How long have people kept knickknacks?

Factual Questions
1

This is prompted by the discussion about Roman dodecahedrons.

I speculated they might just be knickknacks. But i wonder how far back in history people had knickknacks.

I’m defining “knickknack” to be an object that is movable and primarily decorative. So, a hummel figurine is a knickknack.

The small figure of a god that you pray to is not a knickknack, even if it is pretty. Neither is a beautifully painted wine vessel.

A wall painting is not a knickknack because its primary function is being a wall. A wall hanging might keep you warm. A map might be educational or help you plan a route. But a framed painting of your father, or of a landscape, is basically a knickknack.

So, could the dodecahedrons be knickknacks? Or has knickknacks not really been invented? Or were people not wealthy enough to waste money on them at that point in history? But more generally, when and where have knickknacks existed?

2

This PDF article has a history of Ornamental Terra Cottas and Knick-knacks dating back to at least the 8th century BC.

3

Egypt had them probably 500 years earlier.

They were taken aback when they began uncovering mud bricks everywhere they dug. The team soon realized that they had unearthed a large city that was in relatively good shape. “The city’s streets are flanked by houses,” some with walls up to 10 feet (3 meters) high, Hawass said. These houses had rooms that were filled with knickknacks and tools that ancient Egyptians used in daily life.

The article doesn’t bother to detail what those knickknacks were.

4

Neanderthals apparently liked keeping pretty things.

And if that evidence seems a bit thin, here’s a story of a collection dating back 105,000 years.

Probably ancient spouses hounded them to get rid of all that useless stuff cluttering up the dwelling.

5

Since the question seems to have been largely answered, can we now turn our attention to the history of paddywacks?

mmm

6

The problem is knowing what prehistoric people actually did with their artifacts. We’ll never know if somebody made the lion man to represent a god or if they just had a spare chunk of ivory and thought it would be cool to make a lion man.

7

Or even what Romans did with their dodecahedrons.

8

Paleolithic and Neolithic clay figurines of people and animals date from before the earliest utilitarian pottery such as bowls and pots; people had knickknacks before they had kitchen utensils.

9

@puzzlegal would you class small toys as knickknacks?

10

Probably.

I asked a friend who is something of an amateur archeologist a while ago why all those ancient stone figurines of women with big hips are interpreted as fertility goddesses and not as children’s dolls. He replied it was because the effort required to make them was very large, and they would have been too expensive to just be children’s toys, essentially. That’s why I asked about the cost of the Roman dodecahedra.

So I was wondering about “evidence of people making stuff just to have stuff”, and not for some religious or practical purpose. The line I drew was fairly arbitrary, mostly because I wanted to draw some line to exclude ancient cave paintings, which I knew about, and focus on portable stuff.

I still wonder about those fertility goddesses. Most of the hand-held figures of women we have today are children’s toys, and not religious. But most of the hand-held figures we have today are also very cheap, in terms of the labor a parent would need to do to acquire one for a child.

11

I think a big thing would be the switch from stone to clay. Making human and animal figurines with clay is something lots of rural developing world kids do (and not only rural - my age cohort in suburban Cape Town certainly did this too)

12

My age cohort in suburban Massachusetts did, as well.

13

I should clarify that I mean while playing outside by the riverside etc, not in kindergarten or a KidsKlay class etc.

14

Give that man a bone.

15

It’s possible i was introduced to playdough by my mother, first. But i made small figurines out of mud in the sandbox (our sandbox had no bottom, and if you dug far enough and added water, it got very muddy). Mostly we built small toy houses, with mud and some scraps of wood. I also liked to make a model of the inside of my fist. And i played with dough, plasticine, clay, and all sorts of other malleable materials in various settings.

Anyway, i agree that shaping clay-like materials is a fairly natural behavior for young children, and doesn’t need a lot of encouragement or purpose.

16

I’m not much clearer on the definition of a knickknack as I am of a paddywhack. It seems like we are defining a knickknack by what it’s not; not what it is. If it’s just cheap art, then even a cave drawing qualifies.

17

A knickknack doesn’t have to be cheap. But it does have to be an object you can pick up, hold, and move around. And it needs to be primarily decorative, not functional.

18

So, is a piece of jewelry a knickknack?

19

So do some birds.

20

Hmm,

Google’s definition
a small worthless object, especially a household ornament.

“the room was filled with tables, knickknacks, and a large three-piece suite”

Dictionary. Com
A knickknack is any keepsake, trinket, ornament, figure, or display piece that you own just to display it. Knickknacks can include small statues or figures, …

Merriam Webster
The meaning of KNICKKNACK is a small trivial article usually intended for ornament.

Maybe it does need to be cheap.

I think it doesn’t usually include personal ornamentation, like jewelry.