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MICRO-DRILLS
CAHOKIA MOUNDS STATE HISTORIC SITE
MISSISSIPPIAN CULTURE
1,150 TO 600 YEARS AGO
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Micro-drill core blades.
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MICRO-DRILL CORE BLADES
CAHOKIA MOUNDS SITE--SOUTHERN ILLINOIS
GREG PERINO COLLECTION

   These four blades were struck off small cores. They range in size from 1 1/4 (3.2cm) to 1 1/2 inches (3.8cm) long.  They were never finished into drills but close examination might show use wear on some of them even though they were never finished into drills. Any sharp edge could serve as a cutting tool. There are 232 rejected blades in the Greg Perino collection of microliths.

   One of the oldest beads ever found in North America was found on an 11,000 year old Folsom site in Texas. This site is called the Shifting Sand site and the very small Folsom bead was stuck to one of the stone flakes.

Large unbroken micro-drills.
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LARGE UNBROKEN MICRO-DRILLS
CAHOKIA MOUNDS SITE--SOUTHERN ILLINOIS
GREG PERINO COLLECTION

    All the drills in this picture are good representative examples of whole drills. They have not been damaged from end snapping or excessive use wear. They are also larger than the average size drills in the collection.
   Morse (1983) places the rounded shaped drills into a "cylindrical" category. Sixty percent of the 449 blades found on the Mississippian Zebree site in northeast Arkansas were cylindrical. He also places forty percent in a "tabular" category. Morse says that cylindrical microliths have "either rounded and worn tips or beaked and worn tips----sometimes they are polished". He also goes on to say that "rounded tip microliths are probably drill bits for perforating shell beads-----beaked tips probably functioned as gravers for grooving shell or bone preparatory to splitting".
   There are approximately 473 complete micro-drills in Greg Perino's collection. The longest drill in the above picture is 1 3/16 inches (3cm) long.

   Drills were used by primitive cultures around the world to manufacture beads. No other artifact production with hole making as a part of the process approaches the volume of drilling that must have been needed to make beads. Different drilling techniques and devices were probably developed and improved upon over the years as a direct result from so many cultures needing to produce so many beads.

Heavily used micro-drills.
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HEAVILY USED MICRO-DRILLS
CAHOKIA MOUNDS SITE--SOUTHERN ILLINOIS
GREG PERINO COLLECTION

   The drills in this picture have obviously been worn down from excessive use. Two or three of them may have had one end snapped off during the drilling process. The smallest drill in this picture measures 1/2 inch (1.2cm) long.
   According to Morse (1983) Michael Sierzchula's drilling experiments in 1980 showed that with the use of a bow drill he could effectively drill one shell bead in 10 minutes. He reports that after 12 holes the two microlithic drills were still functional. He was able to drill a fresh dog canine tooth in less than two minutes.

    Late Stone Age cultures in the southwestern United States made the largest variety of intricately carved, cut, sawed, ground, filed and drilled pieces of jewelry and beads than anywhere else in North America. Around the turn of the century the Hyde expedition found 30,000 turquoise beads at Pueblo Bonito, New Mexico.

Fine tipped micro-drills.
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FINE TIPPED MICRO-DRILLS
CAHOKIA MOUNDS SITE--SOUTHERN ILLINOIS
GREG PERINO COLLECTION

   A few of the drills in the collection have very fine tips. Many different sizes of holes were drilled in beads and other ornamental and utilitarian objects. The drill sizes pictured here represent some of the smallest holes that could have been made with micro-drills. The smallest one in this picture measures 3/8 inch (1cm) long.
   Shaping very tiny stone tools (microliths) is difficult to work in the hand. It's been suggested that the tiniest examples were probably held in a slotted or grooved piece of wood or antler so it could be pressure flaked along one edge.
   Microliths (small stone tools of various function) are a Later Stone Age phenomenon that were used in countries around the world from India to the Ukraine and from North America to Europe.

   In the central Mississippi Valley during the Late Stone Age, the Mississippian culture was manufacturing vast quantities of shell beads. Some of the different types of beads found in Mound 72 at the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in southern Illinois was disc beads, barrel beads, parallel-sided beads, tubular beads, round-sided beads and seed beads.

Polished micro-drill gullet stones.
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POLISHED MICRO-DRILLS--GULLET STONES
CAHOKIA MOUNDS SITE--SOUTHERN ILLINOIS
GREG PERINO COLLECTION

   Twenty or thirty of the micro-drills in the collection were polished from end-to-end. They were not smoothed by drilling but were eaten by ancient or more recent birds, either chickens or turkeys. The polishing effect was caused by the grinding process in the birds gullets. 

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"REFERENCES"

1896, "A Study of the Primitive Methods of Drilling", by J.D. McGuire, pp. 707, 721, 734, 737.
1912, "Handbook of North American Indians, North of Mexico", by Frederick Webb Hodge, pp. 401-403.
1976, "The Evolution of Man", by J. Jelinek, p. 175
1978, "Jewelry of the Prehistoric Southwest", by E. Wesley Jernigan, pp.197-201.
1983, "Archaeology of the Central Mississippi Valley", by Dan F. Morse and Phyllis A. Morse. pp. 222-224.
1988, "Encyclopedia of Human Evolution & Prehistory," by Ian Tattersall, E. Delson & J. V. Couvering, pp 63-64.
1989, "The Cahokia Atlas", by Melvin Fowler, pp. 229-230.
1999, "The Mound 72 Area", by Melvin L. Fowler, J. Rose, Barbara V. Leest & Steven R. Ahler. pp. 132-137
2002, Personal communications with Larry Kinsella.

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