Author(s)

Daniel Loponte¹, Mirian Carbonera², Romina Silvestre³

¹National Council of Scientific and Technic Investigations, National Institute of Anthropology and Latin American Thought, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
²Memory Center of West Santa Catarina, Chapecó Region Community University, Chapecó, Brazil.
³National Institute of Anthropology and Latin American Thought, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The projectile points known as Fishtail or Fell represent a specific design associated with the earliest hunter-gatherers of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in South America. Brazil was traditionally considered as a marginal area of their distribution because in the past there were only a small number of findings known, often inadequately documented. In this paper we present a general and unified overview of the Brazilian record, including previously unpublished metric, technological and stylistic features. Also, we report on new findings of fishtail points in order to expand the amount of information currently available. Some issues related to these records are also evaluated by comparing them with data from the Uruguayan plains and the Argentinean pampas. The general picture that emerges after this analysis shows a growing record of fishtail projectile points in southern Brazil, demonstrating a significant presence of these early paleo-South American populations.

Fishtail Projectile Points, Paleoindian, South America, Brazil, Pleistocene-Holocene Transition

Loponte, D. , Carbonera, M. and Silvestre, R. (2015) Fishtail Projectile Points from South America: The Brazilian Record. Archaeological Discovery, 3, 85-103. doi: 10.4236/ad.2015.33009.