toyahperdiz

The Toyah Phase has been the subject of debate since J. Charles Kelly first defined it in 1947. Known widely as the Toyah Phase Paradox, research has struggled to reconcile the homogenous expression of this protohistoric to historic archaeological record in central Texas and the high levels of ethnic diversity witnessed by French and Spanish explorers at the turn of the 18th-century. Recent studies have related geographic and temporal variation in artifact styles to “communities of practice” using standard 2D measurement techniques, with varying degrees of success. We build on this research by using a 3D geometric morphometric approach to examine 26 Perdiz projectile points, a hallmark of Toyah assemblages. These points were recovered from two contemporaneous sites located some 100 miles apart in the core area of Toyah Phase settlement. The primary goal of the study is to explore whether 3D imaging can identify localized variants of Perdiz points based on shape. This work, in turn, may be used to infer patterns of interaction between village clusters through network analyses at the regional scale. Implications for how cultural plurality in central Texas may have influenced Spanish missionization are discussed.