https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/102636/1/Milks%202020.pdf
Published on 9 Sep 2020
Abstract
Wooden spears are amongst the earliest weapons known
from the archaeological record, with broken and
complete examples known from Middle and Late
Pleistocene Eurasian, Australian and South American
sites. They were manufactured and used by multiple
species of Homo, including H. sapiens. This paper
comprises the first systematic review of ethnographic
data on the recent use of wooden spears for hunting
and human violence. It confronts the historical
racism underpinning the abuse of ethnographic data
on wooden spears, including associations between the
technology and the development of cognitive abilities
in human evolution. The review demonstrates that
wooden spears were used as thrusting and throwing
weapons by recent societies in North America, South
America, Africa, and Oceania, and continue to be used
today by children as training tools in hunter-gatherer
societies. Their use is recorded in a wide range of
climates and environments, using a variety of different
hunting strategies to target terrestrial and aquatic
prey. Whilst acknowledging limitations of ethnographic
datasets, Middle and early Late Pleistocene hominin
hunting is reconsidered, briefly overviewing wooden
spears in relation to the variety of climate and
ecological settings in which Pleistocene hominins
hunted, targeted prey, and the potential for delivery
methods and hunting strategies. The results underscore
the importance of systematic reviews when utilising
ethnography in interpreting archaeological evidence:
selective references in relation to the use of
wooden spears have overlooked additional examples
that point to a richness and variability of technology
and behaviour that is invisible in the Pleistocene
archaeological record.
"The Eurasian Pleistocene hominins who manufactured
and utilised the early examples of wooden spears
occupied a wide range of ecologies, climates, and
terrains, including densely forested regions in full
interglacials, coastal regions in both glacial and
interglacial periods, and open steppe and tundra
(e.g. Benito et al. 2016; Churchill 2014; Hosfield
2016; Roebroeks & Soressi 2016; Stewart et al. 2019).
Archaeological wooden spears and evidence of their
use have been found in a diversity of environments
including from warm, closed-canopy forested
environments (Gaudzinski-Windheuser et al. 2018),
and cool steppic, open woodland (Urban & Bigga 2015).
While on the one hand, non-analogue ecologies may
limit our ability to make direct comparisons between
the suitability of wooden spears during the
Pleistocene in relation to those made and used by
recent H. sapiens societies, the data in this paper
demonstrate a diversity of climates, ecologies, and
terrains in which wooden spears were utilised. The
representation of the use of this weapon in these
varied environments indirectly supports hypotheses
that wooden spear use could have played a role in
very early hunting and/or ‘power scavenging’ by
Early and Middle Pleistocene Homo, including in
Africa..."
"Examples of taxa exploited by hominins in the Eurasian
Middle Pleistocene include equids (Equus mosbachnesis,
Equus ferus sp.) cervids (Cervus elaphus, Praemegaceros
sp., Axis sp., Dama clactoniana, Rangifer tarandus,
Megaloceros sp.), suids (Sus scrofa), bovids (Bison
priscus, Bos primigenius, Ovis ammon antiqua, Bison
schoetensacki), hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius),
rhinoceros (Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis, Stephanorhinus
hemitoechus), bear (Ursus deningeri) and proboscideans
(Elephas [Palaeoloxodon] antiquus, Mammuthus sp.)..."
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