The swiftness of lightning: The cultural and social dimensions of incised lines on archaeological arrows from alpine ice patches in Canada’s Northwest Territories

This paper examines the significance of incised sinuous lines, known as “lightning lines,” recently identified on two archaeological birch arrows recovered from melting alpine ice patches in Canada’s Subarctic. Ethnographic observations demonstrate that the practice of inscribing similar lines on arrows was widespread across Plains and southern Dene cultures. Archaeological evidence suggests that the trait may be associated with the arrival of a new cultural tradition within the American Southwest, western central Plains, and Great Basin regions in the precontact era, possibly affiliated with the Dene migration from the Subarctic to the Southwest circa AD 1200–1400. We hypothesize that the lightning lines may be a marker of Dene identity as groups arrived in the Great Basin and Southwest, and that the presence of the motif on the two arrows in the Subarctic may also represent a northward transmission of ideas and a continued long-distance axis of interaction of Dene peoples throughout much of western North America in the late precontact era.