A Bifacial Point of Extraordinary Dimensions Found in Paraná State, Southern Brazil

ABSTRACT

We present in this article the description of a bifacial point found in the municipality of Boa Ventura de São Roque, in the state of Paraná, southern Brazil. Given that it is a piece of exceptional size, made with a complex manufacturing technique, we made a metric description and analysis of the knapping technique of this artifact, in order to compare it with other similar artifacts found in Brazil.

KEYWORDS:

• Bifacial point
• hunter-gatherers
• Brazilian archaeology

Acknowledgements

We thank Arildo Ferreira for donating the artifact to the collection of the Museu Paranaense. We also would like to thank Dr. Otis Crandell for proof-reading the article and Dr. Grant McCall (Editor of Lithic Technology) for his suggestions on how to improve this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes on contributors

Claudia Parellada is an archaeologist and she has been working at the Paranaense Museum since 1984. Since 1990, she has been in charge of the Archaeology Sector of the Paranaense Museum, coordinating different research projects in the following areas: pre-colonial archaeology, historical archaeology, landscape archaeology, geoarchaeology, ethnoarchaeology, and rock art, as well as collection management and heritage education.

Mercedes Okumura is the coordinator of the Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Studies and a lecturer in bioarchaeology and human evolution at the Institute of Biosciences (University of São Paulo). Her early research was focused on the bioarchaeology of mid Holocene coastal groups from Brazil associated to shellmounds and the use of craniometrics to explore biological affinities among these past groups. Her current research focuses on the study of ancient DNA applied to these coastal groups, as well as the archaeology of Early Holocene hunter-gatherer groups from southern Brazil where she applies Cultural Transmission Theory and Evolutionary Archaeology to the study of stone tools (projectile points) using geometric morphometrics. Both methods (ancient DNA analysis and geometric morphometrics) are applied in order to better understand questions related to past boundaries and identities, as well as biological and cultural change and stability through time. She is a Honorary Research Fellow from the University of Exeter.

Fabio Parenti is a prehistoric archaeologist responsible of the Center of Archaeological Research (CEPA) of Federal University of Paraná at Curitiba, Brazil. He has been President of Italian Institute of Human Palaeontology. His main research interests are: lower and middle Palaeolithic archaeology, peopling of Americas, lithic typology and technology. Currently he has research projects in Jordan, Brazil, Italy and Morocco.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by CNPq (MO: 302163/2017-4) and Fapesp (MO: 2018/23282-5).