The Bow-and-Arrow along the Southern Arc and Through to Oceania: Earliest Appearances, Archaeological Challenges, and Future Opportunities

Abstract

It has been theorised that the invention of the bow-and-arrow may have been key to the successful dispersal of Homo sapiens, and indeed, archaeological evidence for the use of this technology at early H. sapiens sites along the southern dispersal route towards Australia have been reported. On the Australian continent and throughout most of Polynesia, however, the bow appears to have been largely abandoned or only used for ritual or entertainment. Such a situation appears incongruous with the prominence of the bow as a subsistence technology in the remainder of the Old World, and as such, has proven to be a matter of confusion for both early European explorers and researchers alike. This paper reviews the earliest archaeological evidence for the use of the bow-and-arrow across the southern arc from India through Island Southeast Asia, Australasia, and finally, out across Oceania. Where durable components of arrows are missing from the archaeological record, the rich ethnohistoric record is examined for information concerning its presence or absence. By bringing these data together across such a broad spatial region for the first time, this paper not only provides a ‘big picture’ view of its use across the southern arc, but identifies challenges for furthering our knowledge of when, where, and how it was made and used by various peoples—and perhaps more interestingly, why it was ignored by others.