A quantitative approach to the study of Neolithic projectile points from south-eastern Arabia

Lithic projectile points always had an important diagnostic value for documenting the development and expansion of Arabian Neolithic material culture (c. eighth–fourth millennium BC) and subsistence strategies due to the remarkable abundance of surface assemblages. Given the limitations of traditional arrowhead typology for analysing the increasing variability emerging from archaeological research in the region, we propose here a new systematic description of Neolithic projectile points, based on the consistent observation of technological and morphological change over time and space in a number of diagnostic parameters. A quantitative exploration of variation is carried out on both published and unpublished data through a number of pattern-recognition techniques and exploratory analyses such as principal component and cluster analysis. By presenting the first application of this approach to Arabian Neolithic projectile points, the research offers a valid tool for investigating temporal and cultural trends through different phases of the Neolithic in the region of interest.