Research into Roman gaming stone nominated for Quest science award
In February 2026, a Roman stone found in Heerlen made world news when scientific research showed that it was in fact a genuine board game. Now, this research is one of the five contenders for the Quest Publieksprijs 2026. You can help us win by voting!
What did the research involve?
A remarkable piece of limestone has been lying in the depot of Het Romeins Museum for quite some time. It comes from a French quarry and was found near the Roman bathhouse in Heerlen. Lines are scratched into its surface. Countless game pieces, made of glass, bone and ceramic, also surfaced during excavations in the same area. Hence the suspicion that this was a gaming stone. Walter Crist, at the time working at the Department of Advanced Computing Sciences at Maastricht University, examined the stone together with his colleagues in Maastricht and Heerlen. They discovered that the wear on the stone is located precisely where you would slide your playing piece. This pointed to a pattern consistent with intensive use of the game.
To better understand these traces, Luk van Goor, at the restoration studio Restaura, made them more visible using highly detailed 3D scans. This brought subtle differences to light: some lines are worn just slightly deeper than others. This is a clear sign that certain moves were used more frequently. The beautifully finished edges also indicate that this was a deliberate end product, rather than, say, a building block.
The next step was perhaps the most innovative of all. Researchers in Maastricht used artificial intelligence to reconstruct possible game rules, and it worked!
