00:00.00 archpodnet Welcome to episode 112 of a life ruins podcast where investigate the careers of those living life in ruins I'm your host Carlton Goburn and I am joined by my co-host Connor John and apparently David is on an unexpected journey. Ah some dwarfs showed up. He got recruited to deal with some sort of flying lizard I don't know what the deal is. Um, but today we have with us once again, Dr. Devin Pettigre a graduate of the university of Colorado Boulder who has appeared 3 times already on episodes None episode None and then to talk about his dissertation episode None and today we have ah. Are blessed with Devin's presence to talk about another recent experiment that both me Connor and David got to take part in as well as donny dust and some others chance Ward Tom don't know Tom's last name and Hanson that's what I thought Tom Hanson and ah. 00:51.84 Devin Handsome. 01:55.86 archpodnet And Phil Britton but today we're going to be talking about an article that came out relatively recently within the past. Ah it came out August Twenty Twenty one so last you know beginning of fall ah called the on the efficacy of clovis fluted points for hunting. Probaidians by Aaron at all. So just to start us off Devin how you doing man. 01:54.84 Devin Ah, doing pretty good. You know job search is is amazing. So so inspiring and and fun. Yeah I being sarcast. 01:35.32 connor And he says with 0 sarcasm he yes to say. 03:14.12 archpodnet So. 02:28.74 Devin Know you know going to school is quite. It's quite a lot of fun in comparison. Ah to what comes immediately after especially if you're trying to go the academic route So that's where I'm at. 03:52.76 archpodnet I Can't relate. Um, however I ah right? Ah, but but more but more seriously so I guess you know we've been actually. 03:04.52 Devin Ah, this is true garlton. 02:25.74 connor I Ah Carton Yeah I'm going to kindly tell you to fuck off. 04:29.92 archpodnet You reached out to us ah put this on our radar months ago and we've been talking about it for like eight months now having you on the podcast to to chat about this article and and kind of explain some of the main points that are made the data that's used and how it could be better and. Fortunately, we were able to do this experimental. Um, project with you recently up in the mountains and to highlight some of the methodologies that could be used and and some data that that you've gathered gathered collected um to kind of show the the efficiency and efficacy of actually of clovis points. So I guess. 04:39.10 Devin Right? right. 05:44.60 archpodnet Just starting us off um, could you give us a ah brief summary of aonette. All's claims in their article in the journal of archaeological science report thirty Nine 2021 05:07.52 Devin Sure. Yeah, they they kind of approach this topic from None different directions one being the archeology and the other being an experimental approach or approaches I should say because they actually compile a. Kind of a range of experimental data. Um, and they're looking at impact damages on stone points in terms of the archeology stone points associated with mammoths. Um, and you know how frequently are they impacted. Typically if you launch a stone point at something and hit something hard. It's going to break because stone stone is very hard. It takes a nice edge. But it's also brittle. So so they're looking at frequencies of impact damage on close points and later types of points associated with kill sites. And then in terms of the experimental portion which is what I would like to focus more on they're compiling ah data from a number of different experiments including a couple of my own and but mainly they're focusing on a controlled experiment that was. Formed at Kent state where they tested some different shapes of Clovis points. They weren't you know if you picked it up. You would immediately say that's a clovis point because they they took chert and they ground it on lapidary equipment to to shape like a clovis point. And then they shot those into clay in the pottery clay as their target and they had a previous experiment to try and validate pottery clay which is really important to do if you're going to use a target simant as a flesh simant. It should be. You know you should show. It's it's actually a valid. Flash simulate and they just looked at the the range of penetration that they were getting into that Clay Target and and the other experiments they they looked at included various types of targets. A lot of ballistics skeleton targets. A lot of and a few experiments with actual animal carcasses like the one I performed on the bison where you're actually doing what we would call instead of a controlled experiment like a traditional lab controlled experiment. You might call it more of a naturalistic. 10:16.92 Devin Actualistic type of experiment for actually launching darts by hand or shooting actual arrows into an animal carcass so they they compiled all that and they just took a broad look at like mean penetration depths and then compared that with the anatomy. Anatomy of probisidians of mamas to get a sense of how clovis projectile equipment would perform in a hunting kind of scenario and I guess to to really quickly summarize they found that close points have. Lower frequency of impact damage than you know Clovis points found associated with bison do so the ones that found associated with mammoths weren't as frequently impacted. Um, that's kind of a real broad overview of that segment. But they also in terms of penetration depth. They were kind of getting mean like twenty centimeter deep penetration which they're saying basically what they're saying is they don't penetrate as as well as we we think they ought to and there's all sorts of you know there's a history to this. Or clobu archaeologists paleo archaeologists have thought that paleloaden and points were like the epitome of you know, a really wellde designed hunting our mature stone hunting arm mature hunting and they're saying that. Not so much based on what they're what they're finding. 12:30.64 connor And that's that like starts I mean that that history starts at least at 1989 with George Frisn going to Africa and and and stabbing a probasityian with the ah clovis point in the classic. 14:34.30 archpodnet Um, well what I find it interestingly 1 they cite David they cite David's thesis and I think they mischaracterize it because they talk about like recent studies show that projectile point that has a small tip cross section and. 13:04.68 connor Stabby Stabby I don't know kind of. 13:56.80 Devin Um, but if in. 15:07.80 archpodnet Like is optimal and it's like David was trying to figure out if you can identify arrow points versus clovis poor at little points based on firing him off a bow so it's like that's not what he was doing of course that what he's flying from a bow arrow this smaller arrows or smaller. 14:33.58 Devin Yeah. 15:43.36 archpodnet Points are going to be more effective, especially from a modern you know mechanism. It's like that's not what David claims that's not that's not okay. 14:57.72 Devin Yeah, well so that actually brings up a really important point a couple of really important points 1 is that we need to ah yes, shut up carlton. 16:09.50 archpodnet So aren't they all very important points Devan because it's a. 14:43.58 connor And go away way if I was the meet if I was the producer I would mute you just kick him out until you were until you were dad joke. Yeah. 15:38.82 Devin Um, yeah, just yeah for what was I saying God I gonna try and sound really smart and now I'll just totally derail me. 16:52.70 archpodnet I That so sorry smart Such a such a dumb joke. Um, you're saying they brought up some very that would that That's a very good um observation. Yeah. 15:24.30 connor Um, that's my job Carlton like come on. 16:24.97 Devin Yeah, now what you're saying right? What you're saying is a very important point what you're basically you're saying that they they used the data from David's experiment in a way that David wasn't you know, setting out to use it or. 15:47.62 connor You. 17:01.98 Devin It's not that those aren't the conclusions that he drew from it and perhaps more importantly, those weren't the questions that he was trying to ask and that plays back into the experimental results in a lot of ways right? How we designed an experiment. We're gonna set up an experiment to answer certain questions a lot of times we're trying to. Use a hypotheticaluctive deductive approach where we've got a hypothesis we're trying to test and we have ah a very specific experimental design. That's that's going to address that and so David's hypothesis wasn't any you know, anything approaching how they how they use that data. Um, now they have a table of of experiments that basically you can make the same kind of complaint about um that doesn't mean that you know the way they're using those data is and. You know at all applicable to what they're trying to say but it does you know you you should you should start off being a little bit. Um, careful for that reason the other thing we should think about is the result. 20:13.80 archpodnet And well I want to take a point like actually kind of talking about that same table. They only use one of David's points when he used multiple I think it was like 30 wasn't it Conor. It was like he used a large amount of the same style of side notch point. 19:31.34 Devin In. 20:53.22 archpodnet But 30 different sizes and in their table. They just have 1 um, but they're not the same size. 20:06.80 Devin A. 19:23.88 connor They they have 1 entry but it has 7 samples for it. But I think he he shot. Yeah yeah, and I think but he shot multiple sizes I thought he definitely shot more than seven so they're only picking a couple examples out of that. 21:28.10 archpodnet Yeah, and then you'll and right. 19:57.32 connor And they're reporting like a mean average speed from that. 20:44.24 Devin Yeah, ah, yeah, and they're also reporting a mean mean penetration death from my bison experiment but they only used the results from the shooting the bow and arrow and. If you recall the bow and arrow used in that experiment was kind of a it was like a £50 cherokee bow with a lightweight cane arrow river cane arrow not the kind of bow and arrow set up that if you were a modern hunter and you were going to kill a bison. Somebody said you know you can do this hunt here's a bison. What are you going to use and you brought that out somebody would think you were nuts. Um, they also pulled together mean penetration depths for my pig experiment for my hog experiment. And here's the the main point bows and arrows just like bows and arrows avetile avets and darts are highly variable. Weapons. Ah they come in a lot of different sizes. They carry a lot of variable range and momentum. Kinetic energy and what we set out to test in that hog experiment was a range of Avedon Dart sizes including replicas of darbs from the southwest the us southwest these are replicas of what we would call archaeologically basket maker weapon equipment. From the late archa in the southwest. So you know, roughly 2 to 4000 year skill and they're pretty light that the darts are small and light. They're only like five feet long or so approaching six feet long in some cases. Um and and so i. Was really interested in these weapons for quite a long time and I wanted to know. Could you hunt a bison with one of these and so when I did my master's thesis I really wanted a bi. So actually I wanted one from my since my honors thesis for my undergrad. That time I got a dead bloated cow and then for my master's thesis I got a pig instead of a bi but we may do the point is though that those darts do not perform very well on a pig. They're not the kinds of darts that you would want to hunt a pig with just like the. Arrows were printed pretty light for a bison. Although you could actually kill a bison with one of those if you didn't hit a rib. Um and as a result those those samples of weapons of lightweight arrows of those lightweight basket maker darts unsurprisingly they didn't. 26:21.84 Devin Form that well they didn't penetrate very deeply but they were never basket maker people were never hunting hogs. This is a fact because hogs did not live in the southwest they were probably hunting mountain sheep desert mount bighorn mountain sheep for you know the majority of the like the bigger game they were hunting they were also apparently killing each other with them and they were hunting rabbits and they may have been hunting animals as big as elk and occasionally they may have been hunting bison but the the issue here is that the weapon system. Isn't necessarily matched to the prey species that we were shooting them into and they weren't supposed to be. We were testing. This is my point. The hypothesis was you know basket maker weapon systems could not kill a hawk. Bas can maker weapon systems could not kill Abys um, both of those are you know what we found out was like if they hit ribs. You're done that animal is gone if they have a really sharp point on there and they and you land them just right. You could kill an animal like a hog or a bison but this affects the penetration depth. So if you're just going to get mean penetration depths from those experiments because we used a lot of those types of darts you're going to end up with a low mean penetration depth. If on the other hand you did an experiment where you were throwing big heavy darts at a goat we Donny launched a six foot dart entirely through a goat. Yeah. 30:43.58 archpodnet It was that was so epic I mean it? Yeah I was there. It got very icky because it went through intestines. 30:05.48 Devin Yeah, it was gross I Do not recommend that at all and I'm done testing goats but it it hit right behind the ribs and it just like the whole dart just launched through that goat and if that was all you were testing on that kind of animal your penetration depth would be way. Way higher. So You know what you're asking and the kinds of of iterations of weapons that you're using is really important in these experiments and it's going to dramatically change the experimental results. 30:33.60 connor I Because a big thing they're talking about is they have that histogram under that table saying that like this is where clovis points fall based on accumulation of all this sort of data but like you're saying there's no contextualizing it into like why they're firing are they all testing penetration. Are they asking different questions because that's like I think that's what starts their argument is that okay clovis points don't really penetrate that well based on all this reported data but like you're saying there's no contexting. There's no Contextualizing. You don't know. Enough about the addle addles or darts or anything like that to really feel comfortable, comfortable asking that question. 32:32.78 Devin Right. 33:32.80 archpodnet Well and and they mention you know on page. Let me see here. Sorry 8 you know quote there are documented experimental instances of full-sized arts penetrating all the way through Pig Bisonner Caribou carcasses 32:41.96 Devin Which is yeah. 34:06.60 archpodnet But these individual instances are anomies not frequent or even sely regular occurrences now that's I don't based on my experiments being Devin's tonto in a lot of these cases. It's like I've seen and every time we've done one of these experiments a dart has gone through. If not all the way through a carcass I put one through a bison you can see that on Youtube Donny put that one on through a bison and that's on the same Youtube video. 33:56.58 Devin Yeah. Yeah Carlton you got like almost a meter penetration through a bison. 35:05.42 archpodnet And because it went through it went in between ribs and and going back to what you said earlier I threw a dart it hit the rib cage. It was an obsidian point and it exploded like a fragrenate with like one Mill not even a millimeter of penetration like it hit something hard and exploded. 34:33.40 Devin Yeah. 34:46.60 Devin Yeah. 35:42.66 archpodnet And so that issue of and contextualizing these studies. You know it's important when making claims like this because they have a lot of studies presented and I would highly recommend. You know everyone actually read the studies that they talk about because this is. It's interesting. How the data is being presented and I don't know if I highly doubt it's meant to be nefarious. Um and we're speaking of this because like Devin is actively quoted all this our podcast host is actively quoted in this and we've all engaged in these studies like we're coming at this from a lens of. 35:36.16 Devin Now. 36:53.82 archpodnet Yeah, unlike some of the other things We we've critiqued. We actually kind of know what we're talking about when it comes to this content. You know we you do this? My proudest moment is putting that dart through a clean through a bison like don't take that away from me. 35:22.52 connor Yeah, this isn't hope Yeah, this isn't the hope oil or the revolutionary war like get this like this is like stuff we understand. 36:08.80 Devin Um, ah. 36:34.98 Devin Yeah. 35:53.84 connor Ah, it looks like we're clean through this segment though. Um and we will be right back with episode None of a life and ruins podcast. 37:31.56 archpodnet Um.