ABSTRACT

A variety of flaked stone projectile point attributes can affect impact durability, which is the relationship between projectile impact force and point breakage. We examine the role of isometric scaling – size – on impact durability. Using 30 experimentally knapped points that varied predominately only in size, we conducted a ballistics experiment to understand whether points of certain sizes were more likely to break, or more likely to lose length, either absolutely or as a percentage of original length. Our results suggested that points of different sizes did not differ in how much absolute length they lost, but that there is a significant relationship between point size and percentage of original length lost – namely that larger points are more likely to lose less percentage length. Our experimental results suggest that point size should be considered along with shape and other attributes in future studies of impact durability and technological evolution.

摘要

各种碎石弹点属性都会影响耐冲击性，即弹丸冲击力与点破损的关系。我们研究了等距缩放 - 尺寸 - 对冲击耐久性的作用。使用 30 个仅在大小上主要变化的实验性折断点，我们进行了弹道学实验，以了解某些大小的点是否更可能断裂，或更可能失去长度，无论是绝对长度还是原始长度的百分比。我们的结果表明，不同大小的点在它们丢失的绝对长度方面没有差异，但点大小与原始长度丢失的百分比之间存在显着关系——即较大的点更有可能丢失较少的百分比长度。