The objective of this volume is to showcase the contemporary state of research on recognizing and evaluating the performance of stone age weapons from a variety of viewpoints, including investigating their cognitive and evolutionary significance.New archaeological finds and experimental studies have helped to bring this subject back to the forefront of human origins research. In the last few years, investigations have expanded beyond examining the tools themselves to include studies of damage caused by projectile weapons on animal and hominin bones and skeletal asymmetries in ancient hominin populations. Only recently has there been a growing interest in controlled and replicative experiments. Through this book readers will be updated in the state of knowledge through a multidisciplinary scientific reconstruction of prehistoric weapon use and its implications.Contributions from expert authors are organized into three themed parts: recognizing weapon use (experimental and archaeological studies of impact traces), performance of weapon systems (factors influencing penetration depth etc.), and behavioral and evolutionary ramifications (cognitive and ecological effects of using different weapons).

Recognizes and characterizes stone age weapons using controlled and replicative experiments

1When is a Point a Projectile? Morphology, Impact Fractures, ScientificRigor, and the Limits of Inference.- Identifying Weapon Delivery Systems Using Macrofracture Analysisand Fracture Propagation Velocity: A Controlled Experiment.- 3 Experiments inFracture Patterns and Impact Velocity with Replica Hunting Weapons from Japan.4 ThirtyYears of Experimental Research on the Breakage Patterns of Stone Age OsseousPoints. Overview, Methodological Problems and Current Perspectives.- 5 Levers, Not Springs: How aSpearthrower Works and Why it Matters.- 6 Hunting Lesions in Pleistocene and EarlyHolocene European Bone Assemblages and their Implications for Our Knowledge onthe Use and Timing of Lithic Projectile Technology.- 7 Edge Damage on500-thousand-year-old Spear Tips from Kathu Pan 1, South Africa: the CombinedEffects of Spear Use and Taphonomic Processes.- 8 Projectile Damage and Point Morphometry at the Early Middle PaleolithicMisliya Cave, Mount Carmel (Israel): Preliminary Results and Interpretations.- 9 Morpho-metric Variability of EarlyGravettian Tanged "Font-Robert" Points, and Functional Implications.- 10 Early Gravettian ProjectileTechnology in Southwestern Iberian Peninsula: the Double Backed and BipointedBladelets of Vale Boi (Portugal).- 11 Uncertain Evidence for Weapons and Craft Tools: FunctionalInvestigations of Australian Microliths.- 12 Projectiles and Hafting Technology.- 13 Testing Archaeological Approachesto Determining Past Projectile Delivery Systems using Ethnographic andExperimental Data.- 14 PenetrationTissue Damage, and Lethality of Wood- VersusLithic-Tipped Projectiles.- 15 Experimental and Archeological Observations of Northern IberianPeninsula Middle Paleolithic Mousterian Point Assemblages. Testing thePotential Use of Throwing Spears among Neanderthals.- 16 More to the Point: Developing anMulti-Faceted Approach to Investigating the Curation of Magdalenian OsseousProjectile Points.- 17 Survivorship Distributions in Experimental Spear Points: Implicationsfor Tool Design and Assemblage Formation.- 8 MorphologicalDiversification of Stemmed Projectile Points of Patagonia (Southernmost SouthAmerica). Assessing Spatial Patterns by Means of Phylogenies and ComparativeMethods.- 19 Hunting Technologies during the Howiesons Poort atSibudu Cave: What They Reveal about Human Cognition in KwaZulu-Natal, SouthAfrica, between ~ 65 and 62 ka.- 20 Summary and Conclusions.