North American Paleoindian Eyed Bone Needles: Morphometrics, Sewing, and Site Structure

Eyed bone needles have been recovered from Paleoindian sites over the last 70 years. Specimens 13,100–10,000 calendar years old average 1.81 ± .58 mm in diameter, similar to 2500–1000 year-old specimens in the Aleutians which average 1.67 mm in diameter. Use of industrial steel needles and experiments with replicated bone needles indicate the broken eyes and mid-length fractures of Paleoindian bone needles are the result of use. Some specimens said to be Paleoindian eyed bone needles are ≤ 3 mm in diameter and likely represent behaviors distinct from those with diameters ≤ 2.9 mm. Many smalldiameter needles have been recovered from sites that also produced ornaments. Small-diameter Paleoindian needles may have been used to attach decorative items to clothing; decorative items could have served as identity icons as human groups became sedentary and established home ranges a few centuries after colonization. Paleoindian residential sites that have produced multiple specimens of small-diameter needles reveal clustering of needle specimens in limited areas, and Varying degrees of association with hide-preparation and needle manufacture and maintenance tools such as gravers, scrapers, and awls. Paleoindians, like some ethnographically documented people and some industrial-age people, had sewing specific activity loci.