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October 6, 2006
Friday Stone Blogging
Rather than pot blogging this Friday, I thought I'd just talk about getting stoned. Pictured below is what at first glance looks like any other rock.
But on closer inspection, one can see that it was made more or less spherical by design and hard work. This was likely done by pounding it with another rock. This example is somewhat smaller than a baseball. It weighs about 250 grams, in other words, about 100 grams more than a hardball. But such purposely rounded stones can come in a great variety of sizes. The one pictured is on the smallish side. I have seen them as big as basketballs. They are combat projectiles. Although some may have been used for more personal stonings. Such projectiles are occasionally mistakenly called ballistae. A ballista (ballistae in the plural) is the Latin word for a particular design of a siege engine invented by the Greeks. Ballistae were likely used for defense also. Projectiles like the one above could be thrown by ballistae or some catapult machine or, in earlier times as well as later, a sling. And of course, the smaller ones could be thrown by hand.
There is no way of telling how old the one pictured is. People have been throwing rocks at each other for a long time. They have also been making special throwing rocks for almost as long. The only thing we can be sure of is that it is from somewhere in Palestine. My guess is that it is from the Hellenistic or Roman times. But this guess is based only on the probability of finding one, from one period or another. It could well be Iron Age or even Bronze Age.
I found it on the dusty shelf in an antiquity dealers shop near the Pool of Siloam. That was in 1970. When the proprietor saw me looking at it he gave it to me with considerable fanfare and flattery. My guess is that he gave it to me to assuage his guilt for some crime he had committed against me that day or on some other occasion when I visited his shop. But that is another story.
Update: November 4, 2006
There is now a general table of contents to this series.
Posted by Duane Smith at October 6, 2006 2:33 PM | Read more on Archaeology |
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Comments
I suppose a spherical rock would be more aerodynamic than a rock shaped like, well, a rock. But other than that, was there any other reason why they went to the trouble of sanding rocks into spherical shapes? Why couldn't they have just thrown ordinary rocks?
Posted by: Aydin at October 6, 2006 3:40 PM
Aydin,
I'm sure just plan rocks were thrown many a time. They are a little hard to tell from other just plan rocks. Aerodynamics is certainly one reason for the spherical shape. With the understanding that I am guessing, I can think of two or three more reasons. The small ones fit in the hand a lot better if they are more or less spherical and are less abrasive to when thrown. Also, I suspect that the "chamber" of siege engines was design to hold spherical projectiles. It might be that the projectile could be better controled as it was catapulted, less likely to go off in the wrong direction. The same may also be true when a sling was used. Finally, there may be an issue of maintaining and storing an arsenal. This is more an argument for uniform shape and size than for being spherical. I remember seeing a four-sided equilateral pyramid (a pentahedron?) of uniformly spherical basketball sized projectiles at Heordium that was five feet tall.
Posted by: Duane at October 7, 2006 11:28 AM
"I thought I'd just talk about getting stoned."
I thought you stopped doing that years ago.
Posted by: Christopher Heard at October 7, 2006 10:21 PM
Duane,
We found over fifteen-twenty ballista at Gezer this summer. In fact I was ready by the end of the season to quit counting the things. In any case, they are neat.
Best
Joe
Posted by: Joe Cathey at October 10, 2006 6:38 AM
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.
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