I started from a similar position ... only a people incapable of growing crops (like Eskimoes or Bedouins) would choose to live without farming.
Then I started reading up on it and new possibilities have been ignited in my imagination.
If you had to choose between a 20 hour work week as a Hunter-gatherer and a 60 hour work week as a Farmer, which would you choose?
If you had to choose between living with no higher governing authority or as a serf answerable to a lord, which would you choose?
If you had to choose between an egalitarian society where the worth of each and every individual was measured by what they could do for the family or a rigid caste system of military rulers and workers where wealth was both concentrated and inherited, which would you choose?
I have started to view TL 0 society as the ultimate survivalists. Rugged individualists who want to be judged on their own merit and live free from external rules imposed by another. Nature and survival judge the fitness of the individual and the group.
The Eskimo, Aleut, and Alutiiq live where there is no agriculture - the land won't support it. And yet, they have a vibrant set of cultures. Strong cultural ties, too.
Not a few maintain the old skills, and the old ways are 8-12 hour days in late summer, and next to no work in winter. One or two hunting days per week, plus possibly some ice fishing. Dogs make hunting in winter efficient enough to keep them fed year round, and discourage bears. These dogs are not overly friendly - they're a hair shy of wolves - but are hard workers and well able to read what people want. (But note: the wolves in the area are also strongly hybridized with them - making them even more dangerous - they can read you better than a more pure wolf.)
There's no inherent metalwork, but surprisingly high quality stone, bone, hide, and grass tools are available. Wood isn't a normal material for Yupic and Aleut - the Alutiiq, however, have extensive woodwork. Fishhooks, harpoon heads, and arrowheads are made from bone; bows are rare, but atl-atls and slings are standard.
Leatherwork is surprisingly good - the hand sewn leather is often as well made as machine stitched. Gut, especially whale gut, is turned into high quality rainwear.
Permanent housing is a fixture - but it's the winter house. Summer housing is tents; some fishcamps have permanent tent-frames of whale bone, and smoking and drying racks for salmon and red meats.. Igloos are winter hunting and fishing shelters.
Stored food is refrigerated by putting it into pits into the permafrost layer by the Yupiq; the Aleut hunt year round on the ocean, in both kyaks and dories.
Free time is spent in song and dance, and on crafts.
Goods owned do exceed that which can be carried, but not often by much.
Bone axes are known; so are stone ones. Bows are rare - the wood's not great for it - but spears and harpoons are common. Hafted picks serve as digging adzes, and are made from wood or bone with horn picks.
Sewing needles are made from bone or porcupine quill.
Starches are rare in the diet, and sugars are mostly in the form of berries... and those berries are not sweet. The diet is mostly proteins, with some leafy vegetables, some seaweed. Fruits tend to be berries and rosehips. No grains are common - the grass is mostly used as a textile.
Waterproof baskets can be made - often, they're grass, lined with bladder or gut.
Drop spindles are known, but yarns are used mostly for decorations and art, not for fabrics. Almost all the yarns are from animal fur. Decorative yarns are often hand-rolled, rather than spun. Boots typically are fur, with the fur inside. Sometimes, an outer gut shell is added.
Boats are made of hide sewn over frames.
Dogsleds are wood, rawhide, sinew, horn, and bone. The wood is worked green and wet. When needed, the runners may be "fixed" with ice.
It's hard, but Elders into their 70's were not uncommon according to the Russian accounts. There's a LOT of free time to pass culture on. Songs, dance, drumming are common. The drums make minimal use of wood, but plenty of leather over a thin hoop of wood.
Some form of glue/varnish is known, but I don't know what it's made from.
Branding and banishment are a form of punishment - usually, it's during winter. Sent out, the criminal is chased from the village with nothing but his clothes and a spear. It's usually a death sentence. You can't survive alone, since the meat is too heavy to work alone. Division of labor is common. Women do the food prep, men do the hunting and active fishing, everyone works the fishtraps, cuts and hauls meat, helps with the smoking and drying. Kids and women do most of the berry gathering.
It's TL0, bordering on TL1, sailing is known in principle, but isn't overly efficient (hide sails are heavy).
That's one form of TL0 village culture. Some of the locations of current villages have been shown to have several centuries of occupation. Why? Because there's no need to move. You follow the resources only so far, then return to the winter village.
