Choose Your Weapon: Material Selection for Middle Pleistocene Spears

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.

The earliest archaeological weapons consist of one-piece wooden spears and throwing sticks from the Middle Pleistocene. These earliest weapons were made by late H. heidelbergensis and/or early H. neanderthalensis and were crafted from coniferous wood from at least 400,000 BP. They are typically associated to large prey, but the throwing sticks represent the technological capability to hunt smaller terrestrial and avian fauna. Preserving only in exceptional contexts, they highlight the significance of organic materials for early weapons. In Africa, stone points were thought to be used to tip spears as early as 500,000 BP, while in Eurasia they appear as early as 230,000 BP. Yet, wooden spears are not replaced by stone-tipped weapons, and continued to be used for hunting and violence. I will share preliminary results of an archaeological review of evidence of Middle Pleistocene weapons including stone points thought to tip spears, associating sites with data ecology, climate, and prey. The innovation of the use of inorganic materials for weapons, alongside persistence of organic materials pose not only ‘economic’ questions but also those concerning social and ideological relationships between these early humans, their natural environments, materials, and prey.

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

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40004.0