Bow Drill Spindles
date: label: Accession Date
content: 7 Jan 1869
name: label: Donor Name
content: Roderick R. MacFarlane
notes: label: Notes
content: Source of the information below: Inuvialuit Pitqusiit Inuuniarutait: Inuvialuit Living History, The MacFarlane Collection website, by the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre (ICRC), Inuvik, N.W.T., Canada (website credits here http://www.inuvialuitlivinghistory.ca/posts/12 ), entry on this artifact http://www.inuvialuitlivinghistory.ca/items/133 , retrieved 1-28-2020: A set of three spindles for a bow drill. The shafts are cylindrical pieces of wood that taper towards rounded ends for fitting into drill bearings. Two of the spindles have iron bits inserted into antler socket pieces attached to the spindles and held in place with twisted sinew wrappings. The third spindle has an iron bit inserted directly into the end of the shaft, and also has a wrapping of twisted sinew. One of the spindle shafts has a lightly incised line that forms a spiral along its length. More information here: http://www.inuvialuitlivinghistory.ca/item_types/20: The bow drills in the MacFarlane Collection were used for boring holes into wood, antler, bone and ivory. The drill spindle (shaft) has a bit at one end, and the other end is shaped to fit into a bearing that is held between the teeth. The spindle is rotated by wrapping a slack thong attached at each end of a drill bow around it, and moving the bow back and forth. Ancestral Inuvialuit also used another type of bow drill for starting fires.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 21 Apr 2020
label: Specimen Count
content: 3
place: label: Place
content: Northwest Territories, Canada, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Eskimo, Inuit, Inuvialuk (Inuvialuit)
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 69A00012
label: USNM Number
content: E7463-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Drill