An Assessment of the Impact of Hafting on Paleoindian Point Variability

Abstract

It has long been argued that the form of North American Paleoindian points was affected by hafting. According to this hypothesis, hafting constrained point bases such that they are less variable than point blades. The results of several studies have been claimed to be consistent with this hypothesis. However, there are reasons to be skeptical of these results. None of the studies employed statistical tests, and all of them focused on points recovered from kill and camp sites, which makes it difficult to be certain that the differences in variability are the result of hafting rather than a consequence of resharpening. Here, we report a study in which we tested the predictions of the hafting hypothesis by statistically comparing the variability of different parts of Clovis points. We controlled for the potentially confounding effects of resharpening by analyzing largely unused points from caches as well as points from kill and camp sites. The results of our analyses were not consistent with the predictions of the hypothesis. We found that several blade characters and point thickness were no more variable than the base characters. Our results indicate that the hafting hypothesis does not hold for Clovis points and indicate that there is a need to test its applicability in relation to post-Clovis Paleoindian points.

An Assessment of Stone Weapon Tip Standardization During the Clovis–folsom Transition in the Western United States

“…A follow-up analysis to the base and blade comparisons between Clovis and Folsom examined the variability between the base and the blade within the type samples. Buchanan and colleagues (2012) found that for Clovis points, basal measurements were not more variable than blade measurements. The results of our analysis agree with their finding and extend it to Folsom (Table 3).…”

“…Judge (1973) hypothesized that the basal portion of Early Paleoindian points would be less variable than blade portions, as he assumed the latter would have been subject to resharpening. A study by Buchanan and colleagues (2012) indicated that this was not the case for Clovis points. Our results provide further support for Buchanan and colleagues’ (2012) comparison of Clovis base and blade measurements: Clovis blades are not more variable than Clovis bases.…”

“…Third, we compared Folsom and Clovis blade-shape variation. A previous study by Buchanan and colleagues (2012) demonstrated that, at least with Clovis, blades and bases exhibit similar levels of variation, suggesting that if blades were resharpened, they were under similar constraints as bases. With this idea in mind, we carried out analyses that compared variation in Folsom blade shape to Clovis blade shape.…”

Identifying design and reduction effects on lithic projectile point shapes

“…Geometric morphometrics analyses have also been applied in order to control the effect of potential noisy factors as size, resharpening, differences in lithic raw materials and hafting, geographical origin or distance among samples, among others (Buchanan and Collard, 2010;Castiñeira et al, 2011Castiñeira et al, , 2012Buchanan et al, 2012). Some of these works used elliptic Fourier analysis performed on the point's contour (Iovita, 2009(Iovita, , 2011, multivariate regression correction of landmark coordinate data and composite corrections involving proportions, shape, asymmetry, and size parameters (González-José and .…”

Clovis Lithic Technology: The Devil Is in the Details

“…However, was this for portability reasons? There is no doubt that Clovis points that were clearly deposited at about the same time (if not within hours as at layer 3a at Gault, or in mammoth kills as at Lehner) varied considerably in base size and shape of the haft part (see Buchanan et al 2012). Additional testing is needed, but they seem to vary more than later fluted points that in the author's direct experience conform more to clear shape and size mental templates.…”