Tiny Bet #2: Prehistoric Artefacts
When I first set out on Sabbatical, I knew that ‘making’ would be a part of it. Specifically, after years balancing concept-work and management, I felt the need to get more tangible with idea-play.
Tiny Bets are a series of minuscule gambles on creativity.
Framed as such, to get me making and to lessen procrastination and doubt.
Each tiny bet, a diminutive act of creation that adds to the world of things. Filling some miniature gap in the tapestry of needs or possibilities.
The initial plan was a tiny bet a week. That proved overly ambitious.
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Nevertheless, one tiny bet expanded to fill quite a bit of space. Namely, the presentation of pre-historic artefacts in a way that made them appealing to the eye.
I’ve experimented a lot. Sourcing, acquiring, and mounting prehistoric artefacts to display at home.
A way to shorten the cognitive gap between the real-tools of our ancestors and modern life. An act of visible meditation.
Making the displays inspired Design Fiction: Alone with the Ancients.
Here are a few on display at home:
A Neanderthal scraper, the oldest tool I’ve found, and from our hominid cousins. Dating ~300,000 years ago.
And here is one of a pair of wall mountings, I made for sale on Etsy - Neolithic Arrowhead Collection.
The arrowheads were sourced from a Belgian collection, originally acquired in West Africa. Made from Silex, Agate in very good condition with no restorations or recent repairs and dating 5,000-3,000 B.C.
What’s beautiful here, is that these arrowheads and those like them, were one of the few technologies that fuelled our ancestors for thousands of years.
To be acquainted with these tools is to reach out and touch the tapestry of time.