Lithic Projectile Points and the Great Basin Region of North America

The cultural history of the Great Basin region in western North America has intrigued historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, and others ever since its first crossing and non-indigenous documentation by John C. Fremont in 1845. Because of the regions desert climate and apparent lack of economic and subsistence resources, scholars and researchers have wondered how indigenous Native Americans – the Paiute, Shoshone, Bannock, Ute, and Kawaiisu peoples – were able to live in the region across time. Research by Mesoudi and O’Brien (2008) sheds light on this long-standing question by focusing on the cultural processes that are involved in the development and dissemination of lithic projectile points.

The pervading theory on lithic projectile point development and dissemination, originally proposed by Bettinger and Eerkins (1999), hypothesized that during the Holocene epoch in the Great Basin two dominate methods of cultural transmission occurred: what is called guided variation and indirect bias. Bettinger and Eerkens argued in Point Typologies, Cultural Transmission, and the Spread of Bow-and-Arrow Technology in the Prehistoric Great Basin (1999) that lithic projectile points from eastern California, for which attributes such as length or width were poorly correlated, originally spread through a process of guided variation, where individuals first adopted point technology from a model, then experimented with that model using individual trial and error. Hence, lithic projectile point designs diverged and correlations between point attributes fell. Points from central Nevada, meanwhile, feature highly correlated attributes, which Bettinger and Eerkens (1999) argued was because these points originally spread through a process of indirect bias, where individuals adopt point designs wholesale from a single successful model and do not modify or experiment with that model. In essence, every individual acquires and keeps the same basic lithic projectile point design, leading to the highly correlated attributes.

Work by Mesoudi and O’Brien (2008) has confirmed this hypothesis, indicating that archaeological patterns found in the western and central Great Basin are partially the result of differences in how lithic projectile point technology in the two regions was originally transmitted. The confirmation of this hypothesis has implications not only for anthropological and archaeological theory, but also for our understanding of the indigenous Native Americans and their cultural history in the Great Basin.

In terms of anthropological and archaeological theory, the fact that the height, width, and thickness (continuous functional attributes) of lithic projectile points appear to be modified more frequently than the actual shape (discrete functional attributes) argues that periods of gradual change constitute modification of continuous attributes, and abrupt changes constitute a change in a discrete attribute. That is, anthropological and archaeological propositions such as “punctuated equilibria” may simply be the reflection of a change in hunting equipment, say from the atlatl to the bow and arrow or from one type of spear technology to another. This research also sheds light on more culturally and geographically specific questions such as “What happened to the Clovis people” or “Did a group of Numic speaking peoples colonize the Great Basin only 1500 years ago.” Rather then thinking of a “Clovis people” versus a “Folsom people” or “Cascade people,” this research argues that the changes in lithic projectile point syle’s may simply be a change in hunting styles or technology, not an indication of a different group of people moving into or existing in an area. Similarly, this new research indicates that it might be more parsimonious to conclude that the so-called “Numic Expansion” was an expansion in technology and not people, which would argue that today’s Great Basin Native Americans are culturally affiliated with those of the distant past (as documented in Jones 2005).

As the recent research by Mesoudi and O’Brien has shown, studying lithic projectile points in a comparative manner across time can reveal important information. This information is not only important for anthropologically and archaeologically relevant theories, but also for today’s indigenous Native American peoples – the living descendants of the creators of those lithic projectile points.

Further Reading

Bettinger, R. L., and Jelmer W. Eerkens
1999 Point Typologies, Cultural Transmission, and the Spread of Bow-and-Arrow Technology in the Prehistoric Great Basin. American Antiquity 64:231-242.

Jones, Peter N.
2005 Respect for the Ancestors: American Indian Cultural Affiliation in the American West. Boulder, CO: Bauu Press.

Justice, Noel D.
2002 Stone Age Spear and Arrow Points of California and the Great Basin. Indiana University Press.

Mesoudi, Alex, and Michael J. O'Brien
2008 The Cultural Transmission of Great Basin Projectile-Point Technology I: An Experimental Simulation. American Antiquity 73(1):3-28.