In Search of the Origins of Distance Hunting—The Use and Misuse of Tip Cross-sectional Geometry of Wooden Spears

Abstract The origins of weapons, and subsequent innovations, constitute a significant focus of archaeological research, particularly for the Pleistocene period. Due to preservation challenges, inorganic components of early weapons, such as lithic points, are often the only artefacts to survive. As a result, archaeologists rely on proxies for understanding performance and function of these lasting components including experimental research and ethnographic comparison. Within these analogical frameworks, and alongside use-wear and fracture analysis, morphometrics constitute a key method in assessing whether a point is a weapon component. Early attempts to use the cross-sectional geometries of weapon points (or tips), making use of complete archaeological specimens and ethnographic weapons as reference datasets, suggested clear demarcations between different delivery modes. Yet, subsequent studies have shown that there are considerable overlaps. Recently, it was proposed that on the basis of tip geometries, the earliest complete weapons, Pleistocene wooden spears, are best matched to thrusting spear use. Here we demonstrate that there are measurement errors involved in this classification, and that furthermore there are overlaps between thrusting spears and javelins (throwing spears) that undermine the use of tip geometries to define spear delivery mode. If the correct methods are applied, archaeological wooden spear tip geometries would fit within both thrusting and javelin categories, meaning this is not methodologically useful at this time. We overview the available archaeological, experimental, and ethnographic evidence and propose that these currently support a hypothesis that the technological capacity for use of distance hunting weapons was in place from at least 300,000 years ago.