Clovis point allometry, modularity, and integration: Exploring shape variation due to tool use with landmark-based geometric morphometrics.

ABSTRACT: Landmark-based geometric morphometrics (LGM) is most often used in archaeology to characterize and differentiate groups of artifacts, but it can be used for much more. We demonstrate LGM's power to uncover new insights by exploring stone-tool allometry, modularity, and integration using a sample of 100 western North American Clovis points. Here, allometry concerns how stone tools change in shape as their size changes through their use-lives, and modularity and integration concern how the constituent parts of a tool work together. We show that Clovis points are surprisingly complex tools. When their blades and hafts are defined technologically, rather than arbitrarily, they unambiguously exhibit allometry, and their hafts and blades are modular and highly integrated. We use these analyses t

SUBMITTER: Thulman DK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10431674 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature