Survivorship distributions in experimental spear points: Implications for tool design and assemblage formation

Abstract

How long points last is a performance attribute just as important as how well they fly and how deeply they penetrate targets. I analyze longevity data in a set of experimental North American Paleoindian Folsom spear-point replicas described by Hunzicker (Plains Anthropologist, 53:291–311, 2008) and previously analyzed for other purposes by Shott et al. (Lithic Technol, 32:203–217, 2007). My goal is to demonstrate the value, descriptively and analytically, of the evidence of longevity encoded in spear points and to consider how they can be estimated in archaeological assemblages. This is possible even though, unlike in experimental data, it cannot be observed or measured directly. At least dimly, results point the way toward the ability to estimate how long tools were used before they failed, how to estimate the distribution of this quantity for populations of points, and how to analyze such distributions.