Revisiting the Function of Humboldt Points: Reflections from the Late Prehistoric Hackney Site in Mariposa County, California

Summary

CA-MRP-283, the Hackney Site, is a late prehistoric/protohistoric site in Mariposa County, California. Excavated by California State University, Los Angeles in 1972, the flaked-stone assemblage includes debitage, projectile points, and flake tools. A reanalysis of the debitage shows that late stage biface production, expedient flake-tool production, and the production, repair, and replacement of projectile points were all common activities at the Hackney site. A recent analysis of the projectile points that included a characterization of macro-damage, also showed distinctive use-breakage patterns that suggest it may be time to reexamine the hypotheses surrounding the function(s) of Humboldt/Sierra concave-base series points. Such points are hypothesized to have been used as knives, dart points, or even dispatching spears. The Humboldt points present in this assemblage are all broken with abundant evidence of impact damage. Moreover, an examination of reports on assemblages from other contemporaneous sites in the Sierra Nevada region and elsewhere suggests this is a widespread pattern. To examine the potential cause(s) of these features, we conducted experiments testing macro-damage created in use as a knife, dispatching spear, and atlatl propelled spear. We present here the results of the projectile point assemblage analysis and some preliminary findings from the use experiment.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22364