| Abstract: |
Development of projectile hunting tools remains a significant tenant associated with modern humans' adaptive and migratory success. Technological innovations which accompanied the human odyssey between the now submerged ice-age shelves of Sunda and Sahul (the first major sea crossings by our species) are amongst the most decisive topics of human evolution today. With recent discoveries affirming the Indonesian archipelago's importance as a hub for these studies, technological records remain essential to reveal details of early human life across this strategic region. One such adaption, projectile technology, may appear quintessentially an early human technology, although this review shows projectile tools are poorly documented across Island South East Asia (ISEA), prior to the onset of major climatic change at the close of the last ice-age. Records of hunting and subsistence related to projectile technology, include flaked stone and osseous tools, rock art, and historical records – each reviewed here, to produce a vanguard methodological approach for identification of projectile tools in the early archaeological records of ISEA. Traceology backed by empirical data and contextualised within tool life histories, are found to be of dire need to advance the archaeological understanding of technological adaptations. Methodological advances elsewhere, outlay the latest techniques in recognising projectile tools, here adapted to the unique and globally relevant study area, spanning the extant lands and islands of Eastern Sunda, to Sahul.
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