he Origins and Evolution of Pre-Industrial Hunting Weaponry: Ongoing Challenges and Recent Developments

Hunting remains an essential component of what archaeologists seek to understand about the past even if it was only one important aspect of ancient lives and livelihoods. While the way Westerners conceptualize old hunting tools and methods can result in biased interpretations of archaeological sites, it can also affect contemporary people who continue to hunt using traditional means. Understanding old hunting tools and methods outside of a technological deterministic framework is vital to the work of anthropologists. As I will demonstrate in later chapters, it is also a relevant topic for wildlife managers and conservationists, whose policies can negatively impact traditional hunters. The work of the archaeological weapon investigator often calls for experiments to reconstruct and study old tools. Experiments can take the form of controlled laboratory tests or more realistic exploratory studies with replicas of artifacts and practiced users. Both approaches can be helpful or misleading, depending on how they are carried out and the contexts to which they are applied. Philosophers have for some time written about the pitfalls of assuming that laboratory controls are the only way to conduct real science. The questions archaeologists ask about the past are frequently questions about equifinality, the possibility that multiple past processes could have produced a phenomenon of interest. Such questions are best approached through exploratory methods that are carried out with sufficient rigor. My approach to ancient hunting tactics and weapons has largely been experimental in nature. In this document, I describe experiments to understand the ballistic natures of old hunting weapons. A series of exploratory experiments tracked the many ballistic characteristics that make Indigenous North American atlatl and dart systems lethal against medium and large prey. I also describe a controlled experiment designed to test the effects of material type and edge sharpness of stone and glass projectile point efficacy, but honestly, I found this experiment far less informative than the former. Following the descriptions of the experiments, a theoretical paper is meant to help experimental archaeologists think through the challenges and best practices of conducting their research. Finally, I describe a survey of Iowa deer hunters and a comparison between American and African San hunters to assess the relative impacts of new hunting technologies on hunter success. Surprisingly, skillful hunters with traditional weapons can experience a higher degree of success than users of modern weapons. However, the reality of hunting is highly complex and context dependent.</p

The Ballistics of Archaic North American Atlatls and Darts

Preserved atlatls and darts, commonly of small size, have been found across North America from the Early to Late Archaic. Close replications of these systems were employed in a naturalistic experiment on a fresh hog carcass. The use of high-speed cameras, a radar gun, and a video analysis program to measure dart velocity and view impacts in slow motion allowed a detailed analysis of the results. The experiment captured several details about atlatl and dart ballistics, including killing potential, the effects of point beveling on dart flight and impact, traceable impact damage on bones and stone points, and the effectiveness of various hafting arrangements. The results provide details about the atlatl and dart that will be helpful to the study of ancient hunting cultures

High altitude hunting, climate change, and pastoral resilience in eastern Eurasia

The transition from hunting to herding transformed the cold, arid steppes of Mongolia and Eastern Eurasia into a key social and economic center of the ancient world, but a fragmentary archaeological record limits our understanding of the subsistence base for early pastoral societies in this key region. Organic material preserved in high mountain ice provides rare snapshots into the use of alpine and high altitude zones, which played a central role in the emergence of East Asian pastoralism. Here, we present the results of the first archaeological survey of melting ice margins in the Altai Mountains of western Mongolia, revealing a near-continuous record of more than 3500 years of human activity. Osteology, radiocarbon dating, and collagen fingerprinting analysis of wooden projectiles, animal bone, and other artifacts indicate that big-game hunting and exploitation of alpine ice played a significant role during the emergence of mobile pastoralism in the Altai, and remained a core element of pastoral adaptation into the modern era. Extensive ice melting and loss of wildlife in the study area over recent decades, driven by a warming climate, poaching, and poorly regulated hunting, presents an urgent threat to the future viability of herding lifeways and the archaeological record of hunting in montane zones. &nbsp;</p

On the (Non-)Scalability of Target Media for Evaluating the Performance of Ancient Projectile Weapons

When they work, controlled experiments can efficiently and clearly reveal essential characteristics of the functions and performance of ancient hunting and fighting weapons. However, homogenous target media must be carefully validated to ensure that controlled tests capture the same variables that made weapons effective in their original application. Although homogenous flesh simulants have proven effective for studying firearms, the same simulants cannot be assumed to be effective when testing low-velocity cutting/piercing projectiles, which have significantly different performance characteristics than bullets. We build on past research showing that two flesh simulants that are commonly used by archaeologists, ballistics gelatin and pottery clay, fail to capture how atlatl darts and arrows perform when penetrating biological tissues. In accord with forensic research of knife-thrust attacks, natural and polymeric skin simulants may prove effective in future experiments, but this requires further research

Terminal Ballistics of Stone-Tipped Atlatl Darts and Arrows: Results From Exploratory Naturalistic Experiments

This study describes an effective protocol for naturalistic archaeological weapons experiments that improves cross-validation with controlled experiments and allows testing of multiple hypotheses. Stone-tipped atlatl darts and arrows were launched by skilled users against fresh carcasses, with high-speed cameras and radar guns capturing details of ballistic performance, impacts to bone and stone armatures, and other variables. The results pertaining to terminal ballistics in soft tissues are presented, with implications for what made ancient hunting projectiles effective and can be observed archaeologically. Fine-grained knappable stones seem to produce sharper armatures that can dramatically improve penetration, and presumably, lethality. Two commonly used metrics by archaeologists for estimating armature efficacy, tip cross-sectional area (TCSA), and perimeter (TCSP), are not among the significant variables for capturing penetration depth in soft tissues. However, armatures with larger TCSAs tend to be fitted to larger shafts that carry more energy and penetrate more deeply, providing one method for predicting wounding potential. The variability within weapon systems means that isolating efficacy to individual variables, such as tip cross-sectional size of stone armatures, can lead to erroneous interpretations

High altitude hunting, climate change, and pastoral resilience in eastern Eurasia.

The transition from hunting to herding transformed the cold, arid steppes of Mongolia and Eastern Eurasia into a key social and economic center of the ancient world, but a fragmentary archaeological record limits our understanding of the subsistence base for early pastoral societies in this key region. Organic material preserved in high mountain ice provides rare snapshots into the use of alpine and high altitude zones, which played a central role in the emergence of East Asian pastoralism. Here, we present the results of the first archaeological survey of melting ice margins in the Altai Mountains of western Mongolia, revealing a near-continuous record of more than 3500 years of human activity. Osteology, radiocarbon dating, and collagen fingerprinting analysis of wooden projectiles, animal bone, and other artifacts indicate that big-game hunting and exploitation of alpine ice played a significant role during the emergence of mobile pastoralism in the Altai, and remained a core element of pastoral adaptation into the modern era. Extensive ice melting and loss of wildlife in the study area over recent decades, driven by a warming climate, poaching, and poorly regulated hunting, presents an urgent threat to the future viability of herding lifeways and the archaeological record of hunting in montane zones

Stakeholder Engagement though Empowerment: The case of Coffee Farmers

International audienceWhile most studies on stakeholder engagement focus on high‐power stakeholders (typically, employees), limited attention has been devoted to the engagement of low‐power stakeholders. These have been defined as vulnerable stakeholders for their low capacity to influence corporations. Our research is framed around the engagement of low‐power stakeholders in the coffee industry who are, paradoxically, critical resource providers for the major roasters. Through the case study of Lavazza—the leading Italian roaster—we investigate empowerment actions addressed to smallholder farmers located in Brazil, India, East Africa, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. We contribute to the theoretical discussion around engagement and empowerment by developing a framework linking together areas of empowerment (defined in the literature) and specific empowerment actions (emerging from our interviews). Our insights shed light on how organizations can design empowerment strategies leading to more effective stakeholder engagement and how empowerment actions can contribute to turn low‐power stakeholders into active business partners. We demonstrate that moving from a traditional competitive view of corporate–stakeholder relationships to a stakeholder theory view based on a logic of cooperative partnerships reinforces the idea that stakeholder engagement and empowerment are both entangled with the value creation process