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Hot take: People keep calling every old thing a 'ritual object' and it's lazy

I was reading a report on a dig near York where they found some odd bone tools. The first guess was 'ceremonial'. But when they looked closer, they showed clear wear from scraping hides. It happens all the time. If we call everything a ritual object, we miss the real story of how people lived. It takes more work, but you have to check for use marks under a microscope. Has anyone else seen a find that was wrongly labeled this way?
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taraj11
taraj119d ago
Remember those weird clay lumps called loom weights.
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white.grant
white.grant9d agoTop Commenter
What about those weird stone spheres they keep finding? Always called game pieces or ritual items, but some look like they were just testing rock quality.
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