The First Fishtail Point Find in Piauí State, Northeastern Brazil: Significance and Hypothesis

ABSTRACT

Here we report a newly discovered Fishtail, or Fell 1, projectile-point type, from Coronel José Dias, southern Piauí, northeastern Brazil. It is an almost complete bifacial piece on light local silex. In Brazil, Fishtail points have not been previously reported in detail north of the 22° S parallel. Hence, this new evidence importantly establishes human occupation of extreme northeast of South America during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition.

KEYWORDS:

• Fishtail projectile point
• lithic technology
• surface
• Piauí
• Brazil

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Espedito Martins Dias Neto and his family, owners of the Barreiro Grande lands. Thanks to Leandro Lima for providing us with the first reports of the discovery. The work was achieved thanks to the collaboration between the Fundação Museu do Homem Americano (FUMDHAM) and the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The term configuration is used instead of “shaping”. The latter is equivalent to the term “façonnage” in French. Configuration is a more general term that can be applied to describe the result of a specific technical operation, be it debitage or shaping. In this sense, every shaping is a configuration, but not every configuration is due to a shaping operation.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs; Fundação Museu do Homem Americano (FUMDHAM).