Identifying the origin and widespread use of projectile technologies, one of the most significant technological innovations in human evolution, remains a key challenge of Palaeolithic archaeology. Reconstructions of early weapon technologies do not only allow assessing past hunting strategies, but also the technical and cognitive capacities of Palaeolithic hominins. In this framework, the appearance of stone-tipped spears has been described as a tipping point in human evolution, facilitating an important advancement in prey acquisition through distance hunting. The exact timing of the appearance and subsequent spread of hafted hunting weapons remains a point of contention, but claims for Neanderthal projectile technologies are frequent.
Neanderthals occupied large parts of Europe and western Asia from ca. 300,000 to 40,000 years ago (a period known as the Middle Palaeolithic (MP)). Across this large spatio-temporal range thousands of find spots with stone tools and animal bones have been recovered. Recent zooarchaeological studies and isotope analyses continue to demonstrate that Neanderthals were skilled hunters, with a hunting strategy targeted on prime aged large and medium sized animals. Due to unfavourable preservation conditions remains of organic spears and hafts from Palaeolithic contexts are sparse. Hence, recognising Neanderthal hunting technologies is reliant upon the identification of lithic weapon tips in the archaeological record. So far the predominant focus has been on in-depth analyses of individual points to assess their specific use as a weapon tip. Conversely, TIP-N-POINT aims to contextualise pointed elements within the framework of the entire stone tool assemblage, assessing characteristics used to imply projectile use or hafting across both pointed and non-pointed blanks. TIP-N-POINT further aimed to integrate datasets from various disciplines (zooarchaeology, lithic analysis, dating methods, biomolecular approaches) to provide an enhanced perspective on Neanderthal hunting practices.
