A Standardized Approach to the Origins of Lightweight-Javelin Hunting

Abstract

The tip cross-sectional area (TCSA) approach is a useful morphometric approach to hypothesise about variation in Stone Age/Palaeolithic weapon-assisted hunting. Lightweight-javelin tips were recently added to the original standardized ranges for stabbing-spear tips, spearthrower-dart tips, and arrow tips, making the method more suitable to hypothesise about variability in ancient stone-tipped hunting strategies. Here I explore aspects around the origins of lightweight-javelin hunting through TCSA analysis. I suggest that MIS 6 is the most likely timing of early lightweight-javelin hunting in southern Africa, and perhaps also in the Levant, and that subsequently this hunting behavior–used in tandem with stabbing spears–probably became increasingly widespread. I also predict that the earliest evidence for lightweight-javelin hunting may come from geographic regions that experience cyclic resource stress and where endurance running is habitual.