South African Archaeological Bulletin 66 (193): 67–76, 2011 67 Field and Technical Report A MACROFRACTURE STUDY OF BONE POINTS USED IN EXPERIMENTAL HUNTING WITH REFERENCE TO THE SOUTH AFRICAN MIDDLE STONE AGE JUSTIN BRADFIELD 1 & MARLIZE LOMBARD 2 1 Institute for Human Evolution and School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, WITS, 2050, South Africa. E-mail: justin.bradfield@students.wits.ac.za 2 Department of Anthropology and Development Studies, University of Johannesburg, P.O. Box 524, Auckland Park, Johannesburg, 2006, South Africa (Received April 2011. Revised May 2011) INTRODUCTION Formal techniques of bone-working, and the possible use of bone points as components in hunting weaponry, used to be associated with behaviourally modern Homo sapiens during the Eurasian Upper Palaeolithic and the African Later Stone Age (LSA) after ~40 ka (see McBrearty & Brooks 2000; Mitchell 2002; Marean & Assefa 2005). Deliberately worked bone objects are rare at African Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites older than ~40 ka. At first, most of these MSA bone artefacts were brushed aside as late aberrations or the result of stratigraphic mixing (e.g. Klein & Edgar 2002). The interpretation of ancient archaeological bone points as hunting weapons has largely been based on morphological analogy with recent hunter-gatherer artefacts (e.g. Backwell et al. 2008), and hypothetical reconstructions (e.g. Clark 1967; Lombard & Parsons 2008). Both approaches are indirect ways to infer function, and ethnographic analogy becomes riskier the deeper we move back in time. The discovery of formally fashioned bone points in securely dated and stratified MSA archaeological deposits at the South African sites of Blombos and Sibudu, some as early as ~77 ka (Fig. 1) (Henshilwood et al. 2001a,b; d’Errico & Henshilwood 2007; Backwell et al. 2008), have led to renewed interest in the probable functions of these tools. It has previously been suggested that bone working could possibly be tied to the development of mechanically projected weaponry, perhaps including bows and arrows, and that this association may explain their presence in some MSA contexts (McBrearty & Brooks 2000). Currently, based on morphometric comparison with LSA and ethnographic bone points, two bone points from Sibudu (Backwell et al. 2008), excavated from layers dating between 61.7 ± 1.5 and 64.7 ± 1.9 ka (Jacobs & Roberts 2008; Wadley 2010a), represent the best candidates for this interpre- tation. Though tantalising, this hypothesis remains to be supported and/or tested with more direct evidence. The increasing recovery of bone tools (although still low in number), from excavated deposits of unambiguous MSA contexts, provides evidence for contextualised, systematic bone-tool manufacture and use from ~75 ka (d’Errico & Henshilwood 2007). Hence, finding more direct ways to infer function for these ancient tools may be useful. At present, it is understood that although the MSA bone tool assemblages from South Africa demonstrate technical ability and competence, their presence does not automatically imply cognitive or behavioural complexity that can be considered ‘modern’ (e.g. FIG. 1. Map of South Africa showing provincial boundaries and the two sites of Sibudu and Blombos Cave, which have the most securely dated bone points occurring in the MSA of South Africa.