The identification of Palaeolithic weapon systems has long posed a challenge to prehistoric archaeology. The use of certain modes of propulsion, particularly long-range weaponry, is currently being argued for increasingly old archaeological contexts. The use of these weapons is often considered one of the key elements for understanding Palaeolithic subsistence strategies. Nevertheless, despite numerous efforts, no reliable method has yet been developed that would allow distinguishing between different modes of propulsion on the basis of lithic points once hafted as weapon armatures. Our work focuses on this objective: the development of a method that permits the identification of propulsion modes on the basis of use-related traces preserved on lithic projectiles. This study is one of the methodological components of a broader research project that investigates the appearance, variability, and change in hafting technologies through the Middle Palaeolithic and the Upper Palaeolithic by means of lithic functional analysis. We began by a critical overview of traditionally used approaches, both those focused on the identification of lithic projectiles in archaeological contexts and those dedicated to the reconstruction of the weapons with which these points were associated. This allowed us to draw attention to certain shortcomings in the identification of projectile elements and to the considerable unreliability of the methods currently used in reconstructing modes of propulsion. We have addressed this problem by proposing a new approach. It builds, on the one hand, on work done on fracture mechanics of brittle solids in the context of developing technological and functional analyses of stone tools and, on the other, on ballistic analysis of different modes of propulsion that could have been used in the Palaeolithic. These two elements are closely intertwined in our approach. The experimental program focused on ballistics permitted us to isolate two key parameters, namely the angle of incidence and kinetic energy. These affect the mechanical stress created on impact that is particular to each mode of propulsion. We subsequently carried out a large-scale experiment to test the interactions between these different stress situations and varied point morphologies as well as bonding techniques of varying resistance to evaluate the combined effect on impact fracture formation. As a whole this work allowed us to develop a five-step approach based on the characterisation of mechanical impact stress suffered by a collection of experimental points. The procedure was then successfully tested through the analysis of two Gravettian point assemblages from Maisières-Canal and Ormesson les Bossats. The results, supported by experiments tailored according to site-specific parameters, allowed us to propose two reasonable hypotheses concerning the weaponry associated with these archaeological contexts. For Maisières-Canal, spearthrower could be identified as the mode of propulsion associated with tanged points, and for Ormesson, oblique distal hafting of microgravette points could be argued to be at least one of the hafting systems employed at the site. These archaeological case studies also highlighted the significant experimental effort needed for obtaining these kinds of results.