Reverse Engineering Stone Atlatl Dart Points

ABSTRACT

Reverse engineering provides a way, in the absence of contemporary documentation, to deduce from physical principles the functional traits of artifacts. Constraints on atlatl dart point design serve as the principles to explain the discard of 46 whole points at the Cork site, 22OK746, a Middle Woodland occupation in north-central Mississippi. Because many of the points likely were jam-hafted, the dart–arrow index of Hildebrandt and King, rather than shoulder width, was used to identify them as dart points. Constraints operating on accuracy, penetrability, and durability were chosen. They include weight, symmetry, tip angle, raw material, and ratios of width and length to thickness. Cork site points most often violate critical values of the two ratios, indicating that their poor ability to penetrate a target was a major factor in their discard.

KEYWORDS:

• Reverse engineering
• dart points
• Middle Woodland period
• artifact discard
• jam hafting
• Southeast US

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to students in the 1999 Mississippi State University field school and to Kevin Bruce and Cliff Jenkins, then archaeologists with the Mississippi Department of Transportation, for help during Phase II testing. Figure 4 was drawn by Dylan Karges. Helpful comments on the manuscript were provided by Evan Peacock, D. Shane Miller, and Philip J. Carr, plus four anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data Availability Statement

Artifacts from the Cork site are stored at the Cobb Institute of Archaeology, Mississippi State University. Their final curation location will be the Mississippi Department of Transportation, Jackson, Mississippi.

Note on Contributor

Janet Rafferty received a PhD in 1974 at the University of Washington, Seattle. She is currently professor emerita at Mississippi State University. Her research interests are the prehistory of the southeastern US and settlement pattern change in an evolutionary context.

ORCID

Janet Rafferty http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8625-2687

Additional information

Funding

The field and laboratory work on which this research is based was supported by the Mississippi Department of Transportation [Contract No. 79-0018-03-018-10].