however, that anthropology and ethnology have rarely tried to advance theories about the origin and evolution of mancala. "Some writers have ascribed to it an Egyptian, Persian, Indian or African origin" (3). It might be as much as 3,000 years or as little as 1,000" (2). The situation concerning mancala is not very much better, as shown by Philip Townshend's synopsis of the state of affairs: "The age of mankala is uncertain. The origins of merels are surrounded by the darkness of prehistory and attempts to lighten it up have rarely been made.
While entire libraries could be filled with theories about the history of chess, the opposite is true of backgammon, its evolution having hardly ever excited any interest (1). Our knowledge concerning their origins, both chronologically and geographically, is however remarkably poor. M erels games, chess, backgammon and mancala are certainly the most widespread classical board games in the world.
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