hand-thrown weapons – Sticks and Stones

Skills Shortage! Or The Replicator’s Conceit

Experimental archaeology has run as a thread throughout my postgraduate studies, and I’ve conducted a number of different types of experiments on Pleistocene hunting weapons. Something that was clear early on in designing my experiments is that we have a present-day skills shortage in terms of how humans used early hunting spears. Once upon aContinue reading “Skills Shortage! Or The Replicator’s Conceit”

Tiwi throwing spears

For better or for worse (a bit of both I think), ethnographic research and ethnohistoric accounts have played an important role in how we have interpreted the archaeological signatures that people from the past have left behind. This is nowhere more true than the study of how recent hunter-gatherer groups have manufactured, curated, and usedContinue reading “Tiwi throwing spears”