Clovis points and foreshafts under braced weapon compression: Modeling Pleistocene megafauna encounters with a lithic pike.

Historical and ethnographic sources depict use of portable braced shaft weapons, or pikes, in megafauna hunting and defense during Late Holocene millennia in North and South America, Africa, Eurasia and Southeast Asia. Given the predominance of megafauna in Late Pleistocene North America during the centuries when Clovis points appeared and spread across much of the continent (13,050-12,650 cal BP), braced weapons may have been used in hunting of megaherbivores and defense against megacarnivores. Drawing from historical examples of pike use against lions, jaguars, boars, grizzlies, carabao and warhorses we consider the possibility of a fluted lithic pike.

Dynamics of change in multiethnic societies: An archaeological perspective from colonial North America.

This Perspective presents an overview of the archaeology of pluralistic colonies (approximately late 1500s-1800s) in North America. It complements the other special feature papers in this issue on ancient societies in Mesoamerica, the Near East, the Armenian Highlands, Peru, and China by presenting another body of literature for examining the dynamics of change in multiethnic societies from a different time and place. In synthesizing archaeological investigations of mercantile, plantation, and missionary colonies, this Perspective shows how this research is relevant to the study of pluralism in both historic and ancient societies in three ways.