The
bow available to prehistoric peoples wasn’t accurate enough to kill
game reliably beyond, perhaps, 35 m. Because of this hard limitation
hunters had to be able to approach game, such as ungulates, to within
that distance.
This
is incredibly hard to do. Many ungulates have somewhat poor eyesight
but are excellent at motion detection. Being herd animals, a startle
by one causes all the rest to flee.
Given
this behavior, hunters must put thought into the question of
controlling animal’s flight or movement. There are a couple of
approaches. In one approach archers must be stationed (sometimes in
trees) in areas that the hunters think the animals will
run. The animals are then deliberately moved – often in a battue.
In
the other approach the landscape must be tailored in some way to
increase the probability that the animals will run in a desired
direction. This is the origin of the ‘kite’ or game-drive system
(and, I am convinced, with the cursus in England, or
the mustatil in Arabia).[1]
Getting
back to the original point I have recently come across three or four
readings to justify the idea of the relatively short range accuracy
of prehistoric archery.
The
earliest that I have is V. Stefánsson
who
was visiting the Eskimo in the Coronation Gulf area of northern
Canada, south of Victoria Island. Of their archery he says
this:
"As
to the efficiency of the bow: Tolerable accuracy; such as is needed
in shooting birds, is not secured beyond a range of twenty-five or
thirty yards. Against caribou the effective range varies with
different archers generally between seventy-five and ninety yards;
and is probably not over one hundred." [2]
About
the same period the explorer, Diamond Jenness, visited the Copper
Eskimo who also live in the
area around Coronation
Gulf,
on Victoria
Island,
and southern Banks
Island.
He,
too, tested their archery skills and reports this:
"My
own observations led me to a less favourable conclusion. Ikpakhuak
was reputed to be one of the best bowmen in Dolphin and Union strait,
and the maximum distance he could send an arrow was about 125 yards.
Even at a fixed target his marksmanship was indifferent. During the
summer of 1915 the natives set up a clod of earth about a foot square
for a target. They went back forty paces and tried their skill, but
only about one shot in twenty hit the mark. The men seemed to be no
more accurate than the children, though, their bows being stronger,
their arrows flew with more velocity. Two of the women joined in the
sport, using their husbands' or their children's bows; they acquitted
themselves hardly less creditably than the others. I frequently
watched the men shooting at ptarmigan and water-fowl, and without
exception their marksmanship was poor. It was no better even with
larger game. They could hardly fail to hit a caribou at fifteen or
twenty yards when the animal was stationary, but I have seen them
miss a running deer at this range. They themselves admit that the bow
is of little use at distances greater than about thirty yards."
[3]
Rasmussen
visited the Inuit near King William’s Island in 1922-3. While
there he had occasion to observe the Inuit’s archery. He says
this:
"When
I was there most grown men still had bows and arrows, but the
impression I received from their shooting practice was no great one.
A record of ten archers showed that scarcely any one of them could
hit the mark with anything like certainty at a range of about twenty
metres and it is difficult to get so near to caribou. As soon as the
range is up to thirty to fifty metres the arrow, although losing
little of its power to kill, only hits the mark by what is more or
less accident."[4]
Blehr
summarizes these these
readings
like this:
“From
the Arctic we know that Inuit archers were able to hit a stationary
target with accuracy only within a range of about 23 meters
(Stefánsson 1914, p. 96; Rasmussen 1931, p. 170; cf. Jenness 1922,
p. 146).” [5]
The
hard limit proposed here may be from 23 or 35 or 100 m for effective
use of the bow against ungulates. The reader will keep in mind that
to approach animals at this distance is difficult and not often
crowned with success. It
is for this reason that so much prehistoric hunting involved a
communal effort. D.B. Shimkin, in his ethnographic study of the Shoshone says
"These migrations consequently restricted effective, large-scale hunting of the buffalo to a short period in the spring, a longer one in the fall. At other times the beasts were too scattered pr tpp (sic, 'or too') far in enemy territory for major exploitation. These habits, combined with the buffalo's wariness and keen hearing, made hunting necessarily collective, organized. It was a case of sudden mass slaughter or virtually none at all. Once the animals were scared--even by a single careless individual--they would flee long distances, possibly completely out of the tribe's range.". (emphases are mine) [6]
Next
time I will deal with those hunting systems that do not involve drive
game systems but which rely, instead, on shepherding game into
defiles or valleys.
Footnotes
[1]
Cursus: Maguire [2015] reviews the evidence. For the ‘mustatil’
see Thomas et al. [2021]. Thomas gives an overview of the
phenomenon and proposes all the usual anthro-junk. There is a
readable popular account with photographs in Cascone [2021].
[2]
Stefánsson
[1914] 96.
[3]
Jenness [1922] 146
[4]
Rasmussen [1931] 170.
[5]
Blehr [2014] 234. And
on p. 235: “Due to the arrow’s limited range, and the ungulates’
flight behaviour, various forms of communal hunting dominated all
over the world until the gun replaced the bow and arrow … ”
[6] Shimkin [1947] 266.
Bibliography
Blehr
[2014] : Blehr, Otto. 'Elk hunting in Northern Sweden during the
Stone Age', Fornvannen
(109), 233-242. 2014. Online here.
Cascone
[2021] : Cascone, Sarah. 'Archaeologists Say a Mystifying Group of
Ancient Monuments in Saudi Arabia Suggests the Existence of a
Prehistoric Cattle Cult' in artnet
news,
May 4, 2021. Online here.
Jenness
[1922] : Jenness, Diamond. Report
of the Canadian Arctic Expedition 1913-18; Volume XII: The Life of
the Copper Eskimo.
Ottawa, F.A. Acland Printer, Canada. 1922. Diamond Jenness, p. 146
which is found here.
Maguire
[2015] : Maguire, Kristyn M., 'Topographical Relationships between
Cursus Monuments in the Upper Thames Valley', Thesis submitted for
the Master of Science in Applied Landscape Archaeology in the
Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford, United
Kingdom, 2015. Online here.
Rasmussen
[1931] : Rasmussen, K., 1931. The
Netsilik Eskimos. Social life and spiritual culture.
Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921–1924, 8(2).
Copenhagen. Online here.
Shimkin [1947] : Shimkin, D.B., Anthropological Records:5:4; Wind River Shoshone Ethnogeography. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles. 1947. Online here.
Stefánsson,
V., 1914. The
Stefánsson-Anderson Arctic Expedition of the American Museum.
Preliminary ethnological report.
Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 14.
New York. 1914.
Online
here
or here.
Thomas
et al. [2021] : Thomas, Hugh with Melissa A. Kennedy, Matthew Dalton,
Jane McMahon, David Boyer and Rebecca Repper. 'The mustatils: cult
and monumentality in Neolithic north-western Arabia'. Antiquity,
95(381), 605-626. Online
here.
