New experimental approaches on lithic projectile
macro wear analysis: a case study
Cinzia Loi (*), Vittorio Brizzi (**)
(*) Dipartimento di Storia, Università di Sassari
(**) Dipartimento di Biologia ed Evoluzione, Università di Ferrara - Paleoworking
Kewords: Use wear analysis, experimental archaeology, terminal ballistic, bow and arrow, impact
diagnostics, lithic projectile point.
Abstract
The academic interpretation of impact wear –use of lithic projectile points was conducted in the
past 30 years only by repeated shoots on carcasses or substitutive targets, at distance between 10 –
20 meters, and the subsequent diagnostic wear traces were confined in a restricted pattern. The
hunting practices are far from these conditions, because the post-shot phase is full of mechanical
interactions that will often leaves different wear traces on lithic points. It also happens in a very
short range of shooting, because the arrow vibrations during initial acceleration are substantially
different from a medium distance flight, and wear traces pattern shows many differences in
transversal snap fractures at the impact. Short rage shooting is the characteristic of some collective
hunting practices, as disadvantage and pursuit hunting. Authors have conducted experimentation
at short distances and collected data from real hunting situations. These data was useful to
speculate on behavioral hunting schemes and archeological remains, like the Neolithic obsidian
arrow points sample from the collection of Monte Santa Vittoria, (OR - Sardinia), examined on this
paper.
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