Anasazi Cliff Dweller Arrow Replica SOLD

This slim arrow is a museum-quality replica based on authentic examples I've seen in numerous museums, including the Smithsonian and the Chapin Archaeological Museum at Mesa Verde, CO. This arrow is a reconstruction based on fragments found in caves from the Four Corners area of the SW United States that are around 1,000 years old, many of which I've examined personally.

This arrow copies exactly every aspect of the real, authentic artifacts. The main shaft is reed and the foreshaft is a hard woody shoot I collected in Arizona several years ago. It's beautifully straight. Three small turkey wing feathers make up the fletching and are held with deer sinew and glued with hide glue, just like the originals were. All wrappings are real deer sinew. The rear of the arrow has a hardwood plug that was made from a thin woody shoot. It was scraped so it fit into the rear of the hollow shaft, then it was glued with hide glue and allowed to dry before the string groove was carefully cut into the rear of the shaft. This was very commonly done to most Anasazi arrows I've examined, and it made the nock crush-proof so the pinch grip could be used without crushing the thin reed and ruining the arrow. In many of the old examples you can actually see the small growth rings of the shoot that the nock plug is made of, so I followed that exactly on this arrow.

The front of the reed is wrapped with deer sinew to reinforce it and prevent it splitting. Then the hardwood foreshaft was scraped to fit and inserted into the reed. The foreshaft is tipped with a small, but very finely-made red jasper Pueblo Side Notched point that's held with pine sap glue and deer sinew. It has a needle sharp tip and very sharp, carefully chipped edges. This would have been used on a variety of game animals, including rabbits and large game like desert mule deer and bighorn sheep.

This slim, skinny shaft surprises many people since it looks like a kid's arrow. But it's not. I've seen enough authentic Cliff Dweller arrows to determine that they wouldn't have given such precise ammunition to inexperienced children when adults needed to put meat in their stomachs. These arrows require a surprising amount of painstaking work to make. Those desert cultures were using what they had and this arrow is a beautiful example of that. The bows of this region were often made of poor-quality wood of low draw weight. But when coupled with lightweight arrows like this one, they would leave the bow at surprisingly high velocity and could achieve lethal penetration on big game at close range. Lightweight arrows carry less momentum, so the Native hunters shrunk the size of their arrow points to concentrate that limited energy into the smallest area possible. Recent blood protein analysis of these tiny stone points revealed that many of these points still had tiny residues of big game blood from deer, antelope, bighorn sheep and even elk, proving these points were used for big game. These tiny points are still commonly found in the deserts even today.

This arrow is shipped in a sturdy PVC pipe to ensure safe delivery to your door.

Arrow Specs: Anasazi Cliff Dweller Arrow Replica. Reed with hardwood foreshaft, turkey wing 3-feather fletch and small jasper point secured with pine sap glue and deer sinew. Arrow length: 31 inches

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