One of the long-term "resource" projects that I'm gradually collecting data for is a catalog of romantic, erotic, and sexual behaviors indexed to the cultures and eras when they were popular, and placed in their social context. Think about the simple kiss. What did kissing mean in a given culture? Who kissed whom? In what context? What was communicated between the people who kissed? How as that kiss interpreted by those who witnessed it? If you're writing a sapphic historical romance, under what circumstances might ytour characters kiss? Will their first kiss be erotic or social? Is there a difference in kissing technique for different types of relationship? Will a kiss mean the same thing to both protagonists?
THe easy approach is to assume that the gestures of affection in your story will be identical to the ones you're familiar with, but that approach flattens out history and drains away much of the joy of writing (or reading) about people in another time.
Have you ever chucked somone under the chin? Have you done it without realizing that it's a gesture with a long social history? Would your fictional characters do it? Now repeat those questions for a much larger repertoire of signs of affection. (Why do I never pick projects that have a clear "done" point?)
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