Another Great Basin Atlatl with Dart Foreshafts and other Artifacts: Implications and Ramifications

The purpose of this paper then is to add new data on yet another distinctive Great Basin atlatl with attached weight and associated dart foreshafts, one of which still has a stone point attached to the shaft, and to explore the implications of such a find to studies of Great Basin culture dynamics. At the same time, the fallibility of the statistical support for the discriminant analysis which purportedly allows one to classify unknown projectile points as either arrowheads or dart tips (Thomas 1978) is examined. This paper, of course, builds upon extant studies of Great Basin atlatls (Hester, Mildner, and Spencer 1974), and other studies of atlatls known archaeologically and ethnographically in the New World (Grant 1979; Hester 1974a, 6 W.Taylor 1966; L. G. Massey 1972 W. Massey 1961; Driver and Massey 1957 Metraux 1949; Cressman, Williams, and Kreiger 1940; Cressman, et al 1942; Cressman 1944) and particularly in the Southwest (Kidder and Guemsey 1919; Guemsey and Kidder 1921; Guemsey 1931; Aveylera, Maldonado-Koerdell, and Martinez del Rio 1956)