The adoption and spread of bow and arrow technology in North America reflects a complex interplay of ecological and social factors: While environmental variables such as wood availability and prey diversity / behavior were surely important, demographic and cultural variables were equally or more influential. Parsing the relative effects of these factors and understanding interactions among them requires a clear view of the timing and nature of bow use across North America’s diverse geography. This talk explores adoption of the bow in North America from two perspectives. First, I’ll present evidence for the bow’s earliest appearance, use in conjunction with other projectile technologies, and effects on economic and other systems in several North American ecoregions. Second, I'll present a novel model of technological investment (uptake) that considers effects of people’s social roles: Whether people are craft specialists or do-it-yourselfer tool producers–users affects rates of adoption. This hypothesis has global-scale implications, which I’ll demonstrate through regional case studies. I’ll argue that adoption depended not just on the bow's inherent utility but also on how the technology was produced, shared, used, and valued in different economic systems.