Article2007

The first archaeological evidence for death by spearing in Australia

Jo McDonald · Denise Donlon · Judith H. Field · Richard Fullagar · Joan Brenner Coltrain · Mark Rawson

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Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology Archaeology and ancient environmental studies Australian Indigenous Culture and History

Abstract

An Aboriginal man done to death on the dunes 4000 years ago was recently discovered during excavations beneath a bus shelter in Narrabeen on Sydney's northern beaches. The presence of backed microliths and the evidence for trauma in the bones showed that he had been killed with stone-tipped spears. Now we know how these backed points were used. A punishment ritual is implied by analogies with contact-period observations made in the eighteenth century AD.

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References

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2018Gravettian weaponry: 23,500-year-old evidence of a composite barbed point from Les Prés de Laure (France)2009The changing abundance of backed artefacts in south-eastern Australia: a response to Holocene climate change?2016Lithic miniaturization in Late Pleistocene southern Africa 2016Experimental and archaeological investigations of backed microlith function among Mid-to-Late Holocene herders in southwestern Kenya 2017The performance of heat-treated silcrete backed pieces in actualistic and controlled complex projectile experiments

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