A Geometric Morphometric Analysis of Avonlea Projectile Points From The Whiting Slough Site (ElNs-10)

Abstract

Traditionally typological sequences and projectile point style groups have been produced using visual subjective and metric techniques. However, in the last 20 years’ archaeologists have begun to use shape analysis as an alternative, borrowing this technique from Ecologists, Evolutionary Biologists, and Bioanthropologists. Increasing our understanding of the overall shape of artifacts. This thesis project has improved the shape analysis method by creating a new two-dimensional landmark-based geometric morphometric method that can be used on any artifact where shape is a concern. The projectile point sample that was studied in this thesis is from the Whiting Slough site (ElNs-10), a single component Avonlea site discovered by Western Heritage in 2013. This new method captures the two-dimensional outline using an arbitrary, repeatable, and standardized way of recording landmark coordinates. Increasing the resolution of the outline produced and improving the quality of the data. A Procrustes analysis produced highly significant correlation data and identified two distinct Avonlea style projectile points, Group A (the typical Avonlea Type site projectile point style) and Group B, a different Avonlea projectile point style. Further tests were completed in which the sample was compared to two Benson’s Beehive Complex projectile points, a Timber Ridge projectile point, a Pelican Lake point, a Sonota point, and a Plains Side-Notched projectile point. These tests further supported the robust results and provided new avenues for future research.