Clovis bone versus stone weapon tip penetration: Thinking about relative costs and benefits, experimental assumptions, and archaeological unknowns at Sheriden Cave, Ohio, U.S.A

Abstract

Stone Age hunter-gatherers likely often had choices concerning the raw materials used in the production of their technologies. How different raw materials performed once transformed into tools was one potential consideration that influenced raw material choices. Here, we present an experiment comparing replica Late Pleistocene North American Clovis culture osseous weapon tips versus stone tips in terms of how well each penetrates a target. We focused our efforts specifically on bone and stone point forms similar to those from the Sheriden Cave site, Ohio. Our results show that the bone point form penetrated significantly shallower than the stone point form. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that penetration depth was not a motivating factor in the production of bone point forms at Sheriden Cave. We suggest that other factors, such as raw material availability, craftsperson skill and experience, or tool durability may better explain the presence of bone points at the site. However, more broadly, our study illustrates that experiments do not provide answers about the past, but instead should be employed as theoretical tools to help frame testing and interpretation of the archaeological record.