The Bow and Arrow in Northern North America

Abstract

There were at least four waves of bow and arrow use in northern North America. These occurred at 12000, 4500, 2400, and after about 1300 years ago. But to understand the role of the bow and arrow in the north, one must begin in the eighteenth century, when the Russians first arrived in the Aleutian Islands. At that time, the Aleut were using both the atlatl and dart and the bow and arrow (Fig. ). This is significant for two particular and important reasons. First, there are few historic cases in which both technologies were used concurrently; second, the bow and arrow in the Aleutian Islands were used almost exclusively in warfare. The atlatl was a critical technology because the bow and arrow are useless for hunting sea mammals. One cannot launch an arrow from a kayak because it is too unstable and requires that both hands remain on a paddle. To use an atlatl, it is necessary only to stabilize the kayak with a paddle on one side and launch the atlatl dart with the opposite hand. The Aleut on the Alaska Peninsula did indeed use the bow and arrow to hunt caribou there. However, in the 1,400 km of the Aleutian Islands, there are no terrestrial mammals except humans and the bow was reserved almost exclusively for conflicts among them. The most significant event in the history of the bow and arrow is not its early introduction, but rather the Asian War Complex 1300 years ago, when the recurve and backed bows first entered the region, altering regional and hemispheric political dynamics forever. [Figure: see text].

Introduction: Social Complexity and the Bow in the Prehistoric North American Record

“…Having provisionally eliminated many potential sources of causation, we are arguably left with only one. While there is evidence of some apparently primitive forms of the bow at earlier intervals (see, especially, Maschner and Mason, Walde, and references therein) we argue that there is strong evidence of a relatively synchronous, continent‐wide adoption of an advanced form of the elite bow at or near the appropriate time for this weapon to act as a driver of local North American Neolithic transitions …”

“…The atlatl, held in the throwing hand, then amplifies the normal human throwing motion, allowing the bolt to be projected much farther than with the unaided arm (Fig. 2) . The atlatl was apparently brought to North America by the first human settlers millennia before the Neolithic.…”

“…There is abundant evidence of increases in the scale of warfare during and/or after various individual North American Neolithic transitions, as assessed by injuries in skeletal remains and the building of substantial fortifications . Episodically intense warfare associated with the North American Neolithic is generally well‐documented …”

“…This Special Issue of Evolutionary Anthropology grew out of a symposium at the 2012 Society for American Archaeology (SAA) meeting in Memphis, Tennessee (April [18][19][20][21][22]. The goal of the symposium was to explore what we will argue is one of the most important and promising opportunities in the global archeological enterprise.…”

Theory Testing in Prehistoric North America: Fruits of One of the World's Great Archeological Natural Laboratories

“…Collectively, these diverse observations are inconsistent with warfare theory; however, they conform well to the strong prediction of social coercion theory that warfare is an effect, rather than a cause, of Neolithic social complexity, arising in response to factors that include growing local conflicts of interest (Malthusian competition) as local populations ultimately approach the new, raised carrying capacity permitted by bow‐dependent social intensification . Maschner and Mason's discussions of earlier, less sophisticated versions of the bow, followed eventually by an advanced bow technology in the Northwest, are highly illuminating. First, defining when and where early versions of the bow may exist that are not coercively superior to the atlatl will be crucial to the continued investigation of both warfare and social coercion theories.…”