Duck Gods of Peru!

[Jack]

jack - and now describe life in a medieval monastry or at a hindu festival or ......

Maybe I misled..........I wasn't intending on describing life in prehistory, only to parody how it is described by some archaeologists.

I admit, I have no idea what was going on inside prehistoric people's heads or what was important to them. How could I, my time-travelling castle isn't finished yet.

All I know is the physics, chemistry and biology.
People need to eat, they need to drink, they need shelter from the elements (at this lattitude), they (most) are driven to breed and engage in social relationships. Humans compete.
Food is not usually equally available throughout the year (in our climate/ palaeoenvironment)
Tactics for survival of the person, their family, their extended family, their ideals, their ambitions etc. are/will be/were employed.
These tactics include acquisition of enough calories/nutrition to survive. These tactics include mobility, storage, curation/cultivation/development and transferal of resources.
These tactics seem to vary with environment, social pressures and through time.

[Jack]

Am definitely not letting Jack anywhere near the discussion on any of the Neo sites I'm writing up :0

What you mean your pits clustered around your now truncated away houses.:face-stir:

[Dinosaur]

No! No! No! - the pits aren't usually near the 'houses' - and 0.5m high clay walls with equally high internal posts isn't all that truncated?

[P Prentice]

you'll be telling us next that the pits were used for storage -

[P Prentice]

Maybe I misled..........I wasn't intending on describing life in prehistory, only to parody how it is described by some archaeologists.

I admit, I have no idea what was going on inside prehistoric people's heads or what was important to them. How could I, my time-travelling castle isn't finished yet.

All I know is the physics, chemistry and biology.
People need to eat, they need to drink, they need shelter from the elements (at this lattitude), they (most) are driven to breed and engage in social relationships. Humans compete.
Food is not usually equally available throughout the year (in our climate/ palaeoenvironment)
Tactics for survival of the person, their family, their extended family, their ideals, their ambitions etc. are/will be/were employed.
These tactics include acquisition of enough calories/nutrition to survive. These tactics include mobility, storage, curation/cultivation/development and transferal of resources.
These tactics seem to vary with environment, social pressures and through time.

you forgot join clubs, elect leaders, loose battles, build cathedrals, hide from spooks, burn witches, run riot, be led up the garden path, belief in angels and die from all manner of common ailments

[Dinosaur]

you'll be telling us next that the pits were used for storage -

Seems like an awful lot of effort just for some soil - maybe they hadn't invented the bund yet? Probably auroch traps

[Jack]

you forgot join clubs, elect leaders, loose battles, build cathedrals, hide from spooks, burn witches, run riot, be led up the garden path, belief in angels and die from all manner of common ailments

I class them as tactics to survive (or not) environmental and social pressures

[Jack]

Seems like an awful lot of effort just for some soil - maybe they hadn't invented the bund yet? Probably auroch traps

Pits probably served a variety of roles. Probably even an individual pit may have served several functions. Probably varied due to environment (and region) and local social pressures. Probably varied through time. Difficult to tell as all we usually get is the last use/disuse of the thing.

[P Prentice]

I class them as tactics to survive (or not) environmental and social pressures

surely its all survival tactic - the selfish gene an all that

[Dinosaur]

Pits probably served a variety of roles.

Ah, so auroch traps (which is why they often happen in small clusters - only trapping one hoof wouldn't have gone far towards pacifying the angry beast) THEN used to get rid of inconvenient piles of charcoally soil and of course any crockery smashed by the enraged cow (and, in the case of one of mine, parts of the auroch) :face-approve: