The investigation of Neandertal projectile technology through controlled ballistic experimentes aimed at understanding impact fractures. Acronym: NeProTECH

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In the last ten years, the body of evidence in favor of Neandertal hunting has grown. The concurrence of the faunal data, the discovery of the Schöningen spears (Thieme 1997), that of a stone point embedded in a wild ass vertebra at Umm-el-Tlel (Boeda et al. 1999), and the ever-increasing evidence for hafting in the Middle Paleolithic suggests that hunting with projectile weapons is probably quite ancient. Despite much work on identifying fracture and wear patterns associated with stone projectile use, no unambiguous criteria for carrying out the Identifications exist. We argue that this is because previous studies have not sufficiently controlled for confounding factors, and we propose a rigorous experimental program which should enable us to create a reference collection of impact fractures. We propose to test the effect of speed/force and angle of impact on fracture patterns in identical glass copies of an archaeological Levallois point (controlling for shape and raw material fracture properties). The projectiles will be shot at homogeneous targets made of synthetic materials (ballistic gelatine and synthetic chamois) and bone. The projectiles will be first launched from a highprecision ballistic gun in a laboratory setting, and, in a second experiment, they will be attached to spear shafts and shot at the same targets using a calibrated crossbow. The points will be photographically documented and analyzed both macro and microscopically and the results published in several peer-reviewed journals. The database of fracture patterns will be made public on a dedicated website.