Breakage patterns on fishtail projectile points: experimental and archaeological cases

Abstract

Fishtail projectile points, also known as Fell 1, are dated between 11,000 and 9,500 14C yr BP in South and Central America and have been traditionally considered diagnostic of the early peopling of the continent. In this paper, experimental observations of impact breakage patterns on fishtail projectile point replicas are compared with archaeological points from the Cerro El Sombrero Cima site, in the Argentinian pampas, which exhibit a high breakage ratio and suggest that impact was a major cause of breakage in the assemblage. Also, the position of these fractures is briefly compared to patterns described by J. Bird (1969) for fishtail projectile points from Ecuador and Southern Chile.