Investigating the Spread of the Bow and Arrow in California Using Large Datasets

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Old Technology, New Methodology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeologists in North America often think of the bow and arrow as appearing more or less instantaneously, a conception baked into many culture historical schemes. However, this specialized technology likely has a more complex history. From a single Old World origin, it is thought to have spread to North America via the Arctic after about 5000 cal BP. From there, it seems to have moved from north to south and the from the interior to the coast in California, arriving on the Columbia Plateau by 2300 cal BP, in northeastern California by 1800 cal BP, and likely later in the Sierra Nevada and California coast. Rather than using typological or culture-historical categories to discern this technological replacement, this study plots salient artifact attributes from a large sample of projectile points from central and northern California through continuous time to provide more detail on the timing of the spread of this important prehistoric technology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Old Technology, New Methodology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36162.0