Middle Pleistocene ‘hunting lesions’: experimental approaches to an archaeological puzzle

Summary

Hunting lesions provide indirect evidence of humans using weapons for subsistence. Potential examples of hunting lesions from the European Middle Pleistocene are limited, having been proposed for one scapula each from the British sites of Boxgrove and Swanscombe. These scapulae, both bearing semi-circular damaged edges, have been suggested to have been impacted by untipped wooden spears, similar to those from the Middle Pleistocene sites of Schöningen and Clacton-on-Sea. Plain wooden spears from this period represent the earliest weapons in the archaeological record, and are also known to have been used in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene.

The damage on the two scapulae have received little critical evaluation. A number of issues arise in the identification of hunting lesions from wooden spears not only due to the near-lack of an experimentally-generated reference sample, but also due to problems with equifinality. This paper presents ongoing experimental research aiming to better understand damage signatures of wooden spears on bones, actualistic research on how the use of hammerstones to access marrow and grease may mimic hunting lesions, and an assessment of the Middle Pleistocene scapulae in comparison with experimental research and hunting lesions from later periods.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

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