one hundred highlights from
the social history collections
Bone tools, Blombos Cave, Stilbaai,
Western Cape, dating back to more than 70 000 years ago
These awls are made of long-bone shaft fragments and were manufactured
by scraping. They were used to pierce soft material such as leather or
pierce shells to make beads. A high polish on these objects has no
apparent functional cause. It seems to have been produced to give a
distinctive appearance.
