Prehistoric Weapon Perimortem Damage Documentation

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the 2016 – 2017 academic year a Humboldt State University Anthropology Graduate Student recreated a macuahuitl, a wooden club with obsidian blades, and used it on two pig heads for a use-wear analysis of the obsidian. The pig heads were partially de-fleshed and frozen to be added to the university’s zooarchaeology collection. This allowed for the opportunity for documentation of damage by a prehistoric weapon in a controlled environment. To date, there is not a comparative database that catalogs the damage to bone of ancient remains caused by prehistoric weapons. This prevents archaeologists from determining with certainty the weapon that was used at, or near, the time of death from ancient remains. By using the damaged remains of experiments that involved reconstructions of prehistoric weapons, this project examines the possibility of creating a database of perimortem damage by prehistoric weapons based on region and culture.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25420