Montana’s Early Hunters: TwoTypes of Atlatls in the Vissotzky Petroglyphs

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Value of Rock Art: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Current Rock Art Documentation, Research and Analysis Part II" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Vissotzky petroglyphs are located in the northern Rocky Mountains of western Montana. During our 2023 recording project we documented more than 300 representational petroglyphs at the site, but the most unexpected finds were a dozen atlatls, demonstrating that the petroglyphs are at least 2000 years old. The weapons occur as two types, one identifiable as the Quiltanton Lake type atlatl, named after the type site in British Columbia, and the other a variant of the Basketmaker type atlatl, commonly found throughout the Great Basin and Southwest from Oregon to New Mexico. Projectile point images associated with the Quiltanton Lake atlatls are basally-notched dart points typical of the northwestern Plains Pelican Lake type, while one associated with a Basketmaker type atlatl is an earlier lanceolate type point.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• The Value of Rock Art: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Current Rock Art Documentation, Research and Analysis Part II

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52047