Reverse Engineering Pleistocene Spears
Reverse Engineering Pleistocene Spears: interdisciplinary perspectives on raw materials and performance
PI: Annemieke Milks
Project Collaborators:
Jill Pruetz (Texas State University)
Michelle Bebber, Metin Eren (Kent State University)
Sheina Lew-Levy (Durham University)
Period:
Middle Pleistocene
Abstract:
Why do humans innovate? This interdisciplinary project seeks to answer this from an evolutionary perspective, focusing on the significant shift in human technology that saw Pleistocene humans add stone points to wooden spears. Wooden spears are evidenced archaeologically from 400,000 years ago, while the first stone-tipped spears appear between 300,000-200,000 years ago. Wooden spears were simple but effective, and continued to be utilised until recently. The addition of stone points was a major change, yet existing datasets and interpretations have failed to confirm whether it significantly improved lethality. To robustly evaluate this shift, archaeological, primatological and ethnographic records of wood and stone- tipped spears will be combined with contextual data to create a chrono-geographic overview of material choices. New experimental work in partnership with the Kent State Experimental Archaeology Laboratory is designed to evaluate the performance of wood vs stone tipped weapons in their ability to create wounds and hunting lesions, alongside damage patterns on wood points. Ethnographic work with collaborator Sheina Lew-Levy on the use of wood for children’s spears amongst the BaYaka foragers, and a collaboration with Jill Pruetz to better understand chimpanzee wood selection for hunting spears will both provide further analytical tools to understand wood selection in relation to performance. Together these interdisciplinary approaches help ‘reverse engineer’ this significant Middle Pleistocene innovation and provides new perspectives on both innovative use of materials alongside the continued use of wood, signifying behavioural step-changes in our evolutionary past.
Institution:
University of Reading, Department of Archaeology
Funding:
British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship
£292,586