Did Early Americans Reuse Spearpoints?

OXFORD, MISSISSIPPI—According to a statement released by the University of Mississippi, Jesse Tune of the University of Mississippi and Shane Miller of the University of Alabama have examined some 500 stone projectile points crafted by the Clovis and Cumberland people in the Tennessee River Valley region. “We’re talking about Ice Age hunter-gatherers, people who looked and acted just like us and had the same needs that we do,” Tune said. The study suggests that groups of migrating Clovis people were more likely to resharpen and reuse their spearheads. “Spear points were designed to be disposable objects, and that makes what the Clovis were doing interesting,” Tune said. Several hundred years later, the Cumberland people are thought to have inherited knowledge of chert deposits and other resources acquired by their ancestors. “When we look at the Cumberland points, we can see where they got the raw material, roughly the time period that they lived and that they’ve used the point multiple times,” Tune said. “But [the point] was rarely completely broken to the point that it couldn’t be used anymore,” he added. The team members think that the Cumberland people used their knowledge of the landscape to make new tools as needed, rather than carrying damaged points. Read the original scholarly article about this research in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. For more on the Clovis, go to "America, in the Beginning."