David A. Tatum Verbatim REBORN!

This was ready last weekend, but… uh, I forgot to post it, so… blame the 3 day weekend?  (Nearly forgot this weekend, too).  I guess, after having not had a working blog for a couple years, I’ve gotten out of the habit of weekly releases.

Just in case you’re just joining us, you should first check this explanation as to what we’re doing, then see this link for last week’s sample sheet. As they’re connected, you might want to refresh yourself on what I wrote last week, even if you’ve already read it once. You probably won’t understand what’s going on without having read those blogs.  I’ll also suggest you reference that first sample sheet, because I’m not going to repeat my explanation about who each of the archaeologists are.

Sample II:  The 2nd Layer

Site I:

Dig Team Report:
We think we’ve found the lost monastery!  Surprisingly, the walls of the monastery are going around the cistern… which we’re no longer certain is a cistern.  As we dug down deeper around it, we found that what we thought was a cistern was actually a room on the top of a set of steps.  How far down the building housing what we’ve called a “cistern” goes,  we can’t be certain, as we have yet to dig down to the foundation, but the monastery appears to have been built on top of it, and integrated it into its own foundations.
We’ve never seen anything like this, before, so even though she really wants to continue working on Site II, we had to bring in Dr. Leia Villa to check this out.
Dr. Anne Bein was called away, despite excavations continuing on the many barrows we’ve also found in this field, but she had an interesting suggestion — despite not finding any weapons on any of the bodies, many of the skeletons have a cause of death that are typical of veterans of war.  To try and explain this, we’ve asked Dr. Yari Makura to come in and examine the scene, to see if she can figure out why.

Dr. Leia Villa’s Report:
Certainly are two different types of construction going on, here.  The walls of what we’re calling the Cistern (even though it’s clearly not one of those… though what it was, I can’t tell, yet) are made of large quarried stone blocks — which might explain how they’ve survived intact for so long — with gypsum rubble to fill in gaps (not a true mortar, as it has no binding properties, but with stones this heavy it doesn’t need that).  I’m told the workers, here, found dating evidence that suggests this ‘cistern’ was built in the First Era, but I have to wonder about that.  The stones this place was built from are of varied composition and origin — a mix of granite, basalt, and similar material that would have been… difficult to cut with the technology of the First Era, but it’s certainly quite old.  The amount of wear, alone, proves that.
It must have been built no later than the Third Era, however, because the monastery built on top of it could only have been built in the late Third, early Fourth Era.  Partially destroyed in a fire, the monastery’s walls appear to have principally been timber-frame construction with wattle and daub walls throughout, built on a gravel foundation that was packed tight into the walls of the Cistern.  The layout of the building suggests steps up into the cistern would be in the rear of the building, in a back room, with a large assembly hall in the front.
I’m sorry to miss out on that first sight of the port city, but I can certainly see why I was called out.

Dr. Yari Makura’s Report:
I can see why I was called in, but I’m not sure what I can see in this site.  I’m no osteoarchaeologist, so I had to consult Dr. Bein’s notes extensively.  I also can’t make heads or tails of the barrows, though thankfully Dr. Villa is here to consult.  I was, however, able to make quite a few observations based on the grave goods, which Dr. Bein had largely ignored to focus on the bones.
The bodies were buried with clothing (only fragments of which remain), which was mostly made of silk.  Silk would have been difficult to produce in such quantities at the time.  Silk is often prized for duelist outfits in that era, as it is easier to keep out of, or remove from,  wounds than many of the other clothing fibers in the era (wool, cotton, linen, etc.) common in the era.  Perhaps this is a society of duelists?
There are no weapons in these burials.  There are, however, some odd pieces of what might be charitably called ‘armor’ for forearms and shins.  Odd designs, though — they’re hinged plates, and use intricately woven wire bracelet to attach to the intended limbs.  The way they’re designed, you could put them on as a baby, and they would still fit you when you were fully grown.  And there are no chest pieces, no helmets, nothing.  Ceremonial armor, almost certainly.
I do agree with Dr. Bein’s conclusion that the bones suggest combat injuries throughout the lives of these people, but I doubt they occurred on the battlefield.  They’re mostly consistent with the sort of injuries I would expect to see from hand-to-hand combat, save for a sizeable percentage of wounds you would expect to find from wild animal attacks.  Odd.  Considering the nearby monastery, perhaps deaths from some sort of ritual combat against both man and beast, rather than war?

Site II:

Dig Team Report:
We’ve moved on, for the time being, from the dry riverbed, and started serious digging on the city.  So far, we’ve unearthed a number of 4th era buildings, and a trash heap belonging to a factory of some kind.  As most of the debris is ceramic in nature, we asked Dr. Jordan Potter to investigate.
There is a large statue of some sort, an obelisk on top, with engraving all around it on the pedestal, and some of that odd glowing green glass Dr. Makura discovered as the cargo of one of those ships discovered last week enclosing something in between.  We’re hoping Dr. Aroon Carver will be able to interpret these engravings for us, and maybe help us figure out just what is going on with this glass stuff.

Dr. Jordan Potter’s Report:
Literally tons of ceramic shards have been unearthed from a Fourth Era pottery factory — unusually early for such an industry, but not unheard of.  Porcelain process, which is unheard of in this area, with all of the pottery solidly colored a pale green.  The pottery is in a variety of standard designs, and includes plates, glasses, bowls, and so forth.  I imagine this is more fascinating as one of the earliest examples of mass production-type factory, but is otherwise not all that unusual.  There are no artist’s markings, it’s not especially well made or of good quality.  It’s basically the same sort of pottery as you could buy, today — it’s just older, and for the most part broken.  Why did you bring me in on this one?  There’s nothing I can tell you about it that you can’t see for yourselves.

Dr. Aroon Carver’s Report:
I was rather miffed to be taken away from Site III, because I’m still not done with those metal tablets.  I brought one of them with me, however, and I’ll continue to work on translating it.
As it turns out, having the tablet with me has proven to be useful, both for this site and for my work on the tablets.  There is one passage on one of the four sides of this statue where the engravings are identical to the engravings in one passage on the golden tablets.  Given that the other three sides all translate to the same thing, I believe I’ve now been able to interpret that passage… and established a definite connection between Site II and Site III.
The passage reads “Bear, Dog, Pig, Bird, Worm, Person.  By Our Powers Combined!”  Unlike the tablets, the pedestal includes a symbol below the passages — a circle with a lightning bolt splitting it.
The glass is not standard glass, but uranium glass (hence why it glows); I’m surprised Dr. Villa was unable to identify it, herself, but it isn’t typically used in architectural features, I suppose.  The known manufacturing process for uranium glass was first patented in the Fifth Era, but we’ve had small samples show up from time to time that date back as far as the First Era.  This is the largest example we’ve seen from the Fourth Era or earlier, however.  The glass is enclosed in a structure made with what looks like gold (Dr. Ferreum taught me how to identify if a metal is gold or an alloy; this is an alloy, not actual gold) that is further supported by some surprisingly well-preserved cast iron outside reinforcements on the outside of the frame.  The glass is enclosing something, but we cannot retrieve whatever that is without destructive study, which I am reluctant to suggest.  The discoloration of the glass makes it hard to see, but I believe it is organic, possibly someone’s internal organ.  You should have called Dr. Bein in to see, because I’m hopeless at internal anatomy, and so is Dr. Potter.  Jordan believes it may only be a ceramic replica, given its current state, but without disassembling the statue (which I do not believe can be done without damaging the obelisk) I am uncertain how we can confirm it either way.

Site III:

Dig Team Report:
We still haven’t dug down far enough to reach the First Age settlement we’ve been looking for, but we did just discover a small Fourth Age settlement, which again has not appeared in any of our past records.
Most of what we’ve found to show the presence of the village is decomposing wattle and daub and some gravel foundations to small buildings.  There are few remarkable finds from the village, save some small pieces of metalwork that we’ve shown to our visiting archaeologists, but the village layout is unusual — all of the buildings were built in a circle around a central plateau.  Soil analysis shows that there was once something heavy in the very center of the circle, but it must have been removed when the village was abandoned.  Soil compaction says this would have been a very heavy object, so it must have taken some effort to remove.
This settlement also has several more of those odd tablets, placed in a circle between the village and that central feature, so we retained Dr. Cannon Ferreum to determine which of them are the ‘golden’ tablets, and which are the alloy.  We intend to set them all aside, regardless, for Dr. Aroon Carver’s analysis once she returns.
This settlement includes a large graveyard.  We’re not sure if these particular graves will give up anything of interest, as the bones are not especially well preserved, but in the hopes they might tell us something, we asked Dr. Anne Bein to come and examine them.

Dr. Cannon Ferreum’s Report:
Well, quite a bit to find on this site.  The extensive presence of iron and steel slag throughout the site suggests this village was manufacturing large amounts of crucible steel, possibly even enough for export, in an era where steel manufacturing was in its infancy.  There’s also filings of that fake gold alloy from the tablets, suggesting it was manufactured here as well.  There is no evidence of brass or bronze manufacturing, however, which is odd, as there are a number of brass and bronze artifacts (in the form of cutlery, jewelry, and similar personal effects) on site.
Once again, we found exactly seven slabs.  Five of them were made with a gold-like alloy infused with blood (a different alloy than the one used last week; likely an older process), and two others made with pure gold.  These are exactly identical to the seven slabs we found last week, but the two pure gold slabs are different from the one gold slab found last week.  I’ve sent the pure gold slabs to Dr. Carver for further analysis, but we’re keeping the fake gold slabs on-site for now, to use as comparisons to any similar tablets we find in the future.

Dr. Anne Bein’s Report:
I’m not sure why the dig team thought I would want to see these old pieces of junk — I’ve left them all for Dr. Ferreum’s analysis.  It’s the bones that interest me.
These gravesites are unusual.  In an area without any trees (at least in the Modern Era), the people of this village buried their dead in hollowed out trees.  Symbolic of something?  I’m guessing some sort of nature ritual is involved.
Some of the bones seem unusually soft.  That sometimes happens when soil bones are buried in is especially acidic, but we tested, and the local soil is almost perfectly neutral, not acidic at all.  This may suggest the bones have been moved, at some point in the past, from a different area to this graveyard — but from where?  We have no samples of the foreign acidic soil to test, so we have no idea where the bodies came from.
As to the surviving skeletons, every time we find a skeleton with bones broken during the body’s lifetime, we also have found that the body was killed in a ritual faction — evidence that necks were sliced, to where at least one skeleton was almost fully beheaded.  This society believed in sacrificing their wounded rather than treating them, which is unusual for this era.
I am loving this graveyard, and hope I may continue on it for the forseeable future.

Wrap Up:

I may have forgotten to post last week, but I’m hoping to not have to use another “classic” post next week before posting the next layer, at least, as a consequence.  Got a pretty good head start on the next one, at any rate.  I do have a dentist’s appointment tomorrow, however (routine check-up, but I never react well to these), so we’ll see how next week goes.

Again, I “assigned” each anthropologist by random dice roll (which caused me a narrative issue or two, but figuring out what these various anthropologists might discover about this story is partly the point of this exercise).  I’m not going to let anyone hit the same place three times in a row, however, so despite whatever the dice roll indicates next week, Dr. Cannon Ferreum will NOT be returning to Site Three next week.  Nor with Dr. Villa and Dr. Makura be working together, again, next week.  However, I will continue to use dice rolls to decide where people go, for the most part, but there are plenty of other methods for choosing which of your anthropological specialists go where.

Note:  If you haven’t read Last Week’s Post, this one won’t make much sense.

Before I start, something I probably should have mentioned in my last post — archaeology takes many forms, and both the sorts of archaeological practices used and the types of finds one might find vary greatly around the world, and furthermore has changed greatly from the origin of the science to today. If you’re conducting an archaeological dig searching for architectural finds in Turkey in the Late 19th, early 20th Century (the Heinrich Schliemann style of dig), practices could be somewhat destructive, but you’d be finding ruins of whole stonework buildings that could be restored.  If you’re digging in North America in the 21st century, you’re likely using minimally invasive techniques, and you would (mostly) be looking for differences in soil patterns to show where wooden walls have decomposed. You can decide what type of findings you want to report, and how realistic you want the findings to be.  After all, most people doing this are writers, not archaeologists (unless you’re both, in which case… wow, cool!), so you shouldn’t be expected to know exactly what sorts of things archaeologists find.  For my sample the findings are… not necessarily realistic, but I’m trying to keep them fun.  You’ll see what I mean.

Sample I:  Top Layer

Archaeologists:

1. Ceramics and Pottery:  Dr. Jordan Potter
2. Architecture:   Dr. Leia Villa
3. Osteoarchaeology: Dr. Anne Bein
   
4. Battlefield Archaeology:  Dr. Yari Makura
5. Epigraphy:  Dr. Aroon Carver
6. Metallurgy:  Dr.  Cannon Ferreum

(These will be the archaeologists used for each layer; I am personally assigning them all by dice role, corresponding to their number above, but you can decide for yourself how you want them divided, as long as you make sure you randomize them each week)

You will also run into the Dig Team, which conducts the bulk of the excavation.  The Dig Team report will break down why each site is being surveyed, and what was found (or what was expected, but not found) to explain why they brought in the experts.

Instead of going with “Iron, Bronze, Stone, etc.” age, I’m going with Modern Era, 5th Era, 4th Era, 3rd Era, 2nd Era, and 1st Era (I have a rough idea of what date range the real world equivalent of these eras would have been, but that would be too much of a ‘spoiler’ to include).

Site I:

Assigned Archaeologists:  Dr. Anne Bein, Dr. Jordan Potter

Dig Team Report:
This site is an unusual one — a perfectly square field dead set in the middle of a forest, with the edges aligned north to south and east to west.  The treeline around the site is too uniform to be natural, but the site has not been inhabited in the modern era.  The field itself contains several rows of large mounds.  Old records suggest this was the site of a monastery, with accompanying graveyard, occupied from early in the Second Era to the end of the Fifth.
As part of the dig site is supposed to be a graveyard, we invited Dr. Anne Bein to examine any human remains we discover.
After completing the excavation of the top layer, we cannot say for certain whether we have found the actual monastery or not.  What we did find was soil patterns suggesting a charred wooden wall at the northern edge of the field.  Not far south of the wall was a void in the ground that proved to be a man-made cistern, where six extremely large clay pots were resting.  The excavation only revealed the very top of the cistern, but we sent some people down into it to make a full examination.  They concluded that cistern almost certainly pre-dated the dawn of the Fifth era, and may have been built as far back as the First Era, but only further excavation could say for certain.  Debris around the scene suggests it must have been in use into the Fifth Era, whenever it was originally built, however.  We have called in Dr. Jordan Potter for a more definitive examination of these clay pots, to perhaps discover what the purpose of this cistern might have been.

Dr. Anne Bein’s Report:
I was called in to examine several graves found in Site I.  It was difficult to get to the prize of the dig, the skeletons, as they were buried underneath domes of stone and earth, each about twenty meters apart, twenty such domes in two rows aligned east to west.  There were several grave goods included in each burial, all of the same metal.  But who cares about that?
The skeletons were fascinating.  Fiber fragments suggest each body was trussed up in hemp rope before burial, for some reason, and staked to the ground aligned in a North to South direction.  The heads of all the buried bodies were removed, so we have no dental work to examine — a shame, that, as teeth are some of my favorite indicators for diet and health — nor any hair.  The same ritual was done both for humans and their animal companions, as we found many canine skeletons buried in the same manner.
I directly examined nine skeletons.  Five were male, four female, ages ranging from twenty to fifty.  Analysis of stress patterns in the bones suggest the bodies buried here were uniformly of people who were very heavily muscled, almost to their own detriment.  No suggestion any of them were malnourished appear, but several of the skeletons showed signs of stress in the individuals’ youth.  There are no definitive signs of a cause of death on any of the bodies, which is unusual.

Dr.  Jordan Potter’s Report:
I took a close look at the pottery that was unearthed during the dig.  Six large clay pots, too heavy to be carried, were found in some sort of odd cistern, as the dig team described.  In these pots were a number of coins, all of the same metal (possibly silver?).  I sent pictures of these coins to Dr. Cannon Ferreum for identification.  He says he wishes he could be here, as the coins we’ve found cover every era from the First to the Fifth.  Given that the coins themselves appeared in layers, it appears these coins were tossed into these pots when the site was first occupied, and people continued to feed it without touching the earlier coins until the site’s eventual abandonment at the start of the modern era.  A massive horde of coins to never be touched.
In addition to these clay pots, we found fragments of numerous heavily decorated shallow bowls, in which food substances of some sort were discovered.  I cannot read the writing on these bowls, and Dr. Carver was too busy to come and translate, but pictures of the moon were prominent on every bowl.
The study of the substances inside the bowl should be in Dr. Bein’s province, as they’re biological, but she was too busy cackling over how important the bones were to listen to me when I tried to get her attention (quite good in her field, but rather obsessed with bones only, that woman), so I sent them to the lab for analysis.  It was determined that these foods were all red meat, sometimes cooked and sometimes left raw.  There were surprisingly few grains or vegetables found in these bowls, suggesting they were used exclusively for meat.  We also found fragments of what we believe were fermentation pots, used for the brewing of (as trace analysis determined) barley-grain beer.

Site II:

Assigned Archaeologists:  Dr. Yari Makura, Dr. Leia Villa

Dig Team Report:
This site was selected because of how unusual it was.  Once a major harbor town based in a sheltered river that had been an area of continuous settlement for centuries, and one of the most important Naval anchorages in our history, an earthquake in the early Fifth Era diverted the river and the port dried up, with several warships trapped on the riverbed, and a once thriving city was abandoned.  We brought in Dr. Yari Makura in the hopes of finding these ships.
However, during the dig, we also discovered some unexpected ruins in what would have been the riverbed at the end of the fourth, start of the fifth era.  While we continue to dig up earlier layers of the port city, we contacted Dr. Leia Villa to try and decipher just what the heck stone buildings were doing on the bottom of a river.

Dr. Yari Makura’s Report:
This is not my usual type of site to explore, nor my typical specialty — I’m more used to studying battlefields on, you know, fields, not riverbeds.  Still, there were quite a few things of interest discovered.
Most of the ships themselves haven’t survived, but elements from them have.  The ships appear to have been largely scavenged, but I was surprised to see a surviving bronze pot-de-fer had been left behind — a late fourth to early 5th era weapon I was unaware had ever been used on a ship.  That appears to agree with the date that the earthquake was supposed to have destroyed this harbor, but some other things on this very same wreckage are confusing. Other ships from this era are known to have been built with iron nails or treenails, but this particular wreckage was build entirely with copper nails.  I was under the impression that such copper nails weren’t used until the end of the fifth century, to solve the problems those other two types of nails caused.
The same wreckage also uncovered things such as brass storm lanterns, some unusual dirks (very plain, no decorations, but quite functional) made out of bronze, some ceramic grenade shells, multiple brass beams, and — in the most unexpected find — several stacks of one-inch thick, six foot by eight foot sheets of a fluorescent green glass, all in perfect condition.  Dating evidence suggests the brass beams and glass sheets are much older than the rest of the cargo on the ship, and a closer examination suggests both may have been components of the same structure, but there appears to be something missing that would allow them all to be assembled together.

Dr. Leia Villa’s Report:
Well, this is just fascinating!  Apparently, there was a massive bridge built over the river that used to be on this site, which isn’t all that unusual, but there was effectively a small city built on top of that bridge, as row houses lined one side of the bridge, and shops, stores, factories, and other businesses lined the other.  The bridge was supported with massive stone pillars, held together by hydraulic concrete, with four rows of twelve massive, heavy-duty arches to span the gaps.  This is all made out of granite, which is astonishing — the nearest source of such granite would have been far away (the color and other characteristics of the stone make me think it would be from Site III, though given the city in Site III was abandoned after the second age, that would suggest this bridge survived for an astonishing length of time).  In fact, there is almost no usable stone of any kind in the local area, so finding stonework of any kind is a surprise.
The row houses weren’t especially large, but were double-storied, with the two stories sometimes connected and sometimes not.  Mostly made up of salt-glazed bricks (whose yellow color suggest were also imported, though not from Site III, as the local clay would produce red bricks.  The salt glazing suggests the brick buildings on this bridge were added long after the bridge itself, assuming the Site III source is accurate as the source of the granite).  The bricks were most often laid in a herringbone pattern.  Given the number and variety of artifacts found in the ruins, most of these houses were occupied by one to two people.
The businesses were more varied, but there were some common features to most of them.  Every building on that side of the river had a plate glass front (I will note this was a different type of glass than the fluorescent glass my colleague discovered; this was more of a silica glass, and while thicker than the standard windowpane glass in modern times, it was nowhere near as thick; a quarter to a half-inch thick, at most).  This would display every part of the business, regardless of what was going on inside — even blacksmiths would have their furnaces and forges on display as they worked.
The big question is what caused this bridge city to collapse.  Yes, an earthquake might cause this kind of damage, but the earthquake that shifted the river was too distant to take down this bridge.  The capstones on the arches were well set, the stone pillars — while they had fallen over –were unbroken, and even many of the houses and shops were completely intact.  They were just… lying on the riverbed, covered in built-up silt and new-growth grass.  Unlike the ships, which Dr. Mukara tells me were salvage after the river moved, the bridge collapse appeared sudden and unexpected.  There were bodies of people still in their beds.
Furthermore, dating evidence suggests the bridge remained occupied even AFTER the river had changed direction and the rest of the city was abandoned.  While the river was diverted early in the fifth era, and the city slowly abandoned by the middle, this bridge remained occupied to the very end.
And we have NO historic record of its existence.
Peculiar.

Site III:

Assigned Archaeologists:  Dr. Aroon Carver, Dr. Cannon Ferreum

Dig Team Report:
This site on a massive hilltop is supposed to be the location of a major city from the First and Second Era, when the city was abandoned for unexplained reasons.  We were not expecting to find anything later than that, however, as the land has not been occupied since, as far as we know.
However, long before we were expecting to hit city, we started uncovering some strange elements.  Findings in the soil suggested someone was digging robber trenches, which normally would have been dug by looters.  Whatever these robber trenches were stealing, they did not go far enough down to reach the city we were hoping to find… and they may well have left behind more than they took.  Placed in particular spots in these trenches, we’ve found strange metal slabs, just small enough for one person to carry in one hand, all with indecipherable writing covering one face on them.  We called in Dr. Cannon Ferreum and Dr. Aroon Carver to examine them.

Dr. Cannon Ferreum’s Report:
I was brought in to examine some metal tablets.  These slabs of metal, seven discovered so far, measure approximately six inches by nine inches by one inch.  While they all were fashioned to appear as if they are gold slabs, analysis determines that six of them were actually formed out of an alloy composed of roughly ninety percent copper and nine percent zinc.  That remaining one percent was originally believed to be basic impurities, but we then determined it was all biological material.  Lab work has come back suggesting this material was blood, though whatever process was used to form the alloy destroyed most of the identifying markers in that blood.  What little can be determined from that blood suggests each slab was made with the blood from a different type of animal — four mammals, one bird, and one lizard.  The seventh slab was made of gold, but again it was mixed with blood — human blood.  While I’ve heard theatrical old wives tales of people who tempered the steel of a sword in blood during the smithing process, I’ve never heard of it used as an actual, measurable component in an alloy, before.

Dr. Aroon Carver’s Report:
Interesting.  Very interesting.  The runes on these metal slabs look carved in, not merely etched — just like you would use on a stone tablet or something.  The tool markings suggest only one of them was actually carved, however — the one Dr. Ferreum identified as the one made out of real gold.  The others were merely cast to look carved, but were not carved themselves.
There are some identifiable runes mixed in with characters from syllabaries and alphabets either foreign or entirely unfamiliar to me.  The writing on all seven slabs is identical, save for a single section (or paragraph?) at the very bottom of each of them.  Much of what I can identify is gibberish, but always in these varied paragraphs there is a single word I can read that differs from slab to slab.  These words may correspond with the type of blood used in the alloys that Dr. Ferreum described — four of them mention mammals (bear, wolf, warthog, and mountain lion), one mentions a bird (hawk), one mentions a lizard (snake), and the pure gold one mentions “you,” which… well, I would assume the reader was human.  What else would they be?
I want to look into these slabs some more.  I think I’ll take them with me as I go from dig to dig, and try to interpret them further.

Wrap Up

Well, there’s the sample.  This was a bit more work than I originally intended, but only because I was deliberately using a different method for deciding what I would include on each “site.”

The first site, I had a long list of things I’d been thinking of including (a list with things like “coin horde,” “shrine,” “dagger,” “mysterious field,” “brickwork,” etc.), and used dice to determine what would be found, and finally came up with a bit of a story that might allow me to connect those things together.

The second site, I started with a particular story I wanted to tell, and came up with hints of what that story might be.  I didn’t get to everything I wanted to include, but those other things can show up in the next few layers.

The third site, I allowed which archaeologists I had assigned to it to determine just what it was they found.  And since I connected the second and third sites, I also added a few hints of that connection as well, but that was almost incidental to what I had my fictional archaeologists describe.

A little housekeeping:  I’ve moved my old links page from the old Fennec Fox Press website to here, and fixed a couple outdated or broken links from it.   The old links page is still working, it just isn’t being maintained (a lot of that site is now broken, and that’s due to hosting limitations, so — as I said a few weeks ago — I’ll slowly be moving it over here).

Also, like I said, this took a bit longer than I was expecting, so I may take my time and give myself an extra week before I give you the second layer… but if I do, I’ll still have a post next weekend.  I salvaged a couple of my favorite posts from the old blog, digging through the Wayback Machine, so I’ll be reposting them at various points, filling out those weeks I can’t get a fresh post ready in time.  So next week, I will guarantee a post… though whether that’s ‘new’ or ‘classic,’ well… we’ll see.  Until then!

So, for my first ‘real’ blog since restoring it to functionality, let’s just jump right in with a series of posts on some of the fantasy world-building exercises I’ve come up with over the years.  Most of these are entirely original, though a couple are variations on things I’ve seen in the past.  Several require one or more partners, but several others can be done on their own.  Let’s get started!

Introduction:

This first exercise, I have to admit, is something I’ve pulled from someone else.  In my first year of junior high, I had a very good history teacher (I’m afraid I no longer remember their name — it was more years ago than I’m willing to admit) who used a very similar exercise to demonstrate what sort of historical evidence could be found from archaeological digs.

Now, he made a mistake with his stratigraphy, which no-one in our class caught (but me.  And only at the very end.  Heh), which would have — if it were from a real archaeological dig — suggested that the society being studied started in the steel age, and devolved into the iron age, bronze age, and down into the stone age, but if you’re a writer, you should know better.  Writers, after all, need to know a little bit about everything (don’t believe me?  Think about how far traveled that Lord of the Rings meme about “Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys,” simply because someone scriptwriting the movie (the line is not in the book) didn’t know the word ‘menu’ would imply the existence of Orcish restaurants in Middle Earth), so they should know that the top layer in an archaeological did is the most RECENT layer, not the earliest.

Requirements:

I recommend a partner for this one (someone who is also a writer working on their world building), though over the next few weeks I’ll be providing a sample you can use to do the second half of it.  You may also want something to time yourself, several sheets of paper you can write on (as an academic exercise, I suggest using pencil and paper for the first part, since you MIGHT want to add sketches as you go, but the second stage can be done on computer or however you’re most comfortable), and — just in case you get stuck — a desk encyclopedia for reference (or Wikipedia works too, I guess, but if you’re using pen and paper the desk encyclopedia might work better).

Exercise:

You and your partner will each need (at least) five sheets of paper.  You can do this with as many ‘layers’ as you want, but I think five should be the minimum, and each ‘layer’ needs its own sheet of paper.  If you really want to challenge yourself, do this first section timed, giving yourself five minutes for each ‘layer.’  (If you do not have a partner, I will be providing a sample set in the next few blogs that you can work from)

Create for yourself a set of ‘archaeologists’ who each specialize in one of the following subjects:

• Ceramics and Pottery
• Architecture
• Osteoarchaeology
• Battlefield Archaeology
• Epigraphy
• Metallurgy

(As a note, there are many other fields and sub-fields in archaeology, but these are the ones I feel best fit this exercise… and I don’t think it works with more than six)

For each ‘layer,’ you will have three ‘sites’ being dug. Assign two of these specialists to each ‘site.’  List 2-3 things each archaeologist finds on each site.  Some specifications:  Each Archaeologist will only report things focused on their specialty, though you can mention related incidentals (for example, your architect specialist can say there were mummies found in the pyramid, or your osteoarchaeologist can mention what the bones they found were buried in and\or what killed them, but neither are qualified to know what the dagger the bodies were buried with is made of, or what the writing on the tomb said).  Each layer will be from a different era, and you will be going backwards for each layer (for example,  you will start in the Medieval era, the next layer will cover Ancient, then Iron Age, Bronze Age, and finally go to the Stone Age), so make the findings era-appropriate.  This is for ‘fantasy’ world-building, so some of the items you find can be magical (and if you want to write a short bit about a particular archaeologist being effected magically by a cursed artifact, as long as you don’t kill them off before the final layer, go for it!), but do try to keep them something comprehensible.  And any writing found by the Epigraphist can only include fragmentary histories, at best.

Once each of you has all of your layers set up, trade with the other person, take the findings, and ‘interpret’ the history. Once you’re done, you have the “history” of your fantasy world.

If you don’t understand what I mean by this, over the next few weeks I’ll be presenting my own “sample” set of layers (culminating with my own interpretation of them) for this exercise:

• Top Layer
• 2nd Layer
• 3rd Layer
• 4th Layer
• 5th Layer
• Interpretation

Links will be added as the layers are posted.  Good luck, and remember to have fun!

Full Exercise List (Links will be added as the exercises are posted):

• Exercise I:  Archaeology Dig
• Exercise II:  Building a Government
• Exercise III:  Bestiaries
• Exercise IV:  Magic Systems… and Rules Lawyering
• Exercise V:  Handling Fantastical Linguistics
• Exercise VI:  Tools of the Trade (By Era)
• Exercise VII:  Music, Art, and Architecture
• Exercise VIII:  Arms and Armor (Or Armorless Arms?)
• Exercise IX:  Historical Parallels
• Exercise X:  Establishing Traditions
• Exercise XI:  Is Meat Back on Your Menu?
• Exercise XII: Making Money
• Exercise XIII:  Quackery within Miraculous Medicine
• …? (Reserved for when I’m inspired)
• Conclusion:  The Things That Matter