Applied Geometric Morphometrics in Analysis of Alaska Native Ground Slate Projectile Points

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Indigenous Alaskan ground slate projectile points present an interesting opportunity to apply geometric morphometrics for shape analysis of a unique and relatively understudied lithic tradition. Here I present a method for the purpose of classifying and corroborating presumed tribal affiliations of Proto-Historic ground slate projectile points from indigenous cultural regions of Alaska. A dataset of 2d images derived from an online database lacking high quality provenience information was analyzed using GIS tools and open-source tribal data to tie belongings to tribes (Inupiat, Yupik, Alutiiq, or Tlingit). Further, principal component analysis of points from the various Indigenous Alaskan cultural regions yielded distinct variation in overall shape by presumed tribal affiliation. Discriminant function analysis helped to validate the clusters from the principal component analysis and determine the success of grouping criteria with strong results. While this method is novel, and constrained by data availability issues it serves as a jumping off point for future ways of effectively typologizing lithic traditions, establishing cultural affiliation, and repatriating belongings that may have been neglected by museums or were improperly documented.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52427