Eleven arrowheads found in Turkey bear deliberate marks dating back around 9,000 years, but their meaning still eludes archaeologists.
These objects come from Tepecik-Çiftlik, an ancient village in Cappadocia, central Anatolia. The site was occupied for a long part of the Neolithic, particularly between 7100 and 5800 BCE. The inhabitants cultivated plants, raised animals and also hunted. Above all, they had access to a remarkable local resource: obsidian, a natural glass produced by volcanic activity.
Arrowhead no. 4 with three repeated square incisions covering the ventral face.
Archaeologists recorded 740 arrowheads there. Only twelve bear incisions, one of which was already known before this study. The other eleven were identified among material from several excavation campaigns. This rarity is intriguing: engraved objects represent only 1.6% of all the arrowheads studied.
The marks do not appear to be simple scratches that formed by chance. The researchers examined them under a microscope and recreated their manufacture. Obsidian does not easily scratch another piece of obsidian. A harder flint tool, however, produces comparable marks. Several lines were retraced two or three times, indicating a deliberate action.
Arrowhead no. 8 with incisions composed of two repeated V-shaped lines.
Some motifs even required considerable work. One arrowhead bears three roughly square shapes connected by a line, made with at least twenty incisions. Others feature Vs, wavy lines or a cross. No design clearly represents an animal, person or plant. Above all, no composition is identical to another.
To understand their function, the researchers also looked for what distinguishes these arrowheads from the others. The answer is puzzling: almost nothing. Their shape and manufacture remain ordinary for the site. The incisions appear on objects made from the two main local sources of obsidian. Some were made before the arrowheads received their final retouching, others afterward.
An earlier hypothesis proposed that they were hunters’ marks. Each person might have been able to recognize their arrows and claim the animal they had hit. The scenario remains possible, but the new data cannot confirm it. Engraved arrowheads are very rare, their motifs vary considerably and no clear association with a particular activity emerges.
One clue could come from the context in which they were discovered. None of these arrowheads was found in a grave at Tepecik-Çiftlik, although the site contains more than 100 excavated burials. Finding an engraved object directly associated with a person one day could help determine who used these marks and why.