WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY? – NEOLITHIC CARVED STONE BALLS:

Neolithic stone balls,

Ashmolean Museum,

Internet, Public Domain.

Carved Stone Ball from
the British Museum,
Wikipedia,
Public Domain.

Here is one of my favorite conundrums involving rock art. These Neolithic carved stone balls – what the hell are they? “Carved stone balls are petrospheres dated from the late Neolithic to possibly as late as the Iron Age mainly found in Scotland, but also elsewhere in Britain and Ireland. They are usually round and rarely oval, and of fairly uniform size at around 2.75 inches or 7 cm across, with 3 to 160 protruding knobs on the surface. They range from having no ornamentation (apart from the knobs) to extensive and highly varied engraved patterns.” (Wikipedia) Originally thought to be associated with the Picts, these are now known to date from the Neolithic to Iron Ages, and thus predate the Picts who arose in the Late Iron Age.

Alford ball, Wikipedia,

Public Domain.

Towie Ball, from Scotland,

Internet photo,

Public Domain.

Towie Ball, from Scotland.

Wikipedia drawing,

Public Domain.

Suggested uses range from weapons (like mace heads, bolas, or sling stones) to tools (grinders like pestles, rollers like ball bearings for the stone blocks used to build Stonehenge, weights for fishing nets), standardized weights for traders, and of course the fall back for when you don’t really know anything, “objects of ritual significance or social status.” They have also been explained as perhaps functioning like the “speaker’s staff” to control or order deliberation in meetings. 

I would like to suggest another possibility related to the concept of social status. How about tokens of wealth like the “coppers” of the Indians of the Northwest coast of North America, or Rai (the stone money of the island of Yap). Tokens of wealth depend for their value on rarity. Rarity, in turn, depends upon how hard it is to procure the object in question because of either scarcity of the raw material or because of difficulty of fabrication.

North American Northwest

Coast Indian copper,

picture from Internet,

Public Domain.

In the case of the coppers prehistorically the material was very rare and hard to procure prehistorically for the native people, as well as the effort to produce the item was great. “Coppers, which are still in use today, experienced a real golden age in the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th century. Due to contacts with western explorers and merchants their production increased substantially. However there are several indications that suggest they were already in use before the first contacts with the West, about 1790. The coppers were an exceptionally important symbol in the northwestern societies of the American continent. Apart from being a means of payment in a complex system of transactions, they were also a symbol of wealth and prestige.” (nbbmuseum.be)

Rai, stone money from the

island of Yap. Picture

intchyfeetphotography.com,

Public Domain.

And in the case of the Rai the production of the pieces involved a difficult process of stone carving as well as a sea voyage to and from the quarry on a different island. “Rai, or stone money (Yapese: ray), are more than 6,000 large, circular stone disks carved out of limestone formed from aragonite and calcite crystals. Rai stones were quarried on several of the Micronesian islands, mainly Palau, but briefly on Guam as well, and transported to Yap for use as money.” (Wikipedia) There is no limestone naturally on the island of Yap – thus scarcity. And, of course, prehistorically they had no metal tools so it took considerable effort to create them. When metal tools were introduced after contact Rai became much easier to create and this caused economic inflation and depreciation in the value of the Rai, but they are still held to be important by the people.

Glasgow Ball, Scotland.

Wikipedia,

Public Domain.

Stone Ball, Photo

ancientorigins.net,

Public Domain.

Stone Ball, Internet

photo. Public Domain.

The value of these stone balls does not depend on scarcity of material, hard rocks are abundant in their homeland. It therefore depends on the difficulty of crafting them. It undoubtedly took considerable effort and precision to create most of these stone balls. “Many are said to be made of “greenstone”, but this is a general term for all varieties of dark, greenish igneous rocks, including diorites, serpentinite, and altered basalts. Forty-three are sandstone, including Old Red Sandstone, 26 greenstone and 12 quartzite. Nine were serpentinite and these had been carved. Some were made of gabbro, a difficult material to carve. Round and oval natural shaped sandstones are sometimes found. Examples made from Hornblende gneiss and granitic gneiss were noted, both very difficult stone to work. Granitic rocks were also used and the famous Towie example may be serpentinised picrite. The highly ornamented examples were mainly made of sandstone or serpentine.” (Wikipedia)

Elgin petrosphere, slate ball.

Internet photo, Public Domain.

“By the late 1970s a total of 387 had been recorded. Of these, by far the greatest concentration (169) was found in Aberdeenshire. By 1983 the number had risen to 411 and by 2015 over 425 balls had been recorded. A collection of over 30 carved balls from Scotland, Ireland and northern England are held by the British Museum.” (Wikipedia)

Some of these are fairly crude but many of them are examples of great precision and craftsmanship in their manufacture. I love the mystery here. Along with objects of considerable rarity, some of them are of beautiful design and execution, and no-one knows what they were for. We might as well call them dragon eggs. But they are rock, and artistic – thus, Rock Art.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carved_stone_balls

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones

https://www.nbbmuseum.be/en/2007/07/the-coppers-of -america.htm

Metcalfe, Tom
2018 Enigmatic Stone Balls from 5,000 Years Ago Continue to Baffle Archaeologists, June 18, 2018, Live Science, https://www.livescience.com/62843-enigmatic-stone-balls-scotland.html