Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Cave Men only "Oooga Booga" => Topic started by: jamie on January 11, 2010, 12:27:04 pm
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im doing a piece for a new exhibit at a museum i do work for. if they need anything sharp and deadly im the one they ask to reproduce it. anyway ive been asked for an atlatl and dart. ive been doing quite a bit of research into the setup so it looks authentic, not just something i made with my visions. biggest question of course with atlatls is whether the bannerstones were part of the atlatl. one study says it was used to quiet the whip sound down and it does. one dig shows the bannerstone inline with handles and hooks from an atlatl, however the stone wasnt winged, as most picture a bannerstone to be. i like bob bergs theory of the bannerstone being a flywheel for a drop spindle. this makes a lot of sense to me, especially because of the large variences in size you will find with bannerstones. only problem with this theory is the bannerstone production drops off around the same time when atlatls where being replaced with the bow and arrow. so the theory that it was used to produce thread for binding points and feathers to darts doesnt make sense. the bow and arrow require just as much thread if not more, if one adds the bowstring to the equation. wondering what everybodies thoughts are on the subject. peace
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I don't think anybody knows for sure. I've seen museum replicas done both with and without stones. All I know is that from what little I've experimented with them, I see absolutely no use at all for a bannerstone on an atlatl. They look cool, but actually seem to hinder the performance as far as I can tell- I can throw much farther and more accurately without one myself. Not to mention being a lot more work to make and more weight to tote around.
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i kinda feel the same about the production of the bannerstone. but in an advanced tribal society there are a lot of examples of artifacts that show they produced "unneeded" items. most of the stone knives i have seen had to be status symbols. so if it was a needed item then they would definetly use the time to produce them. you are right there is no answer and im gonna drive myself nuts figuring it out. ;D
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I heard a discussion were the bannerstone was used as part of a drop spindle in spining fiber into cordage.Don't know how much truth was in this observation,but an interesting thought.
Bone pile
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Fellas,
I'm certainly no expert but the bannerstones might be used in conjunction with the dart material. A lever doesn't bennift from extra weight....but if you are throwing a heavy dart (available wood, large points etc) there would be an advantage to increase the "driving" mass.
Not much different than big heavy bows for big heavy arrows. Maybe the guys with cane darts could use a good heavy hardwood thrower (atlatl) and could get more speed for the lighter weight? and the guys with only hardwood for shafts and/ or large heads (like small spear points) would want to increase the mass of the atlatl to better put energy into the heavier projectile. This might account for the differences in the size and shape of the stones themselves...or the total lack of them....just a thought
If the paleo indians were anything it was smart enough to know what works
half eye
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my biggest problem with that idea is the drilled bannerstones. the atlatl has to be turned down just to fit through that hole. so you are decreasing mass and increasing flexibility to add more weight.
another thing with the whip effect, that is supposed to be created by the bannerstone, that bothers me is there is already whip in the dart itself. so why add weight to atlatl. we dont add weight to the limbs of our bows to get more speed. we want our tips as light as possible.
thinking like a cave man the only reason i can come up with to add the bannerstone to the atlatl is to bash somethings skull in.
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I think it was more of a ceremonial bling thang.
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I think it was more of a ceremonial bling thang.
;D
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The skull bashing idea may not be too far off. since once the dart is gone, you might have immediate need for a club. Another thought comes to mind though; could they have been a sort of pommel weight, placed just below the hand rather than above it? It's done with heavy bladed swords to make them handle faster. Adding weight to the pommel makes the tip move faster by acting as a counter balance. Just a thought.
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i honestly think they made them to screw with us! ;D like the pommel idea though.
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You're on to it Jude! Anytime weight is added to a lever on the "load line" end,
it slows acceleration, but on the other side of the rocker anchor, fulcrum, it slows, acceleration
too,
allowing the work end to move more; receive more of the energy, like a teeter-totter with
one rider, and the dart on the opposite seat. The only
advantage, light or heavy dart, has to be a weight below the fulcrum. This weight also
causes the bottom to go backward less, causing the top, working end, to travel farther
-- slightly longer stroke. That is, the fulcrum will move forward more than it would without
the weight.
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Was wondering, and I don't mean to hijack, Comstock's chapter in TBB2 about Ancient European Bows talks about Atlatls using a cord wrapped around the shaft. I don't get how it was used. I'm just seeing it as stopping a release. Anyone understand this?
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Parnell its a handle with a long rope on it. The rope has a knot at the end. You wrap the knotted end around the end of the dart and throw it just like an atlatl. The handle isn't needed. I've thrown an arrow 140 yards with this method.
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Alright, I see. From the reading it sounded like the rope was to be wrapped around the shaft. Thanks for the reply.
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I don't think anybody knows for sure. I've seen museum replicas done both with and without stones. All I know is that from what little I've experimented with them, I see absolutely no use at all for a bannerstone on an atlatl. They look cool, but actually seem to hinder the performance as far as I can tell- I can throw much farther and more accurately without one myself. Not to mention being a lot more work to make and more weight to tote around.
I threw darts with a banner stoned atlatl and it was not pleasant for my arm. I felt like the whole atlatl was way too heavy. I am used to non-weighted atlatls so That may have something to do with it or I may not be using the right kind of dart system. Who knows what the missing link is.
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Good afternoon -
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Would it have a effect to some ones arm similar to changing from throwing a woofle ball to throwing a base balljust a thought i havent tried using a banner stone yet
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Could the stone have been used to stabilize the atlatl for better accuracy? Kinda like a stabilizer on bows...
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Don't know what happened to my last post but....
Have you ever gone canoeing and put the blade all the way in the water and tried to paddle? Pushing that column of water with the blade makes your hand wobble like crazy figure almost a square foot of water at 60 lbs more or less to the cubic foot times the lentgh of the stroke and that is a lot of weight to try to push. With the atlatl you have appx 2/3 of the dart weight in front of the atlatl and that does cause some wobble in your throw. Perhaps the banner stone is to stabilize the wobble of the throw.
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Not long ago I read that the weight may have been used as a counter weight to the dart. ( Cant remember where I read that.)
If you were in the ready position with the atlata raised the weight of the dart ( out front of your hand ) would get heavy and want to droop to the ground. The weight, on the atlata, would balance the dart in your hand. Then you could hold it "up" and ready much longer.
Makes since....
David
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You know it would be pretty cool if we could pull off some experiments on this. If nothing else it would satisfy our need to experiment with primitive tools.
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Here is the answer and it is the right one because it comes from me lol.... a bow shoots an arrow, spined based on the bows poundage...therefore moving the stone along the shaft would changing the speed of the cast. This would allow you to use more of the spear shafts within a group.
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The drilled banner stones are fragile. Exactly the opposite of what is needed. The inline banner stones make a lot more sense. Besides, there is existing evidence for the inline type.
I think the drilled banner stones were flywheels, like you guys suggested earlier. Flywheels are used for spinning cordage, drilling holes, and for gambling games. One drilled banner stone could serve many different needs. That's my take. :)
If it is true that banner stones went by the wayside when the bow and arrow was introduced, that would be very interesting.
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Jack Crafty, your comment about the bannerstones going away is an interesting comment.
I recall a discussion with an archeologist from the Middle Mississippi Valley that may be of interest. He said that atlatl bannerstones in this area (MO, IL,KY, TN AR) started out as the type you bind on. This was the early Archaic which is roughly 7,000 years ago (keep in mind that date can vary from region to region). H e then said bannerstone use increased and the winged type stones were introduced by about 5,000 years ago or the middle Archaic period. By the late Archaic period (4,000 ya) bannerstone use declined including the winged variety. By the Woodland period few if any bannerstones could be found in our area.
He then offered up some juicy tidbits. I pass these along for the primitive philosophers among us.
First, he said you can look at some of the copper and flint maces that were crafted in the Woodland and Mississippian periods and they resemble a winged bannerstone. I went back and looked through some books and he was right. There is one very famous flint mace from Lilbourn Missouri that does indeed resemble an hour glass bannerstone. He explained it as a leftover. Kind of like Microsoft Word using a 3.5 inch floppy disk image as an icon for "save"; who even uses those things anymore? A leftover. Bows were introduced in at least the Woodland period around here. So he suggested that the atlatl was a vestigial tool at this point. but its icon held some meaning.
Second, he indicated that if you examine the paleo-climate for this area there was a warm and dry period (called a hypisthermal period) that created a lot of prairie habitat even in the Ozarks where it was dominated by trees most of its prehistory all the way back to right after the ice age. His point was that atlatls were clumsy in a forest due to the wooden objects you could strike and knock the spear off the hook. A prairie, in his estimation, would provide a more open environment. Less "clanking" opportunities I suppose. Bottom line, his point was that the banner stone rise and fall is matched perfectly with the hypistehrmal. When you have more water and cooler climate that is good for trees and is good to fill your streams and rivers. He indicated that when aquatic resources became scarce, more and more people used hunting to fill the pantry. The bannerstone may have been worth the effort if you really depended on it. 200 hours of craftsmanship may have been worth it if it did, or you thought it helped your hunt. Once things began to cool and become wetter they could depend on the aquatic resources as they once had. Thus bannerstones became less important until the bow was introduced.
I throw that out there for discussion in good spirit. There are some very knowledgeable people on this site and we can certainly learn something from such conversations.
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I have been given to understand that the banner stone may have served the purpose of allowing the throwing arm to be held in the cocked and ready position for longer periods of time as it would provide a counter weight to the long end of the spear. Depending upon the hunting/fighting environment, it may have been significantly advantageous to be able to walk about "at the ready" rather than having to load a dart and cock your arm into position for a cast just as you noticed a possible opportuinty to take a shot. I've done my own simple tesing of this idea and it seemed to work out in my experience, ...though my testing was far from anything that could be called scientific!
OneBow
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Before I type let me say I know almost nothing about atlalts besides what I learned in school, and googling pics of bannerstones so this may be common sense, ridiculous or revolutionary. (I doubt its the last one)
With that being said, Some of the banner stone pics look like it was tied on back stationary as a counterweight of some sort. Some looked like a hole drilled thru the rock and slid onto the shaft of the atlatl. I'm referring to the ones with the hole drilled.
If the stone was left to slide up the shaft from your hand to the tip as you thru it would in not give you a lot more power on your swing??
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I made two of these atlatls with winged bannerstones. One with a long shaft and one with a short shaft. My observations about bannerstones are the following:
- It makes throwing harder on my arm.
It does not improve my distance.
It may even decrease it.
It does dampen the swish during my throw in terms of volume and pitch.
It looks really cool and attracts attention down at buffalo wild wings ;)
Longer shafts make the weight harder to manage in a throw.
Shorter shafts cause less strain on my arm.
The further the weight is from the handle the harder it is to accelerate the system.
Regarding the sliding bannerstone, following are my opinions: :D
- If the bannerstone were to slide I am well certain the hook (which is glued on) would eventually be knocked off, unless there were a stop short of hitting it.
this would make throwing even harder.
If there was such a stop I am certain the repeated thump of the bannerstone would wear that down allowing it to move forward incrementally.
furthermore a slide with a sudden stop would make noise which no sane hunter wants.
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Maybe it was just there for looks 8)
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Cahokia Mounds had their archeology day event yesterday. At the event was Larry Kinsella. Larry make all sorts of replicas including igneous celts, and banner stones. He recently had a paper published in Ethnoarcheology where he used biomechanical analysis to show that bannerstones on atlatls actually took stress off of certain muscle groups for one action only - holding the atlatl in the ready position. A balance function was suggested decades ago and here it is back in the headlines.
Let's say for the sake of argument he is right. Deer hunters think about this. If you need to hold this system steady, with no movement for extended periods; wouldn't you want this to happen without fatigue? I don't know if that article is on line but it caught my interest enough to find out.
Oh and Jackcrafty is right about the bannerstones being fragile. They break easily around the drilled hole area. Another good reason not to allow them to slide with force.
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The journal is on line and costs to see the full article.
I am tight. Here is the abstract.
Abstract:
There are many hypotheses concerning the distinctive prehistoric ground-stone artifacts known to Americanist archaeologists as bannerstones or atlatl (spear-thrower) weights, but there is no consensus concerning the best explanation for their form and function. Based upon several decades of experience replicating and using atlatls, as well as observing white-tailed deer behavior in deciduous woodlands of eastern North America, I suggest a plausible function for bannerstones that differs from previous interpretations. For a hunter of white-tailed deer, waiting in ambush with atlatl and projectile in pre-launch position, a bannerstone attached to the atlatl works very well as a counterbalance. Focus upon detailed behavior of specific prey animals as well as on the hunting techniques and equipment of their human predators opens new lines of inquiry about atlatls and bannerstones.
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I'm with SWAMP.
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In recent discussions with Larry Kinsella, he believes they were a counterbalance on the atl atl itslef. Used only as a method of offsetting the wieght of the dart while waiting to throw the dart.
He has studied deer movement and has determined that it takes a deer approx. 2 minutes to calm down if it is nervous. Try this experiment. Hold your dart in FULL DRAW with an atlatl that is not weighted, for two minutes. Observe your arm fatigue and the ever lowering point of the dart. Now hold one that has the weight on it. What does it do and how does it feel. I just last week at Flint Ridge did this very thing and it was quite striking the difference. Must be a full draw. If you have a nervous deer in front of you you cannot afford the drawing motion needed to throw.
Read this:
http://www.flintknapper.com/Larry%27s%20SEAC%20paper.htm
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I find it funny that I can learn more about physics on this site than any of the books I've read, and the irony is in the name of the web site. You guys blow my mind on a daily basis.
Carry on you primitive minded bad asses
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Purely ceremonial, to show status, cultural ... whatever you want to call it. Not sure why so much time would be put into a weight? Also, every bannerstone (finished) I've ever seen has a drilled hole no greater than a half inch in diameter... tell me that would be effective size for an atlatl hurling a long heavy dart? No way!
I believe they were simply on a staff to show a meaning/symbolic solely.
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wstanley
bannerstones are always a good discussion, and I have not read much recently, so if you happen to know please share.
what is the evidence that connects the type of bannerstone you speak of, to an atlatl? have they been they found in close proximity? has there been a find where they were still attached together?
thanks
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willie,
Not sure I'm following what your asking? I am simply commenting that the shape of these things.... to me (I make atlatls and weights) it doesn't make sense that they were atlatl weights or silencers. I cannot comment on the context to how they are found. You would want to read an archaeological report where these were recovered, of which I'm sure there is plenty, to get an idea of their context with other artifacts.