Maryland Archeology Month

-April 2008-

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Archeology Gallery

Bone Awl

Bone Awl

The object shown here is a bone awl found during Office of Archeology and Archeological Society of Maryland excavations at the 15th century Indian village on the old Rosenstock property near Frederick.

The bone is a metacarpal, or cannon bone, from the foreleg of a deer. The deer was presumably hunted for its meat, and then other elements of the deer (hide, bones, sinews, etc.) were used in the manufacture of everyday items. It is very likely that this bone tool did not start out as an awl, but rather as a beamer (see inset), a two-handed tool used to scrape the fur from a deer hide during the tanning process. Eventually, after much use, the beamer wore thin in the center and broke in half. At this point, half of the beamer was refashioned and sharpened into the bone awl shown here, a tool used to punch or drill holes in tanned deerskins so that they could be sewn together into articles of clothing. Apparently the awl snapped in two during use, but that was not the end of this bone's useful life.

Both halves of the awl were found at the edge of a postmold (the stain left in the ground from a sapling used to form the support structure for a house or wigwam) where the two pieces of bone had apparently been wedged in an attempt to chock a loose house support. It sounds like an example of prehistoric recycling: from food refuse to beamer to awl to wedge.

The story of this bone awl is just one example of Native American ingenuity used in solving ordinary problems and meeting day-to-day needs. It is also a story of how archeologists, given a simple artifact, found in situ, or in context, can peer into the past to reveal more than meets the eye.

By, Dennis C. Curry, Senior Archeologist, Maryland Historical Trust