Arrowhead

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In the Stone age people used sharpened or flintknapped stones, flakes, and chips of rock as arrowheads. They often used various stone spear heads and arrow heads for their weapons and hunting tools. A wide variety of prehistoric arrow heads have been found in each region of the world, and there are distinct changes over time. Arrow heads differ from other stone tools in that the only part of the arrow or spear that has survived for thousands of years is the stone tip, or stone arrow head. The arrow head itself was not a tool, and the prehistoric tools of bows, arrows, and spears are not as easy to find.

Archaeology and Anthropology often involve the study of remnants of the surviving parts of stone tools to date, cataloque, and categorize specific periods of human cultures over thousands of years. Arrow heads and flint chips can survive for long periods, are plentiful, were often lost, and provide useful clues to the human past and prehistoric trade. Scientific techniques exist to track the specific kinds of rock or minerals used in various regions, back to their original sources.

Types

A collection of stone projectile points from North America

A large variety of prehistoric arrow heads and spear points have been discovered in North America. The most common materials, flint, obsidian, quartz and many other minerals were commonly used to make arrow heads and other stone tools. Flint and stone was the livelihood of most utilitarian tools. Since iron did not arrive for over 10,000 years, everyday objects such as axes, hammers, celts, chisels, awls, and even jewellery were fabricated using stones and a high degree of intelligence to make the items. Most arrow-hafted projectile point "arrowheads" are under 2 inches in length and anything larger would be too heavy for the arrow shaft. It is also important to note that the atl-atl was used (spear thrower) and not a bow. Any "arrowhead" over 2 inches to about 6 inches in length was probably used for spears, hafted to bone handles for knives or a scraping tool. Some later points were fashioned from copper that was mined from copper veins in the Lake Superior region and elsewhere. Animal bone was also used for fabrication.

The oldest Arrow Heads found in North America are from the Paleo time period dating back 9,000 to 15,000 years ago. Some of the more famous types include Clovis, Folsom and Dalton points.^[1]

Types of Arrowheads have become more specified over the last 20 years. Greg Perino, a foremost researcher in identifying these types, began his categorical study of projectile point typology in the late 1950s. Collaborating with Robert Bell; Greg and Bell published a set of four volumes defining the known point types of that time. Greg was to follow several years later with his three-volume set of "Selected Preforms, Points and Knives of the North American Indians." These books represent a typological bedrock in our understanding of how projectile points changed through time and how they varied regionally. These books reside on the bookshelves of avocational and professional archaeologists alike.^[2]

References

See also

• Whittaker, John C. (1994). Flintknapping: making and understanding stone tools. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-79083-X. 
• Biface
• Elf-arrows
• Lithic reduction