Articlebronze2018

The antiquity of bow-and-arrow technology: evidence from Middle Stone Age layers at Sibudu Cave

Lucinda Backwell · Justin Bradfield · Kristian J. Carlson · Tea Jashashvili · Lyn Wadley · Francesco d’Errico

88 citations1/1 files storedAntiquity

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Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology Archaeology and ancient environmental studies Archaeology and Rock Art Studies

Abstract

The bow and arrow is thought to be a unique development of our species, signalling higher-level cognitive functioning. How this technology originated and how we identify archaeological evidence for it are subjects of ongoing debate. Recent analysis of the putative bone arrow point from Sibudu Cave in South Africa, dated to 61.7±1.5kya, has provided important new insights. High-resolution CT scanning revealed heat and impact damage in both the Sibudu point and in experimentally produced arrow points. These features suggest that the Sibudu point was first used as an arrowhead for hunting, and afterwards was deposited in a hearth. Our results support the claim that bone weapon tips were used in South African hunting long before the Eurasian Upper Palaeolithic.

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References

1981The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society.1997Lower Palaeolithic hunting spears from Germany 2008Ages for the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa: Implications for Human Behavior and Dispersal 2005The origins of lithic projectile point technology: evidence from Africa, the Levant, and Europe 2012Early evidence of San material culture represented by organic artifacts from Border Cave, South Africa 2012Evidence for Early Hafted Hunting Technology 2008Middle Stone Age bone tools from the Howiesons Poort layers, Sibudu Cave, South Africa 2011Quartz-tipped arrows older than 60 ka: further use-trace evidence from Sibudu, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

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2021Targeted conspiratorial killing, human self-domestication and the evolution of groupishness 2020Further evidence for bow hunting and its implications more than 60 000 years ago: Results of a use-trace analysis of the bone point from Klasies River Main site, South Africa 2021Four-Field Co-evolutionary Model for Human Cognition: Variation in the Middle Stone Age/Middle Palaeolithic 2021Variation in hunting weaponry for more than 300,000 years: A tip cross-sectional area study of Middle Stone Age points from southern Africa

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