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Arrowheads and Atlatl Darts: How the Stones Got the Shaft

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

David Hurst Thomas
David Hurst Thomas*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, The American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY 10024
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Abstract

An ethnographic and archaeological sample of 142 stone-tipped arrows and atlatl darts has been analyzed from several points of view. The raw data provide some quantitative measures against which unknown archaeological specimens can be compared. Several assumptions regarding projectile points are examined, and statistical analysis determines how much can be reasonably inferred about the entire artifact, given only the stone tip. Discriminant analysis further indicates how these 2 groups differ, and classification equations have been derived to classify unknown points as arrowheads or dart points. While separation is not perfect, the results indicate that arrowheads can be quantitatively distinguished from dart points with some degree of accuracy.

Type
Reports
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , July 1978 , pp. 461 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1978

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