The Hunting Tools Of Early Man

The Atlatl (at-el-at-el)

You are sure to note we avoid calling a bird a bird, or a point an arrow head, or was it we do call an arrow head a point. Now does that make sense? In archaeology it does. While an arrow head remains, an arrow head to the American Indian, in pre history of man in North America, there was a time before the Indian, and the arrow. It is the period of the American Indian, as we know him, as well as his bow and arrow, that will not be our interest here. Not that we will not try and show you a few. But this separation of periods is necessary, as man used two completely different forms of hunting and how stone was employed. So to call a worked bit of stone an arrow head, may be very misleading. To direct your attention to the wrong era of man and his hunting, would be a waste. So we call all of the stone items used in hunting "points" and let the chips fall where they must. Stone chips that is. But to aid you and ourselves, we have several break downs of the term "point". To most the term "arrow head", is a definition of a point as used with a bow. This may be accurate for man after about 1,500 BP, but for man between then and about 9,000 BP, it may be a misnomer. For early man, the point was used as part of a dart, the bow was predated by the throwing stick, or Atlatl. Add to the above that man prior to 9,000 BP used a hand held spear, or more correctly a lance. So to avoid conflict in our terms we use the term "point", to this we may add such description as, dart "as used with the atlatl", lanceolate "the spear", or arrow "the bow". Our basic interest here is early man, below is offered a set of basic shapes of the points during the archaic period at the Zueberbueler shelter. A click on it will take us to more of the site's recovered points, and a few extra.