Atlatl Hook

An atlatl hook is the spur at the far end of a spear-thrower that engages a small socket in the butt of the dart. Many were carved as separate pieces of antler or bone and fitted to the wooden board; others were carved in one piece with the wood (Henderson and Burdin 2006; Illinois State Museum).

Antler hooks were cut and ground to shape. A Woodland example from the Wild Violet site (3LO226), Logan County, Arkansas, has the hook spur at one end and, at the other, a notch forming two prongs that fitted over a wooden tab on the atlatl, where it was lashed or glued; two lengthwise grooves on top leave a notched ridge of six or seven humps (Arkansas Archeological Survey).

Green River Archaic atlatls carried hooks of wood, bone or antler and often a drilled weight, the bannerstone (Henderson and Burdin 2006). Early excavators, C. B. Moore (1916) and later Webb and Funkhouser, took the hooks for netting needles and the bannerstones for net-mesh spacers; Webb's later study of the spear-thrower (1957) illustrated many hook styles (Jefferies 2008; Henderson and Burdin 2006). The key trait is a small antler or bone piece with a projecting hook spur at one end and a fitting for the atlatl board at the other.

Wild Violet site, Arkansas (n = 1): length 52.22 mm; width 18.12 mm; hook projection 11 mm; end notch 5.52 mm wide (Arkansas Archeological Survey). Complete spear-throwers are usually 406–508 mm long, extremes 203–762 mm (Hodge 1910, converted from inches).

Best known from the Green River shell middens of western Kentucky and Archaic sites in Illinois, with Woodland examples in Arkansas (Henderson and Burdin 2006; Illinois State Museum; Arkansas Archeological Survey). Hodge (1910) records the spear-thrower itself among all Inuit groups and in southern Alaska, the Great Basin, California and Florida.

Look for a small spur set at an angle at one end and a notch, prongs or seat at the other for fitting to the board. Antler points are pointed tips with a socket, not a spur; antler handles and bone awls lack the spur. Older Kentucky reports that list netting needles from shell middens are describing these hooks (Jefferies 2008). Hodge (1910) describes three ways a thrower met its dart: a spur on the thrower in a shallow socket on the dart, a socket on the thrower taking a conical dart end, and the Greenland form with pegs fitting holes. Indian Knoll, excavated in the late 1930s, produced more than 50,000 artifacts (Kentucky Heritage Council).