Good places for a lay-person to learn about paleolithic to neolithic hominid culture? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 4 months ago by ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/archaeology@mander.xyz

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Had a cool idea for an ttrpg about growing up in a hunter-gatherer culture in a stone-age fantasy setting. The coolest part of idea, for me as the writer/designer, would be to have a section on "rituals" where I describe their technologies as magical rituals, not just a series of materials and steps. For example, instead of saying "you can get a +1 bonus on knapping checks by heat-treating your toolstone" it would be described as blessing the toolstone with fire, which leads into the idea of magic rock that has been fire-blessed by volcano spirits (obsidian).

I am vaguely aware of other technologies, such as extracting glue from animal hide and a tree fungus that smolders for fucking forever when lit, but my knowledge of these is limited. I need a more thorough knowledge of how exactly the pre-agriculture hominids did these things if I want to wax poetic about it.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] fossilesque@mander.xyz 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

You might like books by Alice Roberts, also check out Richard Bradley, who is more technical but honestly hard to put down. What area of the world are you interested in? Those two are mostly Europe centric. I'd also have to recommend Changes in the Land for ideas, though not set in the palaeolithic. https://archive.org/details/changesinlandind00cron_2

Bradley does a lot on rituals... Also look into the field of "experimental archaeology" for practical descriptions of how things may have been done.

To recap: 1. Roberts for how we came to be, 2. Bradley for how we interpret and act in our landscape and 3. Changes for how we affect the landscape in alternative systems.

Concerning Europe: Culture really pops off during the mesolithic for reasons there's lots of theories on. Neolithic is basically like wild gardening at first (and happened at multiple places at similar and not so similar times around the world... or at all). Monoculture is more towards Roman times to support army movement (oversimplified). Field boundaries are a Bronze Age thing, generally, which is right before the Romans, Vikings etc. depending on localities.

https://aeon.co/essays/an-archeological-revolution-transforms-our-image-of-human-freedoms

There's lots of old grimoires found, notably from the 17th century which you can adapt. There are a few museums for this with libraries, notably in northern Iceland and Cornwall, UK. I've been to both and both reproduced various texts from their libraries. There's lots for other parts of the world, but I got eurocentric vibes from your post.

[-] MostlyTato@mstdn.social 2 points 4 months ago

@fossilesque @ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling
I can recommend Richard Bradley's work, having contributed to it myself. There is quite a bit on ritual meaning in the landscape as expressed by Neolithic monumentalism, derived from the pre-existing perceived meaning over various natural places.
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203630228/archaeology-natural-places-richard-bradley

[-] fossilesque@mander.xyz 1 points 4 months ago

That's a good one. :)

load more comments (6 replies)

this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024

32 points (100.0% liked)

Archaeology

2205 readers

1 users here now

Welcome to c/Archaeology @ Mander.xyz!

Shovelbums welcome. 🗿

Notice Board

This is a work in progress, please don't mind the mess.

2023-06-15: We are collecting resources for the sidebar!
2023-06-13: We are looking for mods. Send a dm to @fossilesque@mander.xyz if interested!

About

Archaeology or archeology[a] is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes.

Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.

The discipline involves surveying, excavation, and eventually analysis of data collected, to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Read more...

Rules