Stone Arrowheads - Museum of Stone Tools

Arrowheads

An arrowhead is the armature affixed to the tip of an arrow. Stone was a preferred raw material for arrowheads throughout prehistory.

The bow may have been invented by ca. 64,000 BP at Sibudu Cave in South Africa. Archaeologists have identified quartz backed microliths with high-velocity impact damage, but it is possible that they were dart armatures for use with a spearthrower, rather than arrowheads. Impact damage on stone tools may indicate the use of the bow-and-arrow in Europe by ca. 45,000 BP, and in the Dyuktai culture of Siberia and the Jōmon culture of Japan by ca. 16,000 BP.

However, the earliest unambiguous evidence for bow-and-arrow technology is a wood bow fragment recovered from a Magdalenian period site at Mannheim-Vogelstang, Germany, dated to ca. 18,000-17,500 BP, and Stellmoor in Germany, where arrows and a bow fragment were recovered dating to ca. 12,700-11,600 BP. The remains of five complete bows from ca. 7000 BP were discovered at the Holmegårds site in Denmark. These early European archers used arrows armed with stone microliths.

The bow and arrow was used in most regions of the world during the Holocene, with the exception of Australia and parts of Oceania. It was probably independently invented many times, and some cultures used both spearthrowers and bows. Bow-and-arrow technology was often imbued with social and symbolic significance.

Arrows must be properly balanced to perform effectively. An arrow flexes when leaving a bow, and straightens out in flight; if the arrow flexes too much or too little, it will fly poorly and be less accurate. Ancient wood bows worked best with relatively flexible arrows, which required small stone arrowheads to balance them properly. Although the armatures for arrows were invariably small, the armatures for spearthrower darts could also be small, and they overlap in size with arrowheads. Archaeologists usually identify a stone tool as an arrowhead by size, shape, and modifications to the stone (such as notches or a stem) for affixing the arrowhead to the shaft. Arrowheads were frequently made on flakes or blades and shaped using a pressure flaking technique, often applied bifacially.

Arrowheads differed stylistically from region to region and through time, but similar styles arose independently in various times and places. One of the most common arrowhead styles is the hollow-based point, with an indented base. Notched and stemmed arrowheads were also used extensively. Arrowheads were sometimes serrated on the edges to increase the tissue damage they caused to prey.