The year is 2099. A group of people is preparing to celebrate New Year’s Eve aboard the brand spaceship, Pearseus. Instead, they end up castaways on a remote planet. Three hundred years later, most of the original technology has disappeared. People have regressed to a technological level closer to the Middle Ages, or even ancient times.

This is the premise of my homonymous fantasy series. And, as we all know, the devil lies in the details: what sort of writing devices would these people use? And how would they decorate their houses?

To answer the second question, you will have to wait until the next post. But the first one can be answered with the help of Erik Kwakkel of Leiden University. In a fascinating post on his excellent blog, Medieval Books, Erik has described the details of medieval parchment.

Writing on animal skin

Around the 5th century AD, animal…