Point Assemblage Research Articles

THE POINTS FROM EL BUXU CAVE (ASTURIAS, SPAIN): First evidence of adhesive as hafting material in the Solutrean

A multidisciplinary research carried out on the Solutrean points of El Buxu cave is presented in this paper. The technological and functional analysis of this small but diverse assemblage of lithic points has established that all the pieces had been intentionally discarded on site; one of them broke up while being used, the others were left behind as they did not reach optimal functionality due to manufacturing mistakes. Traces of some kind of glue were identified on the tang dorsal face of the shouldered point that had been used (Layer 2). In order to avoid damage to these valuable samples Raman and IR microscopies, two non-destructive techniques, have been applied for the analyses. A collection of natural adhesives possibly used to join the lithic points to the shaft have also been studied by these techniques. The use of a mixture of resin and wax for this purpose is suggested. Haematite, Fe2O3, impregnate the residues of this adhesive. α- Quartz, α-SiO2, is the principal component of the rock from which these lithic pieces have been made. This is the first evidence of remains of adhesive in this type of Solutrean point. We believe that the unusability of all Solutrean points from El Buxu is related to the territory exploitation strategies of the hunter-gatherer groups during the LGM.

Neanderthal Hunting Weapons Re-Assessed: A Tip Cross-Sectional Area Analysis of Middle Palaeolithic Point Assemblages from South Eastern France

There are many opinions and arguments about the types of weapons that Neanderthals may have used. We list five assumptions about Neanderthal weapon-assisted hunting and suggest that the tip cross-sectional area (TCSA) approach may be used to assess these, and to provide a hypothetical overview of stone-tipped weaponry used in south eastern France between MIS 7 and MIS 3. We analysed stone points from Abri du Maras, Saint-Marcel, Grotte du Figuier, and Payre, and discuss possible hunting strategies in tandem with faunal evidence. Our results suggest that early Neanderthals may have hunted with bimanual thrusting spears in combination with one-handed stabbing spears, but that later groups possibly introduced javelin hunting to the Neanderthal arsenal. Stone-tipped assegais or one-handed stabbing spears, however, stand out as the Neanderthal weapons of choice throughout the Middle Palaeolithic, and we discuss the adaptive advantages of hunting with these weapons. Comparative results that include assemblages from elsewhere in the Old World suggest similarities in hunting with stone-tipped weapons between Neanderthal and H. sapiens before MIS 5, marked differences during MIS 5–4, but similarities again during MIS 3. We suggest that caution is needed when attributing MIS 3 point assemblages to Neanderthals based on age and/or technology only.

The rangeomorph Pectinifrons abyssalis: Hydrodynamic function at the dawn of animal life

Rangeomorphs are among the oldest putative eumetazoans known from the fossil record. Establishing how they fed is thus key to understanding the structure and function of the earliest animal ecosystems. Here, we use computational fluid dynamics to test hypothesized feeding modes for the fence-like rangeomorph Pectinifrons abyssalis, comparing this to the morphologically similar extant carnivorous sponge Chondrocladia lyra. Our results reveal complex patterns of flow around P.abyssalis unlike those previously reconstructed for any other Ediacaran taxon. Comparisons with C. lyra reveal substantial differences between the two organisms, suggesting they converged on a similar fence-like morphology for different functions. We argue that the flow patterns recovered for P.abyssalis do not support either a suspension feeding or osmotrophic feeding habit. Instead, our results indicate that rangeomorph fronds may represent organs adapted for gas exchange. If correct, this interpretation could require a dramatic reinterpretation of the oldest macroscopic animals.

Evaluating the Fluted Points from Spring Lake, Texas: A Geometric Morphometric Shape Analysis of Clovis Affinity

ABSTRACT The Spring Lake Site (41HY160) in San Marcos, located along the Balcones Escarpment in central Texas, produced fluted points that appear diagnostic of Clovis technology as well as ice-age megafauna remains. Unfortunately, these materials were recovered in what appears to be mixed deposits within the lake itself. For over 40 years, researchers have hypothesized that the points represent Clovis technology and presence at the site. We use a two-dimensional landmark approach to geometric morphometric shape analysis to test the typological context of the artifacts against a dataset of well-dated Clovis point specimens. We examine whether they fall within a morphological range of variation in planview shape documented in point assemblages from Clovis sites organized geographically into the Southwest, Northwest, and Northeast regions. Results suggest that the Spring Lake points possess particular affinity in shape to Clovis points found in the Southwest region.

The Cultural and Chronostratigraphic Context of a New Leaf Point from Hohle Fels Cave in the Ach Valley of Southwestern Germany

During the summer of 2020 the excavation team at Hohle Fels Cave in the Ach Valley of southwestern Germany recovered a leaf point (in German Blattspitze) made from gray Jurassic chert. The find is well-preserved and remarkable for a number of reasons. First this is the only leaf point recovered by a modern excavation in the Swabian Jura, and is the first leaf point discovered in situ since 1936, when Gustav Riek’s crew recovered two well-preserved leaf points at the excavation of Haldenstein Cave in the Lone Valley. The leaf point and associated finds originate from archaeological horizon (AH) X, 120 cm below the base of the rich Aurignacian deposits at the site that dates with radiocarbon to ca. 42 ka cal BP. Four ESR dates made on the teeth of large mammals from AH IX overlying the new leaf point yielded an average age of 62.5 ± 4 ka BP. This date represents a minimum age for the new horizons, which based on convention would be placed in the cultural taxonomic unit of the Blattspitzengruppe. Since the Blattspitzengruppe is typically interpreted as the last Middle Paleolithic cultural unit, we were intrigued to find an assemblage containing a Blattspitze in such an early chronostratigraphic context. While in Germany the Blattspitzengruppe is usually associated with the end of the Middle Paleolithic, many researchers across Europe have described these leaf point assemblages as being transitional industries at the interface between the Middle and Upper Paleolithic. Historically, some authors have even suggested a degree of cultural continuity between leaf point assemblages of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic. Here we present the stratigraphic and chronological context of the AH X and provide a preliminary description of the material cultural record from this horizon. Keeping in mind that we so far have only excavated parts of 6 m2 of the new find horizon and the underlying find horizon AH XI, the paper provides initial observations that will need revision as the excavation proceeds. These findings suggest that leaf points represent a feature in the technological repertoire of the Late Pleistocene Neanderthals of southwestern Germany rather than a reliable cultural stratigraphic marker for the last phase of the Middle Paleolithic.

The Nye Canyon Paleo Site: an Upper Montane Mixed Fluted Point, Clovis Blade, and Western Stemmed Tradition Assemblage in Western Nevada

ABSTRACT The place of the Clovis techno-complex in Great Basin culture history remains enigmatic, both in relation to the Western Stemmed Tradition – the dominant Paleoindian artifact complex in the Intermountain West – and to the range of late Pleistocene/early Holocene habitats that people employing Clovis toolkits utilized. Here we describe the Nye Canyon Paleo Site (26Ly930), located in the Pine Grove Hills in western Nevada. The Nye Canyon Paleo Site stands alone in the Great Basin because it contains both fluted points and Clovis-style blades alongside Western Stemmed Tradition points and other tools, sits at a relatively high elevation, and potentially contains buried cultural deposits. Recent test excavations failed to locate an intact buried Paleoindian component, but the Nye Canyon Paleo Site nevertheless demonstrates the use of Clovis and Western Stemmed technology at a single upper montane locality in the western Great Basin and highlights regional Paleoindian upper montane land use.

Race and Vision in the Nineteenth-Century United States ed. by Shirley Samuels

Reviewed by: Race and Vision in the Nineteenth-Century United States ed. by Shirley Samuels Ashley Rattner Shirley Samuels, ed.Race and Vision in the Nineteenth-Century United States. Lanham: Lexington, 2019. 236 pp. $95.00. To a large extent, race operates as a function of visual markers. In this broadly varied collection, Shirley Samuels challenges Stephen Best’s contention that the visual archive of slavery is empty by presenting twelve ways visibility shaped the democratic and antidemocratic cultural agendas of the nineteenth-century United States (1). Serving as a provocative assemblage of entry points to access the contestation of racial identity, visible elements emerge as sites for understanding the surveillance and reinforcement of the social order. While sights and sounds of nineteenth-century American life have often been dismissed as inaccessible to scholars of the twenty-first century, Samuels’s collection models the astounding breadth and variety that cultural reconstructions of these elements of daily existence, meaning-making, and opportunity can take in architecture, literature, music, theater, and art. Valuable to scholars of American culture across a range of disciplines, this volume excels at illustrating a range of possibilities for the kinds of questions scholars can ask while studying race’s contestation and evolution. Building on scholarship by Fred Moten, Saidiya Hartman, and Hortense Spillers that processes the sensory depictions of bodily enslavement, contributors to this volume engage the visual resonances of bodies and forms. In response to Jasmine Nichole Cobb’s call for “attention to the ‘archive of Black visuality,’ ” Race and Vision demonstrates how much physical shapes, appearances, and representations disclose about visibility’s role in citizenship (2). Exploring subjects ranging temporally from the geometric patterns within the architecture of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello to the commentary of Kara Walker’s 8 Possible Beginnings, this volume not only provides a broad assortment of examples of racial difference, categorization, and uses in the nineteenth-century US, but it also offers a generative collection of models, methodologies, and implications for further inquiry and exploration. Describing the collection’s utility as propulsive rather than accretive, the contributors demonstrate the centrality of vision to a range of questions of identity, erasure, belonging, and possibility (7). Race and Vision showcases numerous approaches by which scholars can perceive race anew in an era characterized by limited or evolving visual technologies. Wyn Kelley, Cheryl Spinner, and Kya Mangrum explore the effects of inventions like photography and stereoscopes capable of “reproduc[ing] sight” on American culture, rendering “vision a crucial index of both modernity and subjectivity in the nineteenth-century United States” (5). Irene Cheng, Kelli Morgan, Brigitte Fielder, Martha J. Cutter, Adena Spingarn, Kirsten Pai Buck, and Janet Neary examine artistic representations: architecture, sculpture, sheet music, political cartoons, theatrical performance, and contemporary art as sites of cultural negotiations of racial possibility, distinction, anxiety, ambiguity, and power. Both Kelley and Morgan interrogate the presence of the artist in scenes of composition or creation, locating questions of access, resources, education, and ability in the appearance or concealment of the artist as a racialized subject. Xine Yao and Jennifer Greiman look at literary texts, locating spectacle and color as means of understanding authors’ interpretation of race. [End Page 93] The book’s cover features an arresting image—a page of sheet music titled “Amalgamation Waltz”— that depicts a social dance Fielder locates as a record of anxieties surrounding amalgamation in “Music and Military Movement: Racial Representation.” Reading mixed-race balls as “[important scenes] upon which the dynamics of race and sex could be thought in antebellum culture,” differently racialized bodies function as “a visual metaphor of sorts for racial integration” (53). In sheet music for waltzes and marches depicting Black and white figures dancing together—movement on both the minute personal scales, but more broadly “through geopolitical spaces and in militaristic endeavors” as well. Examining the artifact’s multiple registers in its blended genre of illustration and sheet music, Fielder locates the discomfort these figures evoked to nineteenth-century white viewers due to their suggestion of reproduction and national belonging (58). Like Fielder’s essay, Morgan’s unearths another facet of nineteenth-century American culture that is frequently overlooked. Morgan presents Haitian/Ojibwe sculptor Edmonia Lewis...

Was there a shift from Levallois to Still Bay point knapping at Hollow Rock Shelter, South Africa?

ABSTRACT With this contribution we revisit the lithic point assemblage from Hollow Rock Shelter, South Africa. Our objective is to test whether, in addition to its finely retouched Still Bay points, an earlier Levallois-type Mossel Bay point-making tradition may also be represented at the site and, if so, how the two traditions relate to each other. We conducted a fine-grained temporal attribute study that includes point-production strategies, material use and morphometric analyses. We show that, contrary to previous interpretation, Mossel Bay-type points are represented at Hollow Rock Shelter before about 80,000 years ago. Subsequently, the knappers started to make Still Bay points during the later phase, but Levallois-type Mossel Bay points continued to be used throughout the sequence. Variation between the phases lay in the frequencies of point types and material use through time, as well as in subtle changes in morphometric attributes. As a result, we suggest that Levallois point production was part of the inventory of the Still Bay at Hollow Rock Shelter, but has not previously been reported as such. This study adds to an increasing body of work that demonstrates that Still Bay point production in southern Africa was not the abrupt technological phenomenon previously claimed, but our outcomes nevertheless require further testing at sites with better stratigraphic context than that available at Hollow Rock Shelter.

The case of the braided river that meandered: Bar assemblages as a mechanism for meandering along the pervasively braided Missouri River, USA

Abstract This paper offers a mechanism for meandering in an otherwise braided river and then discusses its general implications for river processes and fluvial deposits. Braided rivers manage to meander without the paired point bars and single-thread channels that are instrumental in developing bends in other meandering rivers. The driving processes for meandering in these braided systems remain enigmatic. The unchannelized and prechannelized Missouri River is an example of a braided meandering river, and it provides an opportunity to gain insight into these processes. This study utilized historical maps, sequential air photos, and surficial geologic maps both to define the processes by which this braided river meanders, and to characterize the deposits produced by these processes. These data show that the Missouri River meanders by building point assemblages instead of point bars. Repeated accretion of midchannel and lateral bars to a common point on the bank forces development of a meander bend around a point assemblage comprising multiple amalgamated compound bars. This differs from single-thread systems, which expand and translate bends around a single compound point bar. Alternating development of point assemblages forces meandering over successions of meander bends. Braided meander loops grow by expansion and translation like single-thread rivers, but they also may contract to produce counterpoint assemblages. Contraction appears to be the more common means of loop abandonment compared to loop cutoff for the braided Missouri River. This differs from single-thread meandering rivers, where contraction is limited, and loop cutoff is consistently the dominant abandonment process. Deposits of the braided meandering Missouri River differ from deposits of single-thread rivers in the rarity of both meander scrolls and single-thread channel fills. Instead, point and counterpoint assemblages comprise fusiform bar elements bound by small filled remnants of anabranch channels. These assemblages are commonly bound by meander cutbank scars. Cutbank scars associated with contraction, however, tend to be composite rather than discrete erosional surfaces, and they do not tend to bind river-scale abandoned channel fills. The braided meandering Missouri River also differs from wandering rivers because wandering rivers meander by building compound bars instead of assemblages, are more gravelly, have less pervasive and much less mobile midchannel bars, and appear to reflect a transitional intermediate pattern instead of a stable hybrid pattern. Braiding and meandering both expend stream power, and both are mechanisms for achieving channel equilibrium. The Missouri River exhibits both of these processes in tandem; thus, meandering and braiding are not mutually exclusive processes. Braided meandering rivers like the Missouri River are less common than either straight-braided or single-thread-meandering rivers, but they are not unique. The long-held distinction of braided versus meandering patterns for rivers thus may be practical but is not definitive.

Modeling of progressive damage in concrete using multidimensional virtual internal bond method

SummaryDamage simulation via tensile and shear failure modes in quasi‐brittle material like concrete is computationally challenging. Multidimensional virtual internal bond (MVIB) method is one of the promising method developed to capture shear failure in materials like concrete. It assumes continuum as an assemblage of material points joined by normal and shear bonds possessing harmonic potential and bond density evolution function, which degrades with deformation to yield at macroscopic level, stress–strain law with inbuilt feature of failure via Cauchy–Born rule. The degradation of bond‐density in MVIB method originally based solely on compressive failure is extended to include tensile failure synonymous with tension and compression asymmetry in concrete. The modified MVIB model is applied to a variety of problems, and the effect of inclusion of both tensile and compressive failure is thoroughly assessed. Through the example of two notches in a square plate subjected to biaxial loading, a systematic study of damage evolution vis‐à‐vis biaxial loading ratio is presented. Capture of crack closure and formation of crack retarding protective shield are unique outcomes of the present work.

A new proposal for the technological analysis of lithic points: Application for understanding the cultural diversity of hunter gatherers in Eastern South America

The lack of a standard protocol for analyzing and comparing multiple assemblages of lithic artifacts has hindered the advance of a better understanding of the cultural diversity associated to prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups. This was the case of Brazilian archaeologists that for many decades associated lithic stemmed point assemblages to a cultural entity known as “Umbu Tradition”. However, most associations of assemblages to this “tradition” have been made regardless of the type of lithic points, as well as ignoring other elements related to the lithic industry, settlement patterns, among others. As a result, since the 1980s, several studies have been questioning the validity of such Tradition. Recent research has proposed new definitions for the previously associated Umbu Tradition lithic industries based on the stemmed points typology. However, no raw data on the technological analysis of such points have ever been presented. This article proposes a protocol for the technological study of lithic points that allows the application of descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis to verify if these types present or not significant differences. We present new data on the technological analysis of 501 lithic points from sites located in the supposed Umbu Tradition coverage area and period, as well two new Early Holocene C14 dates for one of the studied sites (Caetetuba site). Our results corroborate previous propositions of discarding Umbu Tradition as a valid cultural entity, as well as new typologies for the points. We also show that our protocol is suitable to unravel potential cultural patterns regarding many attributes in lithic points as well as to explore if there are significant differences among previously defined types.

Projectile? Knife? Perforator? Using actualistic experiments to build models for identifying microscopic usewear traces on Dalton points from the Brand site, Arkansas, North America

At the end of the Pleistocene, Dalton hunter-gatherers substantially altered their technology by crafting points with serrated, beveled, and tapered blade margins. The functions of these attributes have been the focus of a long-held debate. Some archaeologists argue that the variation was the result of resharpening and use in varied tasks, like cutting—showing an adaptive shift to processing smaller game like deer. Other researchers suggest these new attributes were designed from the outset for the single functional use as projectiles. In this study, we use actualistic experiments to build analogues for interpreting microscopic usewear traces on an archaeological Dalton point assemblage from the Brand site, Arkansas. We then consider changes in point functionality within the broader context of the organization of Dalton lithic technology and how these changes reflect adaptations to the emerging Holocene environment.

Reconstructing Clovis Landscape Use at Multiple Spatial Scales from the Mockingbird Gap Site, New Mexico

This chapter addresses the archaeology and paleoecology of Clovis hunter-gatherers in the Rio Grande rift valley and adjacent regions of northwest New Mexico. We focus particularly on the Mockingbird Gap Site and associated collections of Clovis stone tools from the central Rio Grande rift region. We review the Clovis archaeological record from Mockingbird Gap and the region surrounding the site. We then examine the projectile point assemblages at the site and regional scales in terms of dimensions and raw material use. These data are used to construct a model of Clovis paleoecology in the greater Southwest.

How many techniques to retouch a backed point? Assessing the reliability of backing technique recognition on the base of experimental tests

Backing techniques represent one of the most relevant technical aspects involved in the manufacturing processes of backed tools. In this paper, we present results of an experimental programme focused on the manufacture of backed points, a kind of tool that has played a key role in Upper Palaeolithic technical systems. In order to identify which retouch techniques are effective to produce backed points, different combinations of retouchers (lithic vs. organic) and force application modes (percussion vs. pressure vs. abrasion) were tested. Through a morphoscopic analysis, it was possible to identify and describe numerous mesoscopic and macroscopic criteria useful for the identification of retouch techniques. The results of this experimental activity were then validated through a series of blind tests. Furthermore, these criteria were applied to an archaeological assemblage of backed points from the Late Epigravettian series of Riparo Tagliente (Verona, North-Eastern Italy). It was thus possible to determine the use of two retouch techniques: soft stone percussion on anvil and pressure by a soft stone retoucher. If percussion on anvil had already been attested in several Late Glacial sites, pressure by soft stone is here identified for the first time in an archaeological context.

Assessment of complex projectiles in the early Late Pleistocene at Aduma, Ethiopia.

Complex projectiles—propulsion via mechanical aid—are considered an important technological innovation, with possible relevance for the successful Out-of-Africa dispersal of our species. Conclusive evidence for the beginning of this technology, however, is lacking from the early Late Pleistocene (ca. 130 to 70 thousand years ago; ka). Given the extremely limited applicability of relatively robust methods for validating stone-tipped projectile use, such as through fracture propagation velocity, converging lines of circumstantial evidence remain the best way to examine early complex projectiles. We assess here suggestions for an early Late Pleistocene origin of complex projectiles in Africa. Results from both previous and present independent approaches suggest a trajectory in which complex projectiles were likely adopted during the early Late Pleistocene in eastern Africa. At Aduma (Middle Awash, Ethiopia), morphometric, hafting, and impact damage patterns in several lithic point assemblages suggest a shift from simple spear technologies (thrusting and/or hand-cast) to complex projectiles. Broadly dated to 80–100 ka, lithic points from later phases of the Aduma succession represent a particularly strong candidate for projectile armatures most comparable to ethnographically known spearthrower darts, lending support for previous suggestions and warranting further investigations.

Temporal perspectives on Still Bay point production at Sibudu Cave, KwaZulu-Natal, in the context of southern Africa

ABSTRACTBased on optically stimulated luminescence age estimates it has been argued that the Still Bay represents a sudden, short-lived technological innovation dating to about 72–71 kya. Yet, few sites have the stratigraphic integrity and Still Bay point assemblage size to test this assumption. The Wadley deep sounding of Sibudu Cave provides such an opportunity. Here we use fine-grained analyses consisting of technological attributes and morphometric data to explore the retouched point assemblages of Sibudu over a period of more than ten thousand years spanning the Still Bay. Although we found subtle changes through time, we found no evidence of a technological break in retouched point-production strategies since the Wadley early pre-Still Bay at more than 77 kya through to the final Still Bay/early Howiesons Poort dating to 64.7 ± 2.3 kya. We did, however, uncover a potential point-production hiatus at the site and we present testable hypotheses for this phenomenon. We further contextualise the Sibudu assemblages within southern Africa by directly comparing them with those of Hollow Rock Shelter, Umhlatuzana and Apollo 11. Although our results demonstrate both variation and similarities between the different Still Bay assemblages, we could not replicate a previous suggestion regarding technical disconnection between a north-east/south-west axis on the greater landscape.

Blindness in Seeing: A Philosophical Critique of the Visible Learning Paradigm in Education

An international consensus seems to have developed in educational research—and among educational planners and policymakers—during the last 10–15 years proclaiming that learning is, and must be, a visible phenomenon. This paper questions this predominant view and serves an assemblage of points offering educational scientists at least four profound perspectives to reflect upon. First of all, learning is not immediately visible to the learning subject. It demands and deserves a qualitative lifelong perspective and—not to be underestimated—autonomous reflections to come to know and acknowledge what learning is and can be in an existential perspective. For the individual, it is always worth asking the question whether or not the things ‘learned’ in the first place were worth learning. Secondly, no one can examine the complex synaptic wiring process in the changeable and ‘learning’ brain (i.e., human neuroplasticity); the body-phenomenological depths and growth of a human being; or the manifold processes constituting the totality of historical social interactions surrounding the learning process and reduce them to something simple and already ‘known’ (a figure, a score, an effect, an answer in a test, an evaluation statement, etc). Thirdly, so-called visible learning for teachers has to be differentiated from both conscious and unconscious learning for pupils and students. The attempts to objectify and sometimes even instrumentalize learning risk running into obvious problems and fostering serious mistakes. Besides, the teacher and the ‘learner’ do not share the same perspectives and they often also have different interests. Fourthly, the concept of learning is not a value-neutral term and should only be used with an awareness of its historical development as a concept. I will argue that character formation—edification of character (Bildung), in light of the rich German geisteswissenschaftliche tradition—and the capability to think and become a vivid language user and creator demand much more than learning. Moreover, teaching is much more than a method to ‘produce’ learning, and to reproduce learning goals, and the purpose of education must transcend a teleological implementation of strategic national and international learning goals. In this paper, the revitalized concept of Bildung both serves as a critique of the visible learning paradigm and as a take-off of an alternative and more fertile way to conceptualize the task and possibilities of education. The line of the argument and ambition of the paper is to depict how blindness seems to be an inevitable part of educational seeing. The thesis is that powerful scientific and political adherents of learning cannot see what they cannot see—neither when they see what they (think they) see, nor when they do not see what they do not (want to) see.

The Still Bay points of Apollo 11 Rock Shelter, Namibia: an inter-regional perspective

ABSTRACTDating to roughly 80,000 to 70,000 years ago, components of the Still Bay technocomplex of southern Africa and their potential behavioural implications have been widely discussed. Stone points with invasive retouch, as defined over 90 years ago by Goodwin and van Riet Lowe, serve as markers for Still Bay assemblages, yet many Still Bay sites remain undated and comprehensive, comparable sets of data for their point assemblages remain unpublished. Much of the Middle Stone Age at the site of Apollo 11 in Namibia was undated until 2010, when a potential Still Bay component was announced. Although a Still Bay assemblage at Apollo 11 would represent the most northwesterly and inland expression of this technocomplex, its points have never been fully analysed. This paper presents their morphometric data and an interpretation of point-production strategies. These results are then compared with data obtained for two South African sites: Hollow Rock Shelter in the Western Cape and Umhlatuzana in KwaZulu-Natal. This comparison demonstrates that whereas there are no statistically significant differences in the morphometric data sets between the three sites, there are both similarities and differences in point-production strategies, cross-section shapes and the use of raw materials for knapping. It is suggested that these similarities and variations represent aspects of how knowledge-transfer systems and knapping conventions were followed on both intra-regional and inter-regional scales.

A New Look at Flaked Stone Projectiles from the Mixter Site (33-ER-4), Erie County, Ohio, USA

ABSTRACTThe Mixter site (33-ME-4), Erie County, Ohio, is a multicomponent site first reported in 1967. We re-examined the Mixter site projectile point assemblage to understand which types were present, whether there were Paleoindian points at the site, and whether the projectile points can reveal anything about site use through time. Our assessment revealed an occupation spanning the entire Holocene, a possible Clovis component, and that artifact breakage and discard pattern did not change over time at the site. Given that our new look at the projectile point assemblage differed significantly from Shane’s (1967, The Mixter Site: a Multicomponent Hunting Station in Erie County, Ohio. In O. Prufer & D. McKenzie (Eds.), Studies in Ohio Archaeology (pp. 121–186). Cleveland: The Press of Western Reserve University) original report, we conclude our study with a discussion on reproducibility in archaeological science.

Middle stone age point technology: Blind-testing the damage distribution method

In this paper we present further experimental validation for the damage distribution use-wear method. By reproducing the technique with a replicated tool assemblage we demonstrate its ability to distinguish between tools used as cutting/scraping implements and those with hunting, drilling or piercing functions. The method was also applied to a sample assemblage of unretouched Middle Stone Age points from the Magubike archaeological site, southern Tanzania, in combination with a conventional macro-wear approach. The results of the study suggest that points from Magubike had multiple functions including use as projectile armatures and cutting/scraping tools. These differences in function appear to conform to lithic raw material type, which indicates that tools users were selective in their use of stones.