From My Fantasy Writing Desk
What am I up to as a writer? I’m enjoying a short—very short—lull in the editing activity. I am using these days to clear my desks, both digital and physical. So many things pile up and I have ignored them for weeks while I burrowed deep into reworking my manuscript. Now I am taking care of the tasks and doing a lot of tossing. I am not a person who works well amid chaos. I like order, and I hate the feeling of looming things I’ve neglected, so this somewhat dreary job will make me much happier once it’s done. I’ll jump back into the creative process much stronger for this.
Archaeology I Enjoyed
Harnessing Horses
Photo at top shows a Hittite depiction (wiki)
Any Bronze Age find is exciting, but this one in Scotland is especially so because it preserves not only the bronze fittings but the leather and wood of a horse harness and chariot fittings. Also a sword in its scabbard. Understanding how ancient horse harnesses work is no small thing. I avoid direct descriptions of saddles and reins and all those things in my books because they are all controversial in the Anatolian Bronze Age. Even riding a horse with a saddle rather than in a chariot is not a given in the Hittite context, although the scholars I consulted default to common sense and say horseback must have happened. I look forward to seeing the final conclusions of this Scottish context find and the reconstruction of the harness. By the way, in this article if you click on the bolded phrase “complete horse harness and sword” you will go to a 3d model of the excavation with annotations. Quite cool. Click here for the BBC News “Detectorist ‘shaking with happiness’ after Bronze Age find”
Getting the Ancient News
In the ancient world, how to get a message from one place to another fast? I enjoyed this article in The Ancient Near East Today about fire beacons and other systems of spreading the news. Trust me, as a writer of fiction set in a far-flung empire of the Bronze Age, this is a serious limitation on my plots. I have spent too much time trying to figure out what to do with the weeks of delay while character A hears back from character B. Bogging things down is not an option! Click here for The Ancient Near East Today “Fire Beacons and Message Relays: Staying in Touch in the Ancient Near East”