Altering the course of history

by Nicole Findlay

Not only can Shawn Graham time travel back to Roman antiquity, he can change the course of history.

Graham, an assistant professor, digital humanities, Department of History, combined his love of archaeology with computer programming to develop a virtual simulation that provides users with an immersive history lesson.

The idea for a computer simulation occurred to Graham during his doctoral work in early imperial Roman society.

“History runs only once, but in the computer it can run over and over again,” said Graham.

He compares his simulation to the film Groundhog Day. Each morning, Bill Murray’s character, Connor, awakens to a replay of the previous day, meeting the same people, and encountering the same situations.  The only variable that can change is Connor’s reactions to events.

“My research provided a static picture of the City of Rome’s patronage networks in each of the Roman dynasties but it was not clear how we got from one kind of network to the next, or how they evolved,” he said.  “How did power shift through the social network? How did society advance? ”

Apparently the answers can be found in the very bricks upon which Roman cities were built.

Brick and tile in Roman antiquity often were stamped with the seals of the landowners, the consular dated year, the estates upon which they were made and sometimes the warehouse for which they were destined.

Each tidbit of information is like a puzzle piece that when assembled provides a picture of the individual landowners, slaves and suppliers that comprised the empire.  However a different picture emerges when the puzzle pieces are rearranged.

“An understanding of the outcomes that could have occurred, allows historians to “better understand what actually did take place.”

Graham is now looking the social and economic networks of ancient resource exploitation by using a simulation of the settlement history of Western Quebec and its timbering history as an ethnographic parallel for antiquity.

He has contributed to a number of game-based learning projects. Graham has also worked in the commercial heritage industry in the Ottawa region, most notably completing the heritage inventory of Gatineau Park for the National Capital Commission.