Bow and Arrow Technology in North America

Abstract The adoption and spread of bow and arrow technology in North America reflect a complex interplay of ecological and social factors: While environmental variables such as wood availability and prey diversity/behavior were surely important, demographic and cultural variables—including population size, density, and connectivity; cultural transmission processes; and social dynamics—were equally or more influential. Parsing the relative effects of these factors and understanding interactions among them requires a clear view of the timing and nature of bow use across North America’s diverse geography. This paper makes two primary contributions to our understanding of the bow’s adoption in North America. Firstly, we present evidence for the bow’s earliest appearance, use in conjunction with other projectile technologies, and effects on economic and other systems in the North American Arctic, Pacific Northwest and Plateau, California and the Great Basin, Southwest, and Southeast. Secondly, we present a novel model of technological investment (uptake) that considers the effects of transmission agents’ social roles: Whether agents are craft specialists or do-it-yourself tool producers–users affects rates of adoption, a finding with global implications demonstrated here through regional case studies. We conclude that adoption depends not just on the bow’s inherent utility but on how tools are produced, shared, used, and valued in different economic systems.