Gathering is usually done at a leisurely stroll, constantly on the lookout for food and materials (and dangerous animals).
Gatherers frequently stop to look around, take note of what’s growing where this year and pick leaves, shoots etc.
Gathering is sociable, relaxed and definitely not aerobic. Gatherers are armed with two important tools, the digging stick (like a spear, long and pointy) and a bag of some sort.

The digging stick can be used to scratch for shallow roots when constructing shelters, but it’s primary use is to dig deep holes to get roots for food. They are made like a spear – and can be used for defence in the same way (See spears).

Like spears bags are multi-purpose and not just for carrying what you have gathered. Your bag can also be used for carrying other things, such as food between camps, or dunked in moving water to leach poisons from food,
filled with ‘tangle’ and rotting fish to trap crabs and eels, or hung from a high branch to store food out of reach of other animals (or children) or to hang food in smoke to preserve it.

The gathering bag described below is one of the easiest to make – but takes a lot of time. You may want to make a mini-bag! We designed this system to enable people to learn string-handling skills and to be as versatile as possible.

Size of bag, like size of spear, clothes, shoes etc. is related to your size. It should hang on one side of your body with the strap going to the opposite shoulder. The bottom (inside) of the bag should be reached easily by your fingertips. The neck can be slightly narrower than the main bag to stop things falling out.

The bag is made of woven strips (that can also be used to make straps, friendship bracelets or even whole garments)

(A)

Illustrated (left) are two bands hand-woven from string 7 and 8 threads respectively. You can make your bands from as many strands as you like (well all right - more than 1 or 2)
(B)

To make these bands take the right strand (call it A) and weave it in and out until it comes to the left.
(C)

Take the next right and weave it through to the left and finally weave it past A.
(D)

Just keep doing this until your band is long enough for your purpose. If one strand is running out weave in a new overlapped bit to replace it.

(E)

One strap will go all the way from the bottom of the bag, round your shoulder and back to the bottom of the bag. It’s not only part of the bag but the shoulder-strap as well. Tie the ends together at the bottom, note that they are tapered ends.

(F)

IIs an example of tapering.All you need to do is tie off strings as in the photo.

(G)

Here the bag top band has been inserted, now all you need to do is fold your strings over it and start weaving more bands. These bands need only to be as long as you want the bag to be (H).

(I) (Right)

Finally, in all you need is a spiral stitch or weave to secure all the band edges to their partners and your bag is made. These bags can last for many years of hard work. Whereas the bag only took weeks!

(J)

Here are some other types of bag, these are more complicated and few people will have the time or room to make them.
The strips of weaving are very versatile and can be used to make whole garments. As you weave using this simple system
you will almost certainly get ideas to add colour, make new patterns and so on. Don’t worry if your strip-bag is made from a whole variety of experiments, none of which match. Such examples of experiments serve to jog your memory and give you new ideas. We are so used to things made in factories where everything is uniform that we have begun to think that’s the right way to do things – but Hunter-Gatherers don’t do rules. Do things however you want to.

Even making the examples for these instructions we got bored and went off on a tangent,,,

(K) This is a double weave using the same system. It’s fast but more than two strands at a time gets very difficult!

When you come to Palaeoquest do bring anything you have made with you!

You can also submit pictures and text to go on the website.

info@palaeoquest

Please note that you will have to give permission for your material to be published on the site.