Proyectile weapons before the bow: metric data from the southern Andes, 30-34º S

MARSH, E.; CASTRO, S.; YEBRA, L.; CORTEGOSO, V.; DURAN VICTOR

Tarragona

Simposio; Rock and Roll: 13 th International Symposium of Knappable Materials.; 2021

Instituto Catalán de Paleoecología Humana

Projectile technology was a significant factor in the demographic expansion of Homo sapiens out of Africa. Settlement in the Americas was made possible by a series of human strategies including the use of atlatls and throwing spears. These were the dominant weapons for much of the continent?s human history, prior to the initial appearance of the bow and arrow. This significant technological breakthrough was culturally transmitted over a wide region and accompanied major economic changes. Most methods for distinguishing archaeological dart and arrow projectile points rely on metric comparisons to ethnographic collections (Shott 1997) and the general trend that spear points are large and heavy, atlatl dart points are somewhat smaller, and arrow points are the smallest. In the southern Andes, lithic points prior to the use of the bow include fishtail points (late Pleistocene?early Holocene), large stemmed and lancolate points (early Holocene) and triangular points (middle?late Holocene).