The antiquity of bow-and-arrow technology: evidence from Middle Stone Age layers at Sibudu Cave

@article{Backwell2018TheAO,
  title={The antiquity of bow-and-arrow technology: evidence from Middle Stone Age layers at Sibudu Cave},
  author={Lucinda R. Backwell and Justin Bradfield and Kristian J. Carlson and Tea Jashashvili and Lyn Wadley and Francesco d’Errico},
  journal={Antiquity},
  year={2018},
  volume={92},
  pages={289 - 303}
}
Abstract The bow and arrow is thought to be a unique development of our species, signalling higher-level cognitive functioning. How this technology originated and how we identify archaeological evidence for it are subjects of ongoing debate. Recent analysis of the putative bone arrow point from Sibudu Cave in South Africa, dated to 61.7±1.5kya, has provided important new insights. High-resolution CT scanning revealed heat and impact damage in both the Sibudu point and in experimentally produced… 
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27 Citations
Background Citations
6
Methods Citations
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27 Citations

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  • Environmental Science
    Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences
  • 2021
The Still Bay is a key technocomplex within the Middle Stone Age (MSA), and Sibudu, in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa, provides one of the longest and richest pre-Still Bay to Still Bay sequences. It…
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  • 2019
As a substage of the Middle Stone Age preserving evidence for a range of innovative behaviors, the Still Bay plays a key role in discussions about behavioral evolution during the Late Pleistocene.…
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This work suggests the application of Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), and provides details for how to construct an RTI system which resolves most problems related to reproducibility in use-trace analysis.
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References

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