Human Evolutionary Studies Program and Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
PLoS One. 2012;7(2):e30530. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0030530. Epub 2012 Feb 10.
A number of functions have been proposed for cached Clovis points. The least complicated hypothesis is that they were intended to arm hunting weapons. It has also been argued that they were produced for use in rituals or in connection with costly signaling displays. Lastly, it has been suggested that some cached Clovis points may have been used as saws. Here we report a study in which we morphometrically compared Clovis points from caches with Clovis points recovered from kill and camp sites to test two predictions of the hypothesis that cached Clovis points were intended to arm hunting weapons: 1) cached points should be the same shape as, but generally larger than, points from kill/camp sites, and 2) cached points and points from kill/camp sites should follow the same allometric trajectory. The results of the analyses are consistent with both predictions and therefore support the hypothesis. A follow-up review of the fit between the results of the analyses and the predictions of the other hypotheses indicates that the analyses support only the hunting equipment hypothesis. We conclude from this that cached Clovis points were likely produced with the intention of using them to arm hunting weapons.
一些功能已被提出用于缓存克洛维斯点。最简单的假设是，它们旨在武装狩猎武器。也有人认为，它们是为仪式或与昂贵的信号显示有关而生产的。最后，有人认为，一些缓存的克洛维斯点可能被用作锯子。在这里，我们报告了一项研究，我们对来自缓存的克洛维斯点和从杀戮和营地遗址中回收的克洛维斯点进行了形态测量学比较，以检验缓存的克洛维斯点旨在武装狩猎武器的假设的两个预测：1）缓存点的形状应与杀戮/营地遗址的点相同，但通常大于，2）缓存点和杀戮/营地遗址的点应遵循相同的比例轨迹。分析结果与两个预测一致，因此支持假设。对分析结果与其他假设预测之间的拟合度进行的后续审查表明，分析仅支持狩猎设备假设。由此，我们得出结论，缓存的克洛维斯点可能是为了使用它们来武装狩猎武器而生产的。
