Further Considerations of Tip Cross-Sectional Area for Determining Projectile Systems

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Global “Impact” of Projectile Technologies: Updating Methods and Regional Overviews of the Invention and Transmission of the Spear-Thrower and the Bow and Arrow" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The origins and evolution of projectile technology have been a major research focus in paleoanthropology because projectiles are thought to have had crucial impacts on human adaptation and dispersal in the Pleistocene. Projectile technologies are often used as a proxy for changes in human cognition, cooperation, hunting strategies, and interpersonal or intergroup conflict. Mechanically assisted projectile systems, such as the bow and arrow, are thought to have provided a significant adaptive advantage over hand-thrown spears on some prey types due to the increase in power, accuracy, and range. Therefore, it is imperative that paleoanthropologists determine when and where these projectile systems arose and in what contexts they were utilized. Hughes (1998) developed a method for determining projectile systems that is based on tip cross-sectional (TCS) measurements. Our study expands on Hughes’ approach, using Bayesian statistics to determine which projectile systems can be reliably distinguished using distributions of TCS metrics from a sample of ethnographic and archaeological tools of known function. Further, we consider other factors that may impact our ability to infer projectile technology using TCS such as raw material quality. This research has implications for the reliability of TCS methods as one line of evidence for identifying projectile systems.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• The Global “Impact” of Projectile Technologies: Updating Methods and Regional Overviews of the Invention and Transmission of the Spear-Thrower and the Bow and Arrow

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38405.0