Hunting with poisoned arrows during the Terminal Pleistocene in Northern Europe? A tip cross-sectional area assessment and list of potential arrow poison ingredients

Abstract

The lithic projectile points of the Late Upper Palaeolithic (∼14.7–11.7 ka BP) in Northern Europe display a marked variation in size and design. The small tanged points characteristic of the latest phase in the sequence can be directly associated with finds of arrow-shafts and bow fragments, benchmarking the presence of archery. In the absence of such organic evidence during the older phases, size differences between tip designs may be used, with reference to ballistic principles, to derive hypotheses about ancient weapon systems. By calculating tip cross-sectional area values for a large sample of shouldered, backed, and tanged points from sites across the Northern Europe, we here explore likely changes in weapon use through time. In this context we specifically investigate the likelihood of the smallest of these tips as having been used with poison to increase hunting success. Our results show that: (i) bow-and-arrow technology most likely was in use already during the earliest phases of human occupation in the region; (ii) later on, different weapon systems equipped with different tip designs were used in parallel; and (iii) the smallest of lithic armatures align well with ethnographically documented poisoned arrows. To assist with future studies in the use of arrow poisons in Europe, we provide a list of potential poison sources, where they are currently distributed in the context of our study area.