Arrowheads—or, more properly, projectile points—are the stone, metal, bone, or antler components of prehistoric weaponry designed to penetrate and impart a lethal wound. Most of them were made of stone, manufactured by means of percussion and pressure flaking. The process of stone flaking (or knapping), in which a stone is gradually diminished in size until the desired shape is obtained, required great skill, which could be developed only through long practice.
Smaller numbers of projectile points were made from other raw materials. Slate projectiles were ground to the desired shape by Eskimo hunters. Bone and antler, used in many instances, were shaped by cutting and abrasion. Antler tips were used in rare cases, and needed only a hole drilled in the cut end before they were ready to be fitted over the end of a wooden shaft. Metal points were known only rarely in prehistoric times; they were shaped from native copper and were limited to copper sources, especially in the vicinity of the Great Lakes. In some cases a projectile point was not used at all, and a wooden shaft was simply brought to a sharp point; an enlarged piece of wood (or bunt point) was used effectively on birds and small mammals. Iron projectile points were introduced in protohistoric times by European traders, and some Native American groups salvaged metal discarded by the Europeans and forged it into projectile points.
Prehistoric Native Americans expended surprising amounts of time and effort in acquiring the best of stone-flaking materials. When surface materials were exhausted, quarrying became necessary. Trenches, shafts, and open quarries have been found at all known sources of good flaking materials. Lacking metal tools, Native Americans operated these mines with relatively simple tools and techniques. One well-known source of flaking materials in Wyoming was called the Spanish Diggings by the early pioneers because, not believing that Native Americans could have dug the trenches, pits, and shafts that they found there, the settlers attributed the excavations to Spaniards searching for gold.
Projectile points are commonly referred to as the guide fossils for archaeologists. Fortunately for archaeology, each prehistoric cultural group manufactured its projectile points within well-defined limits of size, shape, and technology—to the extent that the presence of a particular cultural group can be determined through its projectile points. Archaeologists group projectile points into types, and each type can be assigned to a past cultural group and time period. Projectile points changed gradually over time, and although some types are often difficult to distinguish, if a large sample of points is recovered in a good geologic context and can be assumed to have been made by one cultural group, an archaeologist can usually determine, within limits, both the culture and the time period represented. Although some other tool types may also be culture and time specific, many tools have experienced no changes in shape for thousands of years and cannot be used as reliable chronological indicators.
The oldest recognized type of projectile point known to have existed in North America dates from just over eleven thousand years ago. Known as the Clovis projectile point (fig. a), this well-designed piece of weaponry has been found in all of the forty-eight contiguous states as well as in Central America and Mesoamerica. Its ability to penetrate and kill a mammoth has been demonstrated through experiments on African elephants. Contemporary with the chipped-stone Clovis points are elongate cylinders with sharp points carved from mammoth or mastodon bone and ivory, which may have been used as projectiles.
In the period between the Clovis era and about eight thousand years ago, cultural groups known as the late Paleo-Indians used a number of projectile-point types. These points demonstrate technological and morphological changes that can be assigned to a number of different cultural groups. A stemmed type known as Eden (fig. b), named after a nine-thousand-year-old site in western Wyoming, indicates a change in the method of attaching or hafting stone points to wooden shafts. A highly developed stone-knapping technology is demonstrated in all Paleo-Indian projectile points, which also show evidence of concerted efforts to acquire the best of raw materials, some from distances of several hundred kilometers.
After about eight thousand years ago, the notching of projectile points became popular (fig. c), although unnotched types did recur. Notching made it easier to attach a point to a wooden shaft, but it also weakened the point, and breakage was common across notches. Variations in the notching process are time specific and aid the archaeologist in chronological placement. Large notched and unnotched projectile points were mounted on short shafts (called foreshafts) that were in turn inserted into tapered holes in a longer shaft (called a main shaft). They were propelled by an atlatl, a stick held in one hand that acts to lengthen the arm of the user. A hook in the end of the atlatl engages with a small hole or cup in the proximal end of the main shaft. The sharp end of the projectile point penetrates an animal's hide, and the sharp blade edges cut a hole large enough to allow entry of the entire foreshaft. Feather fletching improved the accuracy of the long shaft.
After about two thousand years ago, the size of projectile points decreased noticeably (fig. d), a trend that coincided with the appearance of the bow and arrow. Attached to a shaft of smaller diameter and shorter length, the smaller points compensated for their lack of weight by the higher velocities they could attain. Another advantage of the bow and arrow was that less raw stone-flaking material was needed for the manufacture of projectile points. Although these small projectile points are often referred to as bird points or small animal points, thousands of them have been recovered on the Great Plains at sites of buffalo jumping and trapping during the bow-and-arrow period, a fact that demonstrates the lethal qualities of such points on large animals.
A question that inevitably arises is why these projectile points were not retrieved and reused. Many were in fact reused, and broken parts that could be reshaped into functional weaponry were commonly so treated. However, reshaped projectile points are of little interest to archaeologists because in the reshaping process, a point's original configuration becomes altered to such a degree that, unless the point has been found together with something that can be dated, type identification and chronological placement become difficult if not impossible.
See also
Paleo-Indians;
Woodland Phase Indians.
George C. Frison
University of Wyoming
