Jack Crafty, your comment about the bannerstones going away is an interesting comment.
I recall a discussion with an archeologist from the Middle Mississippi Valley that may be of interest. He said that atlatl bannerstones in this area (MO, IL,KY, TN AR) started out as the type you bind on. This was the early Archaic which is roughly 7,000 years ago (keep in mind that date can vary from region to region). H e then said bannerstone use increased and the winged type stones were introduced by about 5,000 years ago or the middle Archaic period. By the late Archaic period (4,000 ya) bannerstone use declined including the winged variety. By the Woodland period few if any bannerstones could be found in our area.
He then offered up some juicy tidbits. I pass these along for the primitive philosophers among us.
First, he said you can look at some of the copper and flint maces that were crafted in the Woodland and Mississippian periods and they resemble a winged bannerstone. I went back and looked through some books and he was right. There is one very famous flint mace from Lilbourn Missouri that does indeed resemble an hour glass bannerstone. He explained it as a leftover. Kind of like Microsoft Word using a 3.5 inch floppy disk image as an icon for "save"; who even uses those things anymore? A leftover. Bows were introduced in at least the Woodland period around here. So he suggested that the atlatl was a vestigial tool at this point. but its icon held some meaning.
Second, he indicated that if you examine the paleo-climate for this area there was a warm and dry period (called a hypisthermal period) that created a lot of prairie habitat even in the Ozarks where it was dominated by trees most of its prehistory all the way back to right after the ice age. His point was that atlatls were clumsy in a forest due to the wooden objects you could strike and knock the spear off the hook. A prairie, in his estimation, would provide a more open environment. Less "clanking" opportunities I suppose. Bottom line, his point was that the banner stone rise and fall is matched perfectly with the hypistehrmal. When you have more water and cooler climate that is good for trees and is good to fill your streams and rivers. He indicated that when aquatic resources became scarce, more and more people used hunting to fill the pantry. The bannerstone may have been worth the effort if you really depended on it. 200 hours of craftsmanship may have been worth it if it did, or you thought it helped your hunt. Once things began to cool and become wetter they could depend on the aquatic resources as they once had. Thus bannerstones became less important until the bow was introduced.
I throw that out there for discussion in good spirit. There are some very knowledgeable people on this site and we can certainly learn something from such conversations.
