Form and Function: Projectile Point Morphology and Associated Faunal Remains at Four Eastern Great Basin Cave Sites.

Summary

Spatial and temporal patterning of projectile point morphology continues to be a well discussed topic within the Great Basin. However, despite this attention, little progress has been made addressing the functional attributes of projectile points beyond the simple atlatl vs. bow dichotomy. Stratified cave sites offer a unique opportunity to study the relationship between hunting technology and prey choice through the analysis of projectile point characteristics and contemporaneously deposited faunal remains. This study examines several hypotheses related to ballistic performance, penetrative capabilities, and projectile morphology as related to prey size at four Utah archaeological cave sites: Danger Cave, Hogup Cave, Sudden Shelter, and Swallow Shelter. The study utilizes new and previously published faunal analyses in combination with landmark geometric morphometric analysis of a photographic database comprised of over 900 projectile points curated at the Natural History Museum of Utah.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16975