Bows and arrows in South America: Advances and debates

Abstract

Our team began with a comprehensive review of what we know about the bow and arrow in South America, based on a compilation of archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic data (Marsh et al., 2023). Next we encouraged other researchers to join our efforts and contribute to this special issue. Most of these papers were originally presented online in 2022, as part of a bow and arrow symposium at the 2nd Congreso Argentino de Estudios Líticos en Arqueología hosted in Buenos Aires. Some of these same authors participated in a broader symposium that we organized at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in New Orleans, USA, in April 2024, in a session called The Global ’Impact’ of Projectile Technologies: Updating Methods and Regional Overviews of the Invention and Transmission of the Spearthrower and the Bow and Arrow. This ongoing effort has grown out of our team’s research project funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation.