Bone Needle

A bone needle is a slender, polished bone shaft with a drilled eye at one end and a sharp point at the other. Paleoindian needles are very fine: near-complete examples from Agate Basin and Lindenmeier are 50–70 mm long and 1.5–2.5 mm thick (Pelton et al. 2024). Some later needles from western sites are large and clumsy, fit only for coarse work such as mat-making (Hodge 1910).

Paleoindian makers used the groove-and-splinter method: long grooves cut into the dense wall of a long bone freed a thin splinter, which was ground to shape before the eye was drilled. At La Prele, Wyoming, protein fingerprinting (ZooMS) showed needles made from metapodials and other long bones of red fox, a wild cat and hares (Pelton et al. 2024).

Eyed needles and spurred gravers are linked to sewing tight-seamed, tailored skin clothing during the Younger Dryas cold period (Osborn 2014; Pelton et al. 2024). Hodge (1910) notes that true eyed needles were rare among most Native peoples, who sewed with awls, except for bone needles in Ontario and the Iroquois area of New York and fine ivory needles in the Arctic, kept in carved ivory or hollow-bone cases. The key trait is a slender bone shaft with a drilled eye.

Near-complete Paleoindian needles from Agate Basin and Lindenmeier: length 50–70 mm; thickness 1.5–2.5 mm. La Prele, Wyoming: width about 1.5 mm (32 fragments from 11 specimens, at least 4 complete needles and 2 preforms) (Pelton et al. 2024).

Paleoindian needles come from western Plains and Rocky Mountain sites such as La Prele, Lindenmeier and Agate Basin (Pelton et al. 2024). Later needles are best known from Ontario and Iroquoian New York, Ohio Valley mounds and villages, and the Arctic (Hodge 1910; Moorehead 1910; Henderson 2008).

Look for the eye: a pointed bone shaft without one is an awl or a pin. Bone pins are usually longer, with a decorated or widened head (Moorehead 1910). Green River Archaic middens in Kentucky yield many flat, needle-like bone tools, but they are not described as having eyes (Henderson and Burdin 2006). Hodge's (1910) remark that eyed needles became common only after European contact applies to most of the continent outside Ontario, the Iroquois area and the Arctic, and predates the Paleoindian finds. Osborn (2014) treats eyed needles and spurred gravers together as evidence of tailored clothing.