It's really silly to frame this as "archaeology". Archaeology is the study of long-past civilizations with only traces of clues left behind in buildings, trash

It's really silly to frame this as "archaeology". Archaeology is the study of long-past civilizations with only traces of clues left behind in buildings, trash piles, etc. This is a game written just a few years ago; you can just ask the folks who worked on it. (I should add section 4 of the paper tries to explain why this is archaeology, with lots of stuff about "material culture". I did not find it convincing.)