How to use this Page

In 2003 Paul Bahn led the team that discovered the first Ice Age cave art at Creswell Crags in Britain. In recent years, many more discoveries have been made including the expanding phenomenon of 'open-air Ice Age art'. In the slideshow below, you can see some of the earliest examples of art on the planet, and take a tour of prehistoric art throughout the world.

The post Art of the Ice Age [slideshow] appeared first on OUPblog.

It is a well-known fact of British prehistory that burial monuments, sometimes on a monumental scale, are well-documented in the Neolithic and Bronze Age, but largely absent in the Iron Age, outside certain distinctive regional groups at particular periods.

The post Seeking the elusive dead appeared first on OUPblog.

Andrew Baruch Wachtel is the Bertha and Max Dressler Professor of the Humanities, dean of the graduate school, and director of the Roberta Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern Univeristy.  In The Balkans In World History, part of the The New Oxford World History Series, Wachtel depicts the Balkans as that borderland geographical space in which four of the world’s greatest civilizations have overlapped in a sustained and meaningful way to produce a complex, dynamic, sometimes combustible, multilayered local civilization.  In the excerpt below we look at the very beginning of Balkan civilization.

For a modern observer in the Balkans, traces of the region’s prehistory and early history are readily found.  Visitors can explore the tells (sites of ancient settlements where successive layers of homes created large artificial hills) of the Bulgarian plains, the Lion Gate at the fortress of Mycenae in Greece, or the magnificent remains of Diocletian’s palace in Split, Croatia.  Other traces can be heard in the Greek, Albanian, and Romanian languages whose progenitors were all spoken on the Balkan Peninsula in classical times.  Still others can be tasted, in the olives and wine grapes brought to the Balkans by prehistoric settlers more than four thousand years ago.  Even some of the modern political problems of the Balkans can be linked directly to classical times - such as the ongoing dispute between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia as to which state has the right to claim the legacy of Alexander the Great.

Evidence of human habitation in the Balkans dates back almost fifty thousand years, and anatomically modern humans appeared here, as elsewhere in southern Europe, somewhat more than thirty-five thousand years ago, during the Upper Paleolithic period.  These early humans lived, as the archeological record reveals, in small mobile groups, hunting, exploiting the bounty of lakes and seas, gathering wild plants, and fashioning stone tools.  Patterns of life on the Balkan Peninsula were similar to those elsewhere on the continent at this time, though populations appear to have been sparser, for although the region was for the most part spared the glaciation that accompanied the last Ice Age in Europe (which ended around 10,000 BCE), it lacked the populations of large mammals that roamed the northern parts of the continent and could support larger hunting groups.

Around the time of Mesolithic period (approximately 10,000 BCE to approximately 7000 BCE in the Balkans), hunter-gatherer groups began to settle into somewhat more permanent habitations.  On terraces cut into the banks of the Danube River between today’s Serbia and Romania, at a site called Lepenski Vir, archeologists have discovered remarkably well-preserve foundations of early shelters.  The oldest, dating from around 7000 BCE, incorporate both wood and stone and were probably covered with skins.  Although the builders did you make pottery, nor did they have domesticated crops, the care and effort taken in the building process indicate that they already possessed an appreciation of place and sufficient organizational and technological skills to alter their landscape in a conscious way.  These same people also had the desire and leisure to create sculptural works, both abstract and anthropomorphic, which are presumed to have had ritual significance of some kind.

A true revolution came to the Balkans in the period between 7000 and 6500 BCE (the beginning of the Neolithic period).  Three crucial innovations have been documented at sites scattered widely over the region: sustained cultivation of the land (excavations have revealed traces of domesticated wheat, barley, peas, and beans); fired clay pottery for storage, cooking, and ceremonial use; and new domesticated animals, particularly goats and sheep, which joined animals domesticated sometime earlier, including cattle and pigs.  Despite these innovations, tools continued to be fashioned of flaked stone, and the newly agricultural societies continued to hunt, fish, and gather the forest bounty that had earlier been their sole source of subsistence.  Given the sparse populations of the region in the Mesolithic period and the fact that these innovations first appeared in the southern Balkans and spread toward the north, it seems likely that the original farmers consisted not of indigenous peoples but rather of colonists who arrived from the Middle East through Asia Minor, where these same processes had been initiated perhaps a millennium earlier.  Indigenous populations did not necessarily disappear completely, but the evidence suggests they were for the most part absorbed by newcomers.

Little is known about the interactions of the Neolithic peoples of the Balkans either within their own communities or across communities.  It is clear that in the period from about 6000 to 4000 BCE, the Neolithic inhabitants tended to build and rebuild their communities on a single site.  The remains of these sites, called tells, can still be seen today as raised mounds formed by the successive layering of simple wood and mud huts.  The largest, such as Karanovo in Bulgaria, are almost forty feet tall and show evidence of more or less continuous habitations for some two thousand years.  Built on open sites near floodplains where the most fertile soils lie, they lack fortifications, an indication that organized warfare was not yet a problem.  Presumably, populations were still relatively sparse and there was enough room for all…

…For reasons that remain unclear, traumatic changes occured throughout much of the Balkan region around 4000 BCE.  Long-inhabited sites were abandoned, ornamental work in clay and metal appears more rarely, and there are signs of a general depopulation.  Although some grand explanations for this phenomenon have been proposed - including the theory that peaceful, female-led indigenous peoples suffered invasion at the hands of war-like, male-dominated Indo-European tribes (carriers of the ancestral language for all but a handful of modern European languages) - no hard evidence can be found to substaintiate them.

Hi Martha,

Here's a question that I'm almost too embarrassed to ask.

My SceneTracker is strong from Chapter 1 Scene 1 through Chapter 3 Scene 7.

I have the big scene for Chapter 5 Scene 15.

It's the empty 7 scenes between that is making me anxious and doubt myself. I could develop characters in each scene and provide their POVs but I feel like I should know the flow and what will happen next "because she did this ...."

Does this happen to others?

And what would be the best way to prime the muse to have the characters tell me the rest of the story?

Do your characters "talk" to you? I've heard writers say this.

What do you honestly think?

Writing in North Carolina


Dear Writing in North Carolina,

One technique would be to leave the scenes empty for now and forge ahead.

If you believe that the Climax -- the final big scene before the Resolution at the End -- determines what comes before, the sooner you reach the Climax the better.

Sounds like creating Dramatic Action filled with conflict, tension, suspense and curiosity is intuitive for you and Character Emotional Development less so. Why do I say that? You wrote first that "I could develop characters in each scene" and followed with your gut feeling: "I feel like I should know the flow and what will happen next "because she did this ...."

Stay in your strength while keeping the goal of writing your first draft all the way through. The important thing is whatever keeps you writing.

My characters seem to take up residency in every aspect of my life for as long as it takes me to finish a project, which can be a long time. I usually know the end before I begin. I take it draft by draft by draft, knowing each draft will deepen my vision of the project as I sink deeper into the story and spend more and more time with my characters.

Look to research to help dream up and develop scenes. Once you know:
1) what the character wants
2) what stands in her way
3( What she stands to lose
4) The character's flaw

Find inspiration and ideas in researching the unusual world you'll develop in the Middle, any major historical, political, spiritual, scientific events during the time period including contemporary.

I'll put the word out for input from other writers.

Good luck.

Sincerely,
Martha

The following are questions that came up after the last post. Thought the questions and answers might help other writers so I include them below. Happy plotting...

Q: So basically it’s the scene(s) in the climax section that we have to watch out for in terms of the final CED, to see if the character has evolved from the initial fatal flaw in the beginning of the story?

A: Yes, the scene in the Climax is what each and every scene has been driving towards throughout the entire story, which is why it's a good practice NOT to go back and start over again until you have written all the way to the Climax and are pretty sure what that scene is. If you find yourself in that cycle of constantly going back and beginning again, you'll perfect those early scenes that may end up being cut when you finally understand the Climax. Once you know the Climax, you have a much better idea of how best to begin the project.

Q: And what you are saying is that it is suffice by just marking it in a different color to denote the arc or character journey in emotional development? Subplots, therefore don’t need to be marked separately in Plot Planner because it is intertwined within the Dramatic Action?

A: Some subplots deserve their own Plot Planner. In that case I recommend that one line is above the other so you can see how the subplot works with the major Dramatic Action and Character Emotional Development plot.

Q: On the last question, so summaries don’t show thematic details?

A: On a subtle level, thematic significance shows up everywhere ~~ in scene and summary ~~ though word choice, mood, etc. However, you only plot out scenes on the Plot Planner and on the Scene Tracker.

Q: (Anyways, how would we know to mark the summaries for Theme in plot planner if we don’t even track that info in scene tracker). Is my understanding then to just mark those scenes (not summaries) whether above or below the line, that have thematic details, correct?

A: This is true only in later drafts. The Thematic Signficance does not always emerge until after the story becomes more stable ~~ beyond the first couple of drafts. In the early drafts, don't worry about the Thematic Significance. You'll have enough to work with just honing down the Dramatic Action plot and the Character Development plot.

I apologize if I seem to be reiterating my questions, I just want to make sure I am interpreting your response correctly. I know you are extremely busy and I really do appreciate all of your help.

ps. You're right, PP and ST is addicting. And I have resumed back to my writing with more confidence! By the way, I ordered your DVD with the focus on CHildren Writers and eagerly await to be enlightened by your method again. Perhaps by watching you explain your method, I'll get a greater sense on everything you have written in your book.

A: Yes, I believe you will get a greater sense of how the Plot Planner works and how the Character Development profile helps to build the Character Development plot line. Let me know what you think.

Q: Was also wondering, are all of your DVD workshops pretty similiar and touch on everything that is on the book or do you delve into any advance topics on plotting for example with the DVD you have that uses Memoir of a Geisha?

A: The DVDs are different in that they are live workshops that were taped (some better in quality than others).

Thanks in advance Martha for everything and for your continued support!!!

A: Thank you, and great good luck with your project!

Response:
Mostly it's all about the writing and staying fluid.

But, I, too, find benefit in the movement, the lining things up getting-ready-ritual. I'm sure you're jumping forth between writing and organizing by now.

Keep imagining,
martha

Original email:
Thanks again for all your help. I've printed your scene tracker 20 times, labeled, and laminated back to back (10 laminated sheets) so I can use dry eraser and reuse them from story to story. Watch all this organization throw me into a writer's block. Oh, please say it isn't so.

I've even gone as far as laminating my blank master GMC charts, storyboard, plotline, character, conflict, conflict comparison, pertinent backstory for character GMC, character arc and romantic conflict/connection worksheets so that I can use dry erase on them and reuse them.

Geez, talk about anal, but at least it feels like I'm becoming organized. lol