Your awl in an old time tool.
It's from a time before electric refrigerators,
back when people had "ice" boxes.
Your awl is an ice pick. It was used for chipping pieces of ice off the big block that cooled the food. Or it could be used to cut the block into smaller pieces of ice.

That's a fun history. I don't know where we got it but it probably came in a lot from an auction. A few times in the past we've bought boxes of old tools for cheap and I bet this was in one of those boxes.