1. Did archery technology precipitate complexity in the Titicaca Basin? A metric analysis of projectile points, 11–1 ka.
- Author
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Flores-Blanco, Luis, Cuellar, Lucero, Aldenderfer, Mark, Stanish, Charles, and Haas, Randall
- Subjects
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PROJECTILE points , *BOW & arrow , *WATERSHEDS , *ARCHERY , *SOCIAL structure - Abstract
The extent to which archery technology affected social organization in the Andes region of South America remains understudied. To identify the timing and consequences of archery technology in the Lake Titicaca Basin, this analysis examines metric data from 1179 projectile points from the region, 11–1.0 cal. ka. We find that the greatest decrease in projectile point size occurred across the Late/Terminal Archaic and Formative/Tiwanaku period boundaries, 5.0 and 1.5 cal. ka, respectively. We do not find a statistically significant decrease in size during any other transition, including the Terminal Archaic/Formative boundary, which was previously hypothesized to have been the time when archery technology first appeared in the region. These results instead favor the hypothesis that archery technology first entered the region during the Terminal Archaic Period, 5.0–3.5 cal ka. We furthermore observe that this technological transition coincided with the growth of settlements, a surge in the use of exotic goods such as obsidian, a low level of inter-group violence, and incipient agropastoralism—a pattern that intensified during the subsequent Formative period when monumental ceremonial centers emerged. These findings lead us to propose a model for South American archery technology in which its appearance after 5000 years ago contributed to the emergence of new cooperative dynamics that expanded regional exchange networks and community aggregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
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