Investigating Beringian Hunting Toolkits from Experiential Perspectives

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Perishable Weaponry Studies: Developing Perspectives from Dated Contexts to Experimental Analyses" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Experimental archaeology is an underutilized methodology for investigating variability in projectile point technologies of Upper Paleolithic Siberia and Late Pleistocene/early Holocene eastern Beringia. This paper presents the results of a multifaceted experimental research project combining 1) actualistic testing of three Paleo-arctic projectile point styles and 2) use wear analysis of a large sample of osseous and lithic tools from 11 eastern and western Beringian archaeological sites to test established hypotheses of projectile point variability in the north. A major component of this project was the 3) development of scaffolded and scalable student-centered learning activities tailored to engaging the general public, stakeholders, and indigenous communities through hands-on experimental archaeology and object-based teaching. Understanding the functions of these important artifacts can inform on the significance of inter- and intra-site assemblage variability in Beringia and adaptive responses to shifting resources during the Pleistocene/Holocene transition across Beringia. Here we present developing behavioral models to explain the variable projectile technologies, including seasonality, site-specific or prey-specific activities, raw-material conservation, and ballistic performance of weapon systems as contributing variables.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Advances in Perishable Weaponry Studies: Developing Perspectives from Dated Contexts to Experimental Analyses

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40187.0