Bison experiment 2: Update and initial findings
Our second bison experiment was a success! We had a small crew including myself, (Devin Pettigrew), Donny Dust, Justin Garnett, and Marissa Crise (Marissa took phenomenal records of the experiment). The experiment occurred in North Park, CO, a place with a deep history of big game atlatl hunting (the Folsom Paleoindian occupation of North Park is well-known). Tremendous thanks to all of our backers!
The 2 year old bison bull proved a tougher customer than the last bison (an old cow). Shots from this experiment will therefore dramatically improving our ballistic comparison of ancient hunting weapon performance on big game. However, as before, we witnessed the capacity of atlatls and darts to produce highly lethal wounds. We documented nearly 100 shots, with several large Clovis and Agate Basin points fitted on heavy darts that penetrated deeply (completely through the torso in some cases) and produced impressive wound tracks through vital organs that would allow a hunter to retrieve a large animal very close to where it had been hit. We also documented damages to stone armatures and their hafts that are useful for comparing back with the archaeological record. Approximately 30% of a bison's thorax is protected by ribs and we did not document a single instance of penetration through a rib. Just as with mammoths and other big game, ribs prove to be a substantial barrier on bison, which were unquestionably hunted by Paleoindian and more recent historic peoples alike. In some cases, points failed so catastrophically when they impacted bone that penetration failed completely and point fragments could land meters away from the carcass. These failures and successes help us reverse engineer these weapons, to understand their capacities to perform, to interpret design features of artifacts in a more informed way, and to better interpret the archaeological record of ancient hunts.
Archaeological investigations of hunting events are not unlike forensic investigations of a crime scene; it is useful to know about the parameters that make weapons effective, when they penetrate deeply, as well as when, why, and how they fail. We are interested in the results of impacts all over the body, not just through vital organs (ancient hunters did not always hit their mark). Similarly, when interpreting a crime scene an investigator would be in a poor position if she/he only had information about the performance of very well-designed murder weapons striking limited locations on a body. Murders are often carried out with less efficient weapons! For similar reasons, archaeologists also benefit from understanding skin resistivity between ribs as well as over the abdomen and on other parts of the body, the penetration of both efficient and inefficient armatures on shafts with variable energy and momentum, and what happens when stone points strike ribs, scapulae, and vertebrae. Currently I (Pettigrew) am processing the shot data and am already noticing trends in the results from the high speed cameras that we did not catch/could not measure during the experiment. These results will be the topic of future lab notes.
In the meantime, Donny Dust put together a video on his Paleotracks Youtube channel summarizing how the project was implemented and showing some initial results:
I am also pleased to announce two more pieces of news: (1) the radar gun purchased for the experiment proved highly effective for documenting atlatl dart and arrow velocities. Both downrange and peak velocities can be captured and even the range at which these velocites are recorded can be set. It will see use in many future tests, including a small velocity experiment this coming week. More results from radar gun experiments will follow. (2) The bison meat is reportedly delicious. Justin, Donny, and Marissa worked incredibly hard preparing for and conducting the experiment and as partial repayment went home with large coolers packed full of meat. Nothing went to waste. Additionally, all skeletal elements were kept and are awaiting their turn to be cleaned by a dermestid beetle colony for analysis of impact damages to bone.
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