Sarah, Well, I favor the used-as-food theory. By (archaeological) standards here, 5 cm. is a decent sized shell. Conus meat is hard to remove so such a hole would be understandable. But, I have also found Conus dead on the beach with similar holes bashed in the side. I have looked at many hundreds of thousands of shells from middens in Ecuador, mostly used as food and mostly small gastropods (1-5 cm.; Columbella, Tegula, Cantharus, and various limpet species, and so on). In fact, the numerically dominant shell in the middens of the central coast of Ecuador is Olivella semistriata, accounting for about 40% of the total number of identifiable shells. Very few of these were used for beads (<1%) and so we assume they were eaten, perhaps in the form of broth. I have made some and it is quite tasty. As for using cone poison on arrows or darts, the scarcity of points in the excavated material is probably not significant. Bone, wood and bamboo were often used for arrow points (and still are today by such groups as the Yanomami) and these materials often do not survive in archaeological deposits. Poison arrows are usually made of such materials because they are designed to break off in the wound and thus ensure an adequate delivery of the poison. The poison arrow points I have seen were made of hard wood and were deeply scored around in order to break off. The poison was smeared into the grooves. kate