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ENCORE - Social media bifaces - Tea Break 5
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In this month's episode, Matilda chats with fellow podcaster and well-known YouTube anthropologist David Ian Howe all about ancient arrowheads. Probably everyone knows what an arrowhead is, but what's the story behind the use and development of arrowheads? And most importantly, what's the link between arrowheads and smartphones? Listen in to find out all this and more!
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Transcript
Introduction and Holiday Announcement
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hey, guys, it's David. I hope you're enjoying your holiday season. The APN is going to take a quick break for the holidays. My producers, Chris, Rachel and Ashley, it's kind of a thankless job sometimes. Editing is one thing, but getting everything uploaded and recorded and scheduled and all that is also quite a laborious task. Trust me, I do this for my other podcast and I've done this for my YouTube for a long time. It's a lot of work. I hate doing it. They do it for me on here. I love that. I love them.
Bonus Episodes and Favorite Interviews
00:00:29
Speaker
So you're gonna get two episodes that are not specifically posted and talked about by me. What I'm trying to say is you're getting two bonus episodes here that I have appeared on on A Life in Ruins and another on Tea Break Time Travel. The A Life in Ruins, you've probably heard before if you've listened to me, but the one with Tilly Zee Break on Tea Break Time Travel is actually one of my favorite interviews I've ever done. She asks great questions, knows what questions to ask, and he says she's also an archaeologist and
00:00:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's about stone tools and of course the Columbian Exchange because I'm like a nerd about that. So you're gonna get both those episodes. I don't know which one you're about to get right now, but we'll roll the dice. We'll see. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did and I will be back with you guys after the holidays. So enjoy.
Guest Introduction: David Ian Howe
00:01:11
Speaker
um You're listening to Tea Break Time Travel, where every month we look at a different archaeological object and take you on a journey into their past.
00:01:28
Speaker
It's time for our fifth expedition back in time, during this episode of Tea Break Time Travel. I'm your host, Matilda Zebrecht, and today's tea is a roast almond tea. Finally not a fruity tea, I seem to only be drinking fruity teas here.
00:01:45
Speaker
You're listening to Tea Break Time Travel, where every month we look at a different archaeological object and take you on a journey into their past. I'm your host, Matilda Ziebrecht. And joining me is David Ian Howe, who I guess you just got in because we've ah had to reschedule this a few times. But do you have a hot beverage there? Do you usually drink hot beverages? I do, actually. I don't normally drink them. But today I was like, I'm going to need some coffee. And yeah, now I have a... Perfect. It's fate. Yeah. but But so you're more a coffee guy than a tea guy then.
00:02:15
Speaker
Actually, I'm more of a tea guy than coffee, but any any amount of caffeine will just make me stay up for two days. So I like rarely drink it, but this morning was particularly like, okay, I'm going to need some coffee. Fair, fair. Yeah, no, I'm always interested in like seeing the difference between... either People are either like solid coffee drinkers or solid tea drinkers, but then you also have the black tea drinkers and the herbal... are you ah If you don't like caffeine, then are you more of an herbal tea? Yeah, like I like the cool like eccentric fruity teas and stuff that you get at the store. and They're perfect, right? I never used to know that that kind of tea existed. And then at some point, my brother-in-law bought me some, and it opened up a whole new world to me. It's amazing. so Yeah, like passion fruit tea. I'll go with that every day. Yeah, right. It's really nice. But I haven't had passion fruit. My one yesterday was kiwi and kiwi and strawberry, and that was also very nice. it was nice That sounds good. ah Very nice. Anyway, cool. Okay, but good coffee. That also works. ah Hopefully you don't fall asleep too much. ah Hopefully this is an interesting enough conversation that you don't need more coffee. yeah But yes, thank you so much for joining me today. And ah for those of you who don't know who you are, I doubt it because they'll probably know you far more than they know me at this point, but just in case.
00:03:24
Speaker
How did you get into archaeology? You are sort of an archaeologist by trade, I understand it. So how did that all start? How did
David's Archaeological Journey
00:03:32
Speaker
the interest start? Was it always there or were you one of these ones who came in later to the to the understanding of the past? I was always like I was into bugs as a kid and like picking up frogs and like zoology and Pokemon. And I would like name everything and take pictures of all the animals that I saw and like document them. But when I was like I guess mostly a kid like in school. I was really interested in history and I really was interested in like the Spanish colonization of the Americas, just like that that period of time was so fascinating to me, or I guess exploration in general. And then I realized when I took an anthropology class that
00:04:14
Speaker
What I was more interested in was like the culture clash between, you know, the Aztec and the Maya and the Spaniards and like, like how a stone age civilization meets like a gunpowder age civilization and how those interactions work. So in anthropology, I was like, Oh wow, it's like you can explore.
00:04:31
Speaker
human culture and then then i from there I got into like stone tools in my anthropology classes and then I went on a few digs and then that kind of evolved into the dog stuff that I do now because I also found the dog stuff fascinating but yeah stone tools is like my bread and butter.
00:04:47
Speaker
Yeah. And so that's nicer than now you can combine the love of sort of animals and the zooc zoo side zoology side with the archaeology works out. When you say name, by the way, do you mean like name is in like Harry Tom or do you mean is in like the scientific name?
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah. Like the scientific name, like I would look up like what kind of frog it was or, uh, this was like when it was still AOL, really slow internet. Yeah. I had, I made, I was obsessed with, well, I still kind of am with primates. When I was younger, I wanted to become a primatologist and I made like the whole family tree of the whole private family. I did this massive poster of it and learn all the scientific names and I used to know them all, but now I've forgotten everything. Do you still remember it once? Primates. I remember all the apes for sure.
00:05:31
Speaker
Oh, you even knew all of them. ah yeah Yeah, I like I like apes as well. But yeah, just random little things around the yard. Not all of them, but I know like, you know, coyote and deer and like all that.
00:05:42
Speaker
Yeah. No, nice. Cool. And so you you mentioned though that you got into a stone tools. So I mean, that's quite different. And even I guess the culture clash is sort of very different from the, because I have to say I got into archaeology because I was interested in zoology and that I was interested in kind of who human evolution and the kind of more, I guess, yeah, you call it scientific anthropology or that side of things rather than necessarily the culture side, um if that makes sense. But then your interest indeed was in more sort of cultural interactions. And I mean, Aztec, I have to admit, I don't really know much about American, arche South American archaeology, but how late were the Aztecs and the Spanish invasion or the colonization?
00:06:21
Speaker
Yeah. So the Maya were about like a thousand AD a little after that. So like I compared to like the crusades era and then the Aztec kind of rose to power in like the late 1500 or not like the early 1500s to like late 1500s. And that's like right when Cortez got there.
00:06:39
Speaker
Okay, which is always so interesting because like you say, they were a Stone Age society, but it it's funny to think that something that we think, and they had such complex society and such complex tools, but I still come from a European background and you think Stone Age, Neolithic. Okay, yeah, so we're thinking, you know, 5,000 BC or something, but no, they were really recent, which is...
00:06:59
Speaker
yeah And I tell a lot of people to just think of it as like a giant Neolithic city that just never ended like in Europe. They kind of ended in whatever 10,000, 8,000 years ago. And then now it's like, I guess like 5,000 years ago, but yeah, it's, um, it's pretty fascinating.
00:07:16
Speaker
Yeah, no, I'm always amazed. Like also how, what was it? There was a thing I was thinking, heard the other day and it was talking about like when Stonehenge was built and then looking at the empires that were happening in the Middle East at that time. And it's just so funny that at the same time period in different parts of the world, you have so many different things going on.
Time Travel Hypothetical Discussion
00:07:34
Speaker
Yeah. and In terms of like, yeah, I hate to use the word development because that makes it sound like it's a sort of evolution thing, but in terms of how complex societies are and and all of that.
00:07:43
Speaker
Yeah, the the spread of technology is kind of how I see it. Yeah, no, yeah interesting. Anyway, sorry, im random random get off-cut of this. Out of curiosity, I always ask this to everyone, if you could travel back in time to a time period, be it 1500, be it 5000 BC, where would you go and why? Oof, I didn't expect that one.
00:08:04
Speaker
is go to break time travel Let's see. I mean, my cop-out answer would be either at the height of the Roman Empire, either in Rome or Jerusalem, just to see all of those cultures coming through and like hear all the different languages.
00:08:21
Speaker
Yeah, I mean you'd see like Jesus going on too, but like there's just it's a big event at the time But like just how big the Empire was then and all that would be cool Yeah, that maybe being into nachitlan would have been kind of sick And I guess the third answer would be just to live in any hunter-gatherer society, pre-Neolithic, either in Europe or Asia or the Americas, just to see what that was like, because it was probably so vastly different than we imagined. I'm always intrigued at how different it would be, indeed, like how wrong we are. basically yeah everything would be interesting. I love how you mentioned like, you know, oh the whole Jesus thing going on. I wouldn't have even thought of that, but of course that would be such a political like travel um to yeah go back to, yeah, like zero BC in the Roman period or something. Yeah, it just to everything going on there would have been so neat. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. No, that's cool. I like as well how pretty much everyone has answered this question.
00:09:23
Speaker
similar to you to say, not necessarily like, Oh, I'd have gone back to this like amazing event. It would have been, Oh, go back and just see how people were living and what life was like. And yeah, like you say, what languages was spoken. And I like that. I think that that is, yeah. A nice way to think about the past indeed is something that's just happening and going on and constant. just Yeah. Cause like with, um, Clovis here, like our, I guess, Mesolithic paleolithic culture in the Americas, like we only have their tools. I guess we can get into this later too, but We don't know anything about like their like toys or their instruments or like what their clothing may have looked like. It could have been like extremely
Childhood in Archaeological Context
00:10:00
Speaker
elaborate, but all we have is the tools. So like it's just to the mind's imagination, like what they had.
00:10:05
Speaker
Yeah. Which, i well, I didn't realize that they didn't even have any like clothing or anything preserved. There's some beads and there's like, I think some elk teeth. That's a pretty throughout American history. There's just elk teeth dresses everywhere. But yeah, like they use them to make jinglers. Okay. But yeah, nothing like as elaborate as, you know, Chauvet or Let's Go that they left us.
00:10:27
Speaker
yeah no that's really and I like how you mentioned toys as well, i have to make because I've relatively recently had a baby. And it's funny, before that I must admit I never really thought much about you know toys. or kind of I tried to think about the archaeology of childhood, but it's such a ah complicated subject to get into.
00:10:44
Speaker
But then since having this and I just noticed, yeah, she just, you know, everything becomes a toy and she picks up all these things and how she interacts with the world. And it really makes me think like, wow, yeah, I really wonder what these how many of these objects, which we see as like ritual figurine things or something where just, you know, someone needed to give a child something to play with for a while.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah, like the Vogelherd horse was just like a chew toy or something. Yeah, right. It'd be really interesting to see. That would be good, like to do some sort of micro, micro wear analysis of it and see if it had been what had been chewed because people must have been teething. I mean, they were teething. Oh, that's a good question. ah Mackenzie Corey, the archaeologist here in the States, he does specifically the archaeology of childhood. I'm sure you'd probably love talking to him. yeah Oh, Mackenzie Corey. I'm writing that name down. I haven't heard of him. Yeah, he's great. Just such fascinating stuff. Like I never thought about like he finds on the plains like little doll houses or not doll houses, but like there's ah a wigwam or a teepee ring of stones that is clearly like the main dwelling. But then there's a small one near it, which was probably a child's little place to hang out and just looking for things like that. Yeah. Yeah.
00:11:53
Speaker
Well, and there's so many things as well that I didn't really think about even like, yeah, I'd bring it up, but like breastfeeding and you really need clothes that will allow easy access. And then you're looking at when a lot of these replicas of this women's clothing in the past, you're thinking, well, that wouldn't work. Like you wouldn't, you know, which I mean, sure, maybe people weren't feeding all the time, but still like you would think that design would allow that, to you know, if that makes sense. Anyway.
00:12:19
Speaker
Anyway, cool. As I say, thank you for joining me on my
Prehistoric Scenes and Tool Technology
00:12:22
Speaker
tea break. And before we look at but the themed object for today, we're going to journey back again in time to around 64,000 years to the site of Cebudu Cave in South Africa. So I'm going to set the scene. The rugged rocks of the cliff tower over the camp, which is spread throughout the cave entrance. Beds made from grasses and reeds are dotted around the edge of the open space. The remains of the fire from last night still smoke in the hearth. And nearby sits a figure bent over their task examining the edge of a small stone point.
00:12:49
Speaker
Pressure is applied, a tiny flake pops off, a satisfied grunt of approval, and the point is placed on a small pile next to the fireplace. Nearby, a collection of straight wooden sticks and some lumps of resin wait patiently for the next stage of the process. On the other side of the cave, another figure is carefully cutting up a large chunk of leg from the last hunt, but it won't be long until they need to venture out again, just as soon as the next batch is ready.
00:13:13
Speaker
So today we are looking at arrowheads or bow and arrow technology, I guess in general, and stone tools as a kind of expansion of that. And we'll get into the details soon. But first of all, I always like to look at the most asked questions on the internet courtesy of Google search autofill. So I basically typed in our arrows or where arrows and saw what came up. So the first one is our arrows reusable, which I guess makes sense because speaking as someone who's not very good with bow and arrow technology, you quite often shoot it and it ends up in the middle of nowhere. But how how often were arrows reused or how often do you think it would have been likely that something like that was happening? I love that introduction, by the way. That's great.
00:13:53
Speaker
I would say, yeah, for the most part, they're reusable. I mean, that's most composite tools are designed to be reusable, like atlatls and arrows for sure. and And like this is, I think throughout world culture and history, people would like put a specific color on their arrow, like specific, you know, fletching or feather.
00:14:15
Speaker
word Yeah, or like a specific point size or style, you know, ah so they know they got the shot. And like, when you go look for your arrow, it's like, oh, I got it. Okay. Oh, that's, I did not know that at all. And that seemed kind of everywhere. For the most part. Yeah. I know. That's like a lot of like military history. I think it's like mentioned in the, the Iliad or the Odyssey, one of them, maybe in Gilgamesh. I can't remember, but yeah, it's just like you just put a specific paint on your arrow. So, you know, it was yours. Um, in which case that to me means like the course they'd be reusing them. Yeah. because to fletch an arrow takes ah ah quite a long time. You can probably mass produce them really quick, especially like in the Neolithic or, you know, middle ages when you had specialized labor like that. But around a fire, as a hunter-gatherer, like it takes probably quite a bit of time to make them good and right. So you'd want them to be reusable.
00:15:10
Speaker
Yeah, no, that makes sense. And I like this idea of it being, do you think indeed it was the whole kind of, oh, I got the kill, or was it more, ah ah this is mine, I made it? Like how, how did they feel about personal property? That's never something I really considered. Do you have any views on that?
00:15:25
Speaker
It probably completely varies as a spectrum. Like you probably had one guy who was like, no, that was mine. Uh, but you probably had more people that were like, when you were all very skilled at it and like you wanted to know like, okay, I got the, I got the killing blow or like I missed and it was just so you could get better or just in general, just to collect data like, Oh, okay. That one's mine. I did it bragging rights.
00:15:47
Speaker
I can also just imagine a like, hunter gatherer, you know, there's a little scientist there with his little clipboard being like, all right, yes, so this time I was off by 5% of the ah projectile potential next time. do his more better than me But no, but it's always in like, because also I remember back in the day when I was doing my undergrad and one of the first things you learn about hunter-gatherer society is, you know, it's very egalitarian and everything's shared and all this style of thing. But ah yeah, indeed, kind of ownership of objects or knowing what was yours on differentiating, like that that must have been happening, I assume.
00:16:21
Speaker
Yeah. In a lot of like modern hunter gatherer cultures or even not even like hunter gatherer, just hunters in general, it's still like a tradition that like, if you got the shot, like you get the first like prime cut or in like some cultures, like you get to eat the, you know, testicles or the heart or the liver depending on like, and it's like a ritual thing. Okay.
Arrowhead Effectiveness and Ownership
00:16:44
Speaker
Yeah. Who, who has the the prestige or whatever to get the fancy bit of meat. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, that makes sense. Yeah.
00:16:53
Speaker
Okay, question number two was, were arrows effective? Which by this, I guess this refers to this idea. I think a lot of people find it very strange that, you know, you can use a stone axe to cut down a tree or you can, you know, do all these things. And I guess using stone tipped arrows, for example, or even bone tipped arrows and in earlier periods as well to hunt large beasts or everything. Everyone's always like, no, but that can't have been possible. I mean, were they effective?
00:17:17
Speaker
Yeah, there's even a study that says you can use, I was with the Miss Busters actually, um you can use a wooden arrow that's just sharpened and to shoot something and penetrate just as deep. okay However, an arrowhead cuts more and allows for more bleeding and gets in more effectively, whereas like a wooden one would just seal the hole and it doesn't bleed out as well, but you can shoot something.
00:17:44
Speaker
So for a long time, I guarantee people were doing that and then decided to put blades on the end of them. And yes, they are quite effective. And I just think of it as this too. Like I have my whole life I've done our tree.
00:17:59
Speaker
and I've had like kids bows or like practice bows and stuff and like you still are very much told do not point this at anybody kind of thing and like even if it was a tiny little draw weight bow like it can still do damage especially if you hit someone's eye or you know not a very hard part of the body so going up against the bison you got to be really good at it but Yeah, if there's six of you shooting something and you all have a sharp end on something that is traveling at a relatively high velocity, it's going to do some damage. I think I saw you'd recently participated in ah some sort of study that was looking indeed at the velocity of it. Was it at lattles you were looking at? Yeah. Yeah. A paper came out saying that
00:18:42
Speaker
It was probably impossible for paleoindians to have hunted mammoths with their atlatl technology, which I normally don't try to go into biased or be biased on studies, but I find that kind of absurd. So we like, uh, tested that out and like on the third throw is it already like prove their paper wrong. So that's kind of cool. Awesome. Yeah. Cool. Will that also be released as a paper in the future? Yeah. Devin's working on it right now and yeah, I'm working on some pictures and data for it.
00:19:08
Speaker
Oh, nice. Sounds good. So indeed you mentioned that potentially initially it was more sort of sharpened bits of wood or or bone or anything. And then they were touching blades. So the next question is how were arrowheads attached to arrows? Yeah. The easiest way would be you just cut a groove and just kind of push it in there until it sticks. But that's not the most effective. What you want to do is then add sinew or pitch or both.
00:19:33
Speaker
And pine pitch is just tree sap, either rabbit or turtle poop, and um charcoal. Just those two or? For whatever reason, turtle poop is like the Maya and the Aztec specifically wrote about how it's like the most adhesive binding substance. Wow. Yeah. So interesting. It must be that the seaweed or something. I don't know what turtles eat. The environment. Interesting. Or I guess they weren't eating sea turtles. They're probably eating like box turtles, but Yeah. Rabbit dung works too. And you you melt that all together and it makes like a very, very sticky substance. And you heat it up kind of like wax and you put it around and you essentially just hot glue the arrowhead into the wood. And then you wrap sinew, which is usually deer backstrap and you chew on it so it gets wet and like kind of stringy. And then you wrap it around the arrow. And when all of that dries, it like shrinks up and it it does not move.
00:20:31
Speaker
Okay. And you've, have you I assume you've tried this. Sounds like you have experience with it. Yes. I tried cooking pine pitch in my kitchen in grad school. and My roommate was not thrilled about it. With turtle poop or? Rabbit poop that I found outside. Oh, he was with poop. Yeah. Because I found rabbit poop and I was like, oh, I'm going to make pitch. I how that's indeed one of the first things that you know. It's also anyone listening who's thinking of sharing like a flat or something with an archaeologist, you know, and think about the potential issues. like cooked it in they ah Like I cut a beer can in half too, that was my favorite part. Scripted in that. Modern experimental archaeology, using the authentic methods.
00:21:17
Speaker
ah I actually cooked, ah I had a seal skull that I needed to be flesh and I just cooked it in my casserole pot on my stove and at some point the smell was horrendous. That is like just a Tuesday for us and most people would be like, what?
00:21:32
Speaker
yeah yeah I can actually remember speaking about atlatls and projectiles. I can remember the first time I learned to use an atlatl was in my like experimental archaeology class at uni.
Atlatl vs. Bow: Technology and History
00:21:41
Speaker
and We just went into the local park and someone had done like a cutout of a mammoth and we had to throw it at them. and At the time, I was like, this is awesome. This is really cool, but I didn't really think anything of it. Looking back, I'm like, we were throwing atlatls in like a park where people were walking their dogs and they must have been looking at us like, what the hell are you doing?
00:21:59
Speaker
And going back home indeed to my friend who was doing law, and you know she was saying, oh we had this seminar about you know this case, and that it I was like, oh we we were throwing spears in the park. That's um something I find so interesting as well, is like stone tools in general, but at Lattles for sure are arguably older than the bow and arrow.
00:22:18
Speaker
hi they I was going to ask for that later. Yeah. So, okay. And we find evidence of that, of that lattles because my, well, cause my thoughts were, because usually it lattles are made out of something organic, right? So I didn't think they would survive as well. Like when you walk by the park and you see people throwing at lattles or like,
00:22:35
Speaker
When I show students at Lattles or things like that, like it's just such a foreign technology to them because they never see them or haven't heard of them. But like they're a probably 100,000 year old technology that like we've just forgotten about that everyone used.
00:22:52
Speaker
And when we got to, or not, we, like like when the Europeans arrived in the Americas, we called it the atlat, which is how you say atlatl, because that was the nahuatl or the Aztec word for it, um which is such an ironic thing to me because we definitely have atlatls in ancient Spain really and we don't have a word for them because they just completely fell out of use with the bow.
00:23:17
Speaker
Because the last question that came up about on the Google search was, are arrowheads worth money? Which I interpreted as meaning like archaeological arrowheads that are found on the ground. And I want to get into this a bit more later as well. But I'm curious whether, indeed, in especially like in North America, is it quite common for arrowheads to be like ancient arrowheads or you know archaeological arrowheads to be just sold as general objects?
00:23:44
Speaker
Unfortunately, yes. Arrowheads are a huge, and this is where it's like putting things into socially constructed categories always gets confusing because they're usually at-lateral darts or knives. But how do we know there's nothing attached to it? Anyway, that's my whole thesis. but That's good because I have lots of questions about that. Awesome.
00:24:05
Speaker
But yeah, you'll always see it a flea market someone who's like genuine error heads and like they have like something to sell or Oftentimes though, it's somebody who's napped them and they sell them as like genuine quote Indian airheads unquote, and like, like, you know, my mom would be like, oh, I just found this guy. He had a bunch of artifacts and like would buy them for me. She didn't know any better. But like I meant well because I was like pretending to be legless in the backyard all the time. But yes, there is apparently there's a very large black market artifact trade here. I don't really tap into it or no, but it's definitely a thing. And it it gets sticky because I know probably you're in Germany right now, right? Yes. Yeah.
00:24:49
Speaker
I'm not sure how the public land thing works there, but here. I don't know either here. I know in the UK, but yeah. Okay. Um, yeah, the UK, it's quite similar, but here you have federal land, state land, and then private land and federal land could be either be the forest service because we would just have vast swaths of forest that still are like wild BLM land is just big open desert usually. And then state parks and stuff like that. And national parks are all federal or state parks or state federal parks or national parks and stuff. Anyway,
00:25:22
Speaker
On those lands, you are legally not allowed to collect any antiquities because it is private land and is protected by indigenous laws. But like the state of Texas, as big as it is, is mostly private land, not public land. So people can own like acres of land and they have just thousands of arrowheads on their property.
00:25:44
Speaker
and they'll collect them all and put them into like a little coffee tin and like or display them on their mantles and stuff and show people. in state Yeah, it creates this sticky cultural situation because as an anthropologist, you want to be objective and like you're in their house, you want to respect their customs and you're like, I know for a fact that's just like you've looted that out of a yeah huge site. But it's their land, it's their property, they do own it and like it just hurts me to know like that all that context is lost.
00:26:15
Speaker
Exactly. Well, and you think so many, I mean, how many also objects, I can remember in the UK, there's these, I don't know if you know them, they're like carved stone balls um from Scotland. Oh yeah. They're just these really like enigmatic objects. No one knows what they were used for. And at some point one was sold for like a ridiculous amount of money by, and it was bought by like the museum. And then suddenly,
00:26:35
Speaker
Well, these other ones appeared like seeing as it was then sold for that much money, which, that you know, you're then like, oh how many other objects are just that we don't know about ah just sitting somewhere that could, you know, provide the vital like you could maybe someone has a full set of clothes from the Clovis people, you know, and they're just keeping it on their shelf or something.
00:26:54
Speaker
That is a great answer or question, actually, because if you're going through the back catalog, you'll get to an episode of Ruins where we interview a guy from Brian Schroeder from Texas. And he is the state archaeologist and he's dealing with a woman who has a mummy that they found on her property. Her grandparents found it. And at this point, she built like a little fake cave for it in her house and like the remains stay in that.
00:27:23
Speaker
And she feels that she is responsible for taking care of this thing because her grandfather gave it to her. But like the indigenous people are like, uh-uh, that's ours. But like it's this weird cultural thing where like this woman genuinely believes like she's doing a good thing. And like if she gave it to a museum, it would just sit in a box and like it wouldn't be as loved. And it's just such a fascinating conversation, but also just so sad. Yeah, I mean that is true. I mean I guess in that case it's it's even more tricky because like you say they have the Indigenous group who are involved and then it gets even more complicated with sort of the the heritage in that respect. But like I also wonder sometimes about you know these objects that are like put in museums. I mean I have so many replicas of things.
00:28:05
Speaker
And it's so fun to, you know, play with them and things. And there's all these studies I know that have been done about like, whether audiences know if it's a replica or not, you know, like if museums were to just have replicas of things in order to share the knowledge, because I mean, that's how museums started, right? Was kind of to share all these different cultures with other people and, you know, all of this kind of stuff. So, you know, why does it have to be the original ones? Why can't those go to, indeed, like you say, people who will love them, you know? and yeah that so Yeah, it's sticky. Yeah, it's complicated. Although, saying that, so we've sort of diverged now from the from the Google questions a little bit, but I did want to talk about this a little bit, because I imagine that something like arrowheads are probably one of the commonest objects found all over the place, really.
What to Do When You Find an Arrowhead
00:28:48
Speaker
Although, as you say, whether or not they're arrowheads is another question. We'll get to that in a second. But I mean, if, for example, someone were to find an arrowhead, and is listening now and thinking, but I have these. I have my my tin on the mantelpiece. you know What am I supposed to do with them then? What what are they supposed to do? I think in ah definitely in England or I guess the UK, like a metal metal headling what is it call metal detecting is a big thing and you're looking for like coins and you know because you get so much history over there. People do that here, but our coins only go back 400 years and like not really until about 1800s do they really pick up in the record. but
00:29:25
Speaker
We are coins, our arrowheads here. And like it's a family tradition, kind of like Easter egg hunting to just go out on land and like look for arrowheads or like farmers will like till the land, like with a, you know, just pull up the plowed zone and then arrowheads will just come out or like after rain, some of them will just wash out. Yeah. And I never grew up, I mean, I grew up in like the New York city area, so I never like, it was just concrete where I lived. No, you never plowed the paper, the paper arrowheads. Weird, weird. Tried. Yeah, it's just such a tradition and a lot of people get into archaeology because of that. So to me, it's not the worst thing because it does get people interested in the past. However, if it's on public land and public land, which people still do collect it on, that's a legitimate oof. But then there's the other issue too. This was my friend's thesis.
00:30:18
Speaker
private land is usually the good land that has good tillable soil that's near water that is like pristine looking and that's where the sites would be because people wanted that same spot so they on private land have so much archaeology that they're just like plowing through that yeah do So I know that in the UK, for example, there's the treasure trove that then you can hand it in, but unless it's like ah an artifact of extreme cultural import or something, you usually get it back. Or you'll get the financial reimbursement for it kind of thing, depending on what it is. um The exact details I don't know. So anyone listening from the UK don't like stormy with other things being like, I didn't get paid for my little thing that I found. But I think that's the the general process.
00:31:03
Speaker
Some people try to bring them to museums and they're like, I found this on my property. And it's like you're in Tennessee and you found an obsidian projectile point. I doubt it. You bought it at a flea market or you flint napped it and you're trying to pull it fast. I've had that done so many times okay because they want you to buy it. But like most people have this idea that museums just buy antiquities and it's So a lot of like working as a collections manager for years, like a lot of it comes from someone's family who like the grandfather died or their father died and they have this big collection at the estate sale and they're like, I don't know what to do with it. So they just drop it off at a museum or the university and you get these big donated collections that have zero context, but they have such beautiful, beautiful projectile points and like beads and pipes and stuff. One time we found a mandible and that was a, that was an issue. wow yeah
00:31:59
Speaker
yeah or a mala sorry oh good yeah went no no if we don't want this one take this one back can you Can you show me what you found? But yeah, no, okay, okay, but that's interesting. Because yeah, indeed I also get a lot of people who say like, oh, but you know, I found this ah important thing or there was even the, yeah, ah sure, I'm going to say it. I thought I wouldn't say this, but I don't know if you saw the mammoth graveyard. It's like a new David Attenborough show that came out recently about this big site now in the UK. It's very cool. You should definitely check it out. And basically this couple had found like a Neanderthal, what was it? I can't remember. I think it was a hand axe, Neanderthal hand axe.
00:32:39
Speaker
And but they didn't realize what it was until at some point they had like showed it to someone or something. But they'd had it in their possession for ages because they like hunt for fossils and they find, you know, artifacts and all this kind of stuff. And like they used it to cut their wedding cake and, and this kind of thing. And I'm there as a microware analyst being like, oh,
00:33:00
Speaker
yeah trace is a row and and it's ah Yeah, it's one of those things I'm always saying to people like, if you find something, maybe you can keep it, but first take like, you know, nice pictures of it and show it to someone who's an expert in it so that they know how to deal with it. But yeah yeah, wow. That's so interesting too, because if it's cutting a cake, it's got dairy in it. So it would raster his cow fat when You do the analysis. Right? Like, can you imagine? So, I mean, yeah, they got to keep the thing, but it was just, yeah, when they were talking about it and they were very sweet and they were so proud and, you know, they were really involved with the excavation and everything. So it led to some really cool research project being done. But still, I was there just cringing, going like, oh, no this isn't what you do. You don't use it to cut your wedding cake anyway. Oh, yeah. yeah
00:33:45
Speaker
So moving a bit more into your, nowhere near at the end of the episode, moving to your level of expertise, ah your your region of expertise in this. So indeed you did arrowhead technology, if I'm correct. And you already mentioned a little bit this idea, and I find that really interesting, but you know, how do we know it's actually from an arrow? Because I guess usually indeed you just have the arrowhead. You don't really have the rest of the arrow, and apart from very special cases. So what are the yeah the criteria or how how do we deal with that issue?
00:34:13
Speaker
So that's the gist of my thesis. I mean, there's a lot of factors that went into it. But yes, it like you find so many points that like people are just like, oh, this is an arrowhead. But then you also have ones that are clearly at laddled darts. They're too big to be fired from arrows. And there's been a lot of studies that like tried this statistically or ethnographically trace like what the cutoff point for an arrowhead versus an atladdle is.
00:34:40
Speaker
And much like anything in anthropology, it is a very fluid spectrum. Yeah. It's tough to say if they're very small, like we can say, okay, that's an arrowhead, like it's not going to work on the end of an atlatl, but even arrowheads, like you can make them big. And when you say big, what kind of size do you mean? Like I'm not talking like a neolithic like sword or like, you know, big long, or like a, like a chopper, like the Neanderthal ax you were talking about, but definitely like, you know, uh, palm sized arrowhead is usually an atlatl dart. Um, and that one that's like a fingertip size is definitely an arrowhead to me. Okay. Okay.
00:35:20
Speaker
So yeah, my my thesis, like getting too into it was just like shooting a spectrum of sizes of arrowheads or projectile points from a bow and seeing how well they performed and wanting to know like, okay, there's probably one that's just too big to work. And like the one that's too big to work, we can then say is like, all right, this is anything past that is an arrowhead size or a net level dart size. And what I found was like you can shoot all sizes with a bow ah pretty accurately and they still penetrate. So it's literally who's to say at this point, like you can't tell. But I still like have a firm belief that like if it is as small as your finger, maybe
00:36:04
Speaker
From like your palm down to your finger size, I would say it is an arrowhead. But like Clovis people and Paleoindem people used to very large points, so we can definitely say those were Owlettles. Okay. And I mean, what makes an arrowhead? Like what are the defining characteristics of an arrowhead?
Cultural Significance of Arrowhead Styles
00:36:20
Speaker
Are there any, or is that also really buried? If it, I'm trying to think if there's a, if it fits, it ships for arrowheads, but if it hits, it sticks. I don't know. but If it works, it works. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That'll do that. Okay. Yeah. So there are no, because I very briefly looked things up and I've never really looked into stone technology that much and definitely not arrowheads, but I mean, it seems that there's ones with like the shoulders. There's ones that are just points. There's ones that are like heart shaped. And is that variation dependent on like time period or region or use or a bit of everything? A simple question, but it's such a complex answer. That's what I do. yeah and I like it. I'm also loving the show, by the way. Thank you. I think of it like, like our iPhones are our, our bi-faces today. Like we always have some kind of bi-face on us. That's such a nice idea.
00:37:12
Speaker
Yeah. And it's the exact size of a functioning by face normally that you can fit in your pocket. And like before it was pocket knives or, you know, whatever, but we still have those as well. But your phone, everyone has a different colored iPhone. They add a different case to it, or they have like a Google pixel. They have a Huawei phone. Huawei? I've never heard of that, but yes. Okay. I think it's the Chinese company. Ah, right. Yeah. It's very bad with modern technologies. Very good.
00:37:39
Speaker
But yeah, everyone's is so varied and different and right now I think I have the iPhone 13 that they're on now. who fan The three cameras on the back and like right now though people are still using ones that have the two cameras on the back and I was hanging out with a friend the other day who had a Google Pixel which is this completely different phone.
00:38:01
Speaker
If you were to look at those archeologically in the future, you'd be like, okay, these are both social media bifaces, but like what which one is like more effective? which one like Is it just style? Is it function? So to get back to your arrowhead question, think about the phones we had 30 years ago, the big corded phones you had to hold on the kitchen. like Those look vastly different than an iPhone, but they both serve the same function.
00:38:28
Speaker
Yeah. And it's only 30 years time difference. And like, there's so many different colors and variations of them. So when you're looking at, let's say archaic Tennessee, 8,000 years ago, where I'm sitting right now, they used a specific kind of point, but also it could vary. Like they didn't put notches in it. Maybe they put notches in it. Overall, they put the same notches in it because it's the same like your father's teaching her to do it, or your mother's teaching her to do it, and you're gonna make it the same way. But everyone puts their own spin on it, or they might want a different color. And then we pick it up and we're like, oh, well, the people here definitely use this. This is their technology for a thousand years. And it's, eh, well, like, is it? And then like, ah, it's just so intriguing to me because it all comes down to personal preference, but then you gotta get into the spiritual, like, animistic side of it. It's like, okay, maybe it had to be this specific way because that's like,
00:39:20
Speaker
There was a a ritual thing to it, like making the notches was like blessing the hunt or something. Like we we have no idea. Yeah. I love that idea, though, indeed, that it's almost like a fashion thing, like, you know, having the different arrowheads, like someone will be going like, oh, you have the, you know, you have the new iPhone 13. Oh, you have the new, like, double notched style or whatever. Like, you you go go that route. Like, i I really wonder now whether people were sort of, you know, oh, he's so old school, he has the, you know, the
00:39:51
Speaker
double whatever bi-face or something instead of this. like that's i don't know I'm now trying to think if I've read any studies on that. I guess there have been ones in sort of later periods, but in terms of like hunter-gatherer societies, I'm trying to think if I've read anything about that. Do you know of any any studies about that or that style?
00:40:06
Speaker
I mean, it it goes back to what I said earlier, like with marking which arrow is yours, like you may have made a different projectile point to say that it's yours. And it's definitely group identification because like we find today, the only thing that preserves is the stone really. And like, even if you were, say I was hunting here in Nashville, 8,000 years ago, somebody who lived, let's say 7,999 years ago,
00:40:34
Speaker
will find an arrowhead in the ground and be like, oh, this is not mine. Someone was here before me and they use their points this way. So it's like a, you can see somebody else was there and, but essentially like, okay, the Cherokee once walked through here because this is their point. And like another tribe would have been like, okay, so this is Cherokee territory. And I guarantee that was part of it because it's the only thing that preserves still.
00:41:00
Speaker
Yeah. So like identification, but also kind of personal style, but also a little bit of like taboo and ritual ritual. I use that in inverted commas, but yeah. Um, as well. Yeah, no, that's really fascinating. I love that idea. Indeed. that Yeah. We have all these categorizations of everything of all the different materials and like all the different arrowhead points and stuff, but in the end, maybe those are also completely off. They were used for different. Those styles are because of different things or because of different reasons.
00:41:25
Speaker
Yeah, a really cool example would be Cumberland points. They are a Paleo-Indian point that are very specific to the Cumberland River which borders Tennessee and Kentucky and they're only found here and they're like the most complex stone tool I've ever seen. They have like a beautiful flute running up the whole point and they're like got like a They look like a fish. it's really It's really neat. Very thin fish. And it's like such a risky point to make because when you take that flute off, you could just snap it in half and it takes a long time to get there. But it's a very regionally distinct paleoindian point that only appears here. And it's like, is it fish shaped because it was along the river? Probably not. They just thought it was functional. But also it's like,
00:42:10
Speaker
Paleoindians moved across the continent so fast. The ones that settled in the Tennessee area hunting here stayed there long enough that they developed their own specific style. And it might have just been one person who was like, bro, check this out. And it changed that way. Or it was like a specific, like very spiritual thing. And i we have no idea. That's cool.
00:42:31
Speaker
which, you know, that's it the end of the day, I guess. that's so i agree I feel really sorry for people listening to this podcast because a lot of my guests have said very similar things in like, well, but at the end of the day, who knows? And it's like, yep, cool. That's the message of archaeology. I guess it's like, we won't know. And like,
00:42:47
Speaker
I always want to be as as as respectful of indigenous belief as possible, but on a level like we're all humans and we're all primates and we do very similar things and like drawing like you know phallic objects into cave art and stuff like that is always going to be funny. It's just like I think it was all over Rome, it was all over it and people would like talk about, I mean not to get into this on the podcast, but you know like somebody wrote graffiti that was just clearly a joke yeah and like people have always done that and
00:43:21
Speaker
whether or not there was a spiritual purpose to making a point a specific way. I think humans have always just been like, I border always more on the bro, check this out, like a new invention, or it's just like, ah well, I'm going to make mine this way. Cause people are just persnickety that way. yeah And I'm not persnickety. How would I say like idiosyncratic? And that probably is what starts trends. And that's literally how tick tock works right now. Like somebody makes a joke and that becomes a trending sound. It's so fascinating to see.
00:43:50
Speaker
but So you're saying arrowheads are basically, uh, you hunt together a paleo window and TikTok. Yeah. Cool. I like this. I like all the analogies we're making today and with modern technology. It's my job.
00:44:04
Speaker
So you briefly mentioned as well the idea of arrowheads as like composite technologies, and obviously we mainly just find the arrowheads. What would be like, I mean, that you just you described already how to make it, but do you think then, I mean, this is always ah an issue, I guess, when looking at any kind of technology in the past, that idea of kind of skill and understanding. I mean, could anyone have made arrowheads or would it have been a specific job, do you think? Not job, but like a couple of different people would have been better at it.
00:44:33
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I mean, it's complicated. It's not complicated, right? There's overall the general trend of human society. It seems that men do most of the hunting, but they also do a lot of gathering. Whereas like, at least in like the hunter gather research that we learned in in grad school, women tend to do more gathering because it's more stable and you can carry your children with it. You don't have to bring them three weeks on a hunt. And like in that sense, in that traditional sense, we look at the past as like, oh, they were just shirtless male hunters throwing things at mammoths. And it's like, actually, no, like, you know, women were making traps. They were attaining all the hides. They were doing all this stuff while the guys were like, hopefully coming back three weeks later with the bison. So it's like,
00:45:19
Speaker
In my opinion, like women did probably most of the work of survival, just like keeping everything in check, doing all that. I mean, still are, really. i mean Exactly. Yeah. So they probably were making points, too. like They were probably flint knapping in their downtime. And like maybe when the men got back, they flint knapped, or it was only a male thing. But in my opinion, working with Stone Tools and like meeting, I guess, professional cavemen now is my new group I'm in.
00:45:48
Speaker
At the end of the day, everybody has to know how to make fire. Everybody has to know how to flint nap or else you're going to die yeah because if you were stranded somewhere, you need to know how to make a cutting implement. Even if it's just a flake, you don't need to make ah a Clovis point or like a Neolithic hand axe or what is it? A Danish flint knife. Those things are really cool. Everybody needs to know how to do it. And I think in every society, men and women both did it.
00:46:11
Speaker
it's talking about also the the idea of sort of composite technology because I guess also that idea if they're taking like arrows out with them on a hunt for example if they're gone for a couple of weeks and you break an arrow or something and you need to kind of whip one up I guess you would have to if you're a hunter you have to also be able to make the tools I suppose.
Composite Technology in Prehistoric Tools
00:46:27
Speaker
Yeah. And like rifling is the technical term, but replaceable parts. And which is, I think, uh, think about why it's called a rifle. Um, but, um, yeah, like, uh, like an at-lateral is a socketed composite tool. So like you have the whole at-lateral, but you drill a hole in the end where you can put a foreshaft that has the point attached to it and do it. So like it just pops in and you can switch out the point sizes depending on what you're hunting or.
00:46:54
Speaker
When, like, I always think of it this way too, like you could throw your atlatl into something with a rope on it and then yank the rope out and the socket comes out with the point still stuck in the animal so that you can, they can reel it back. and So I think mobile hunter gatherers probably had some kind of bandolier, the bunch of those points on them, like around their chest, like Chewbacca.
00:47:15
Speaker
or had them in like, I mean, that's just, I would love to see that, but at least in a bag on their side. And if you lost those or they broke, you had to be able to make one really quickly. And people usually did carry a bye face and maybe like in a little backpack or a pouch with them, like two big, good pieces of um like a spalled piece of chert or flint to make something out of expediently. So everybody needed to know how to do that, I think.
00:47:43
Speaker
no No, I just love this. It's so funny. i I mean, I really love looking at technology in the past. I'm an artifact analyst and everything, but talking to you today, I now really have this vision of people, you know, like you say, it's like the mobile phone, it's like this, it's like having a rifle. It's like, and you just, it's, it gives such a different impression of, of kind of how people saw their objects. Cause I feel like a lot of people in the modern day see sort of stone age, so to speak, um tools or sort of stone, stone technology as something that was a lot more, yeah, I don't know how to explain it, like less.
00:48:14
Speaker
everyday, if that makes sense, because to us it's so cool and it's so different. But yeah it' it in't yeah, this is probably an unrelated thing, but it's just to me, I'm just sort of now thinking about it now, like you say, with the bandolier and everything, like it's just such a cool idea that it's like, oh yeah, cool, look check out my new, this axe that I made today, or you know this this arrow I made today. It gives such a different impression to me at least, maybe that's just me.
00:48:34
Speaker
Yeah. And once I learned that thing about like not necessarily the division of labor, but like just thinking about how much stuff like was done at camp, like you have to make those hide tanning racks. You have to have like vats to but like so soak the skins in the tannins to make them tenable rabbit traps. You got to make fire pits. You got to make fires like wood storage somewhere, like ah just so many logistical things at camp. but That involves so much technology and then like your dwellings, depending on where you are or your beds. I think probably things were a lot of hammocks that most times if it was a wooded area and like everything that's in your room right now or in your house, there was some version of that in the past in some way, depending on where you lived, because like it's all simple technologies. Like I'm looking at a lamp right now. They had lamps. yeah I'm at my computer right now, which they clearly didn't have, but they had but sitting around a fire talking and learning.
00:49:33
Speaker
Yeah. And I'm looking at my cricket machine right now that I used to cut stencils, but like, thus I guess somebody would have been flint knapping or making art or something like that. It's just, it's all there and I'm going on a tangent, but just, it just makes my mind wander. Like what little cool tools and stuff they had that just did not survive the record. Yeah. Or sitting on someone's, you know, shelf somewhere and we just haven't seen them. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's.
00:50:00
Speaker
And I guess the last point to that would be like, and I think I already said it, but we usually get an impression of the past, especially with like paintings and, you know, movies that it is shirtless male carnivorous hunters. And that's all prehistory was, but it's like,
00:50:19
Speaker
It's so much more than that. And like, yeah, there's just endless stuff. Like I think more about the complex like tools and stuff they're using around camp and like the stories are telling and dances and like, were they, were they deer cult? Were they wolf cult? Like did they believe they had kinship with bicep? Just so much stuff. Yeah. Or even even less kind of spiritual thing, like we spoke already about children and stuff, and I think that's also something right that hasn't often been considered in archaeology, and it's a growing field now. But you know what anyone who has a child or who's who got family with a child knows that they very quickly become the kind of center of you know your world. and it's yeah so it's But it's a thing that is not often considered, I think, when looking as well at technology or at interactions in the past too.
00:51:02
Speaker
Sure. And like with the infant mortality rate and how much, I think it was like 50% of women died in childbirth or something like that until 1980. So like, I'm not sure when, but probably pre eight like with civil war, but or say 1800s for you guys over there. But Yeah, like childhood must have been such a cherished and like revered thing because you had to make sure those children survived because there was a very high chance they wouldn't. So like, I'm sure children had a very high status in society or not high status, but they were very much so I guess. yeah Yes, they had the emphasis was on them. Yeah, no, no it's a it's fascinating subject. I feel I need one to get more into it. But anyway,
00:51:45
Speaker
Cool. um I had ah one more question just about archery, actually. um You mentioned that you ah have done archery a lot in your time, so in terms of the actual like technique required to do, I mean i imagine that bows are also something that don't really survive in the archaeological record, or do we have some nice examples of of kind of Paleo-Indian or or other areas of the world, ancient, shall we say, bows?
00:52:11
Speaker
Yes, a bow. Uh, there's been a few found in like bogs. Uh, and like the earliest bow we have is in Germany and still more Germany in a bog about 11,000 years old, I think. And then especially out West, we find a lot here, like preserved in caves. The string is still not attached, obviously, but like it's, it's a bow for sure. Okay. That's cool. And does that, continue to can you imply about like the, the, the different techniques that would have been used, et cetera, as well?
00:52:39
Speaker
for archery? For archery, because I'm just trying to think of i mean you know like the the Mongolian horse riding. Archery style is then very different from like the English combo style, and you know of that kind of thing.
00:52:51
Speaker
Yeah, bows definitely get smaller when the horse is introduced here or reintroduced because you can't fire like an English long bow from the back of a horse. It has to be a small handheld thing. Yeah. But we can imply that they, you can, you can tell based on the length and the thickness of the wood, like what poundage like it had, like when you pulled back on it, like, and how heavy, like what game it was probably hunting and stuff. Oh, that's very cool that you can tell that much. And you mentioned very briefly the idea of sort of skill, I guess, in archery and and and that side of thing. I mean, how was the research about that? i don't I know nothing about that field.
00:53:26
Speaker
Yeah, so my friend Bridget Grund, or Dr. Bridget Grund, did her dissertation on researching atlatl or atlatlists like around the world, like at the world atlatl championship and archery championships. Oh yeah.
Archery Skills and Learning Curves
00:53:40
Speaker
That's awesome. I didn't know how to exist. Yeah, it's pretty cool very cool. And people are really good. It's it's wild. Wow.
00:53:48
Speaker
But she found with her research, like ethnographic, archaeological, and modern ethnographic, it is far easier to learn to use an atlatl, like just to pick it up and throw it than it is a bow, because a bow is kind of a complex, like it's it's very hard to figure out at first, especially a a traditional bow.
00:54:08
Speaker
But it takes a lot longer to get good with an atlatl, even though it's easy to learn. But it's very much more quicker, like vastly quicker to get good with a bow and arrow once you figure out the technology. Yeah. And like, um she did like a bunch of like gender studies, like who uses what bow or, you know, technology more. I can't remember what the answers were on that. but Yeah, it it's just once the bow came about, it replaced the atlatl everywhere, because even though it's harder to learn, it's just way more efficient. Interesting. No, that's really cool. And I guess I'm trying to think, I mean, I'm just thinking of like the, you know, those dog ball throwing things, because I guess that's my brother the ch closest we have to an atlatl these days, um but in in that sort of sense. But yeah, I suppose it is more indeed like throwing. So I guess if you could throw then,
00:54:59
Speaker
you can sort of use an atlatl, but yeah, like improving your throwing technique takes time, I guess. It does. And we can see in the record, I know we're going to wrap up soon, but like with Mungo Man in Australia, you can see that he had atlatl elbow, which is like and also yeah an ossification that happens on your I believe you're radius, not you're humorous. Like in the joint area on your elbow, that like shows that there's micro traumas to it from throwing the, like a pitcher in baseball. Like they throw out their elbows a lot. Yeah. yeah And you can see that even though there were no at-lattles or points found with him, that you can tell that he was throwing an at-lattle about 60,000 years ago, 50,000 years ago.
Evidence of Atlatl Use in Ancient Times
00:55:40
Speaker
So cool. Oh, so nice to get little snapshots into the lives of people.
00:55:45
Speaker
and in such interesting ways, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, really cool. Well, unfortunately, I think we should probably wrap this up indeed. and We've had quite a long tea break so far. But thank you very, very much for joining me. And I hope that you enjoyed it. I definitely learned a lot about Arrowheads. So, yeah, thank you. I just want to say I've been on a lot of podcasts and this is by far one of my top favorite ones I've been on. You're very good at it. Thank you. I appreciate it. It's really sweet. Yeah. This was like really fun and it blew by. Cool. Thank you. So ah yeah, if anyone wants to find out more about David's work, I guess your thesis, is it somewhere available online for people to read? I've been in the process of publishing it for years, but I made a YouTube video on it. Oh yes. Yeah. So you did.
00:56:29
Speaker
at Lattles, Arrows and Paleoindians is the title. It's like one of my most recent videos. It's the whole thesis. You don't need to read it. Just watch it. Perfect. I'll put the link ah in the in the show notes on the podcast homepage. I'll also try to put other links to things that we've mentioned today and general information on Arrowheads or ah projectile technology.
Podcast Credits
00:56:46
Speaker
So I hope you all enjoyed our journey today and see you next month for another episode of Tea Break Time.
00:56:54
Speaker
I hope that you enjoyed our journey today. If you did, make sure to like, follow, subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts. And I'll see you next month for another episode of Tea Break Time Travel.
00:57:06
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.