Treating Problems of Target Nonscalability in Archaeological Projectile Experiments

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Many controlled archaeological weapons experiments have used homogenous target simulants to answer a variety of questions. Target simulants, however, must be shown to be scalable for the weapons we study; they must be shown to capture the same characteristics that make weapons effective in their original application. This paper presents original research demonstrating that two frequently used flesh simulants, pottery clay and ballistics gelatin, are not scalable to animal tissues for low-velocity cutting/piercing projectiles, which perform very differently than bullets. This problematizes conclusions drawn from a number of previous experiments. Skin simulants tested without a target backing may provide a way forward, but these also come with challenges in material selection and target setup.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36211.0