Perishable Weaponry from the Northern Colorado Plateau: Adding Temporal Context to Wayward Collections

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.

Archaeological sites in the high dry deserts of Eastern Utah have yielded remarkably preserved collections of perishable technological components of past lifeways. This includes many examples of projectile weaponry. These objects can add direct evidence to studies focused on the adoption of the bow and the persistence of the atlatl in specific regions, an argument frequently based on changes in projectile point technology. Unfortunately, many of these sites with incredible organic preservation were heavily impacted by looting and other poorly documented collection practices in the twentieth century. These wayward practices have led to a loss of context and cultural affiliation for these rare objects. This presentation focuses on adding temporal context to perishable projectile weaponry housed at the Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum through direct radiocarbon dating. Because many of these objects have very limited spatial association due to their removal from archaeological sites by private collectors, temporal context is one of the only ways to better associate these objects with the people and archaeological cultures who created and used them in their daily lives.

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40237.0