about an inch and a half

@btroje Most likely a projectile point. Spitballing to say it might have been used for an atl atl.

Wrong point type for an atlatl. @Fidget

@Fidget its an arrowhead

@btroje You're right. I looked it up tonight. (Google is mah friend!) This is what I get for not looking up something way outside of my regional knowledge. Derp!

@btroje Where are my manners? Apologies for the very wide pitch.

@Annaleda too lazy to google but I think an atlatl would have a point about 6-8 inches long. What say you?

I was thinking 4-6. Lol
Since spears could be two to four feet long, we’re both correct. I double checked.

Depending on where in the world, the smaller ones usually had barbed bone points. I got to play with a few at the museum I apprenticed at for three years. I have a very nice spear point, but it’s in storage. I have a picture, but not good quality. It’s about 6 inches. Found in a 8000+ yo site, in central Oregon. It’s obsidian from a formation before the event that made the caldera named Crater Lake.

My mind is grinding. My Lithic Analysis classes deep in there.

Can you imagine the first atlatls? During a time between spears and bows, thick spears and spear points. Wow. @btroje

@Annaleda The few I saw were excavated in the southeastern US. They were tiny! I wondered what in the world they would hunt with them since I originally figured the added force could make them better for taking down mega fauna. Maybe extended range when hunting smaller game?

(This wasn't my original area in anth -and it shows- although I want to return to it. )

As the people got better at making them, and evolving them, they got smaller. Now they are more like darts. The ones you saw were probably for medium game.

There was a culture that specialized in very small points, as they had hardly any rock where they lived in the far north. Arg. I’ll find there name. I’m having a moment. @Fidget

@Fidget what did you study? I was mostly prehistory, paleontology, and geology. This last stint. I did Graphic Design (before computers, that’s how old I am. Lol.) for two years after high school, and in my twenties took botanical medicine.

@Annaleda LOL! I studied graphic design for a short time in the mid 80s. Yep! I remember the tall desks and dread of a strong breeze when someone opened the classroom door. FWIW, my 20s and 30s could be compared to giving a bonobo tuition money and a backpack and turning it loose.

My BA is in anth with an emphasis on cultural anthropology. My areas were performance/arts, ritual behavior and sexuality. This dovetailed nicely with my minor in folk studies. (Welcome to Quilts an' Haints U!) We did modules in all areas of the discipline and the digs I worked were mostly salvage sites. We/they were/are still finding smallish late archaic habitation sites. There was some nineteenth century historic work done as well.

The botanical medicine study sounds intriguing.

I love bonobos. @Fidget

@Fidget did you study the Venus figures?

@Annaleda I love them, too. At the time, I was partial to the really teeny protohominids. Mayb this was because there were a lot of people who were all about Leakey's Ladies.

There was mention of the Venus of Willendorf (and others.) I'm fond of them. Have you seen Nina Paley's animation of them?

I make figures like the real old ones. Clay, wood, stone. Each one is different. The size and shape just happen during creation.

I made up a bunch of very little clay ones, and gave them to mothers to be. @Fidget

LOL!

it was smoking a cigarette. it deserved the rest

What a lazy daisy. Lol@btroje

no I kinda just appreciate things and don't go about naming and dissecting them. If you have ever been in the desert you will see rocks that have been in the same place for a long time. THere will be erosion around them and they will be resting on an elevation of dirt they have protected.. This was resting on what looked like a 6 inch stem of dirt out in Arizona

very interesting, and to think of all the days that passed between your hands touching it and the last ones. I always think about that when I find one.

@hankster yes you wonder about those before us

i do. they were way ahead in some ways it seems, but perhaps that's just the romantics' version.

@hankster primitive technology is in some ways more sophisticated. I couldnt pick up a rock and make something useful out of it for my survival but I can attempt to post links