Hi All.

Just one topic I want to raise – connected to the excavation of the Iron Age Hill fort at Danebury.

I should mention I am quite knowledgeable regarding historical weight standards   , but know little about historical weapons  .

The very eminent archaeologist Cunliffe found the remains of lots of stone balls at Danebury.  Only 3 complete ones, burnt fragments of 65 others.  These are not far off spherical but with a flat base, and had an iron ring fixed in the top.  They seem to weigh heavy - 500g to 3KG - with most of them probably originally weighing 2KG plus.  There are two excavation reports available to download if anyone wants the full details (big files)

Cunliffe thought they were most likely metrological weights.  But could not find any consistent weight standard in them. Biggs extended this idea to them being weights but to no standard – which I make an oxymoron    .

There is a whole bunch of other things these might be - some kind of heavy loom weight, or tethers from animal husbandry, or fishing weights, or weights to secure thatching nets are all possibles.  But the thing is, an awful lot of work went into making them, more than would seem appropriate for most of those uses.  So I am wondering if they were a very heavy form of bola perdida?

Similar objects have only been reported from one other English Iron Age site as far as I can see (Winklebury).  So if they are a weapon their use might well have been just an idiosyncrasy of the local Celtic tribe.  Which might imply they never caught on elsewhere and so were maybe not all that effective really?

Any thoughts welcome!

Rob

https://independent.academia.edu/RobertTye

Oh, yeah. still have the book I bought about the excavations.

Rob_Tye wrote on Mar 12^th, 2015 at 4:27am:



Can we have that in english ?

Massi > He's saying that you didn't offer any proof about why you don't think the stone balls could be bolas, and that he'd prefer it if you'd explain yourself a little more.

Spot on

Massi >, 2-3 kg is about equal to the mass of a brick. Devastating to be hit with, but relatively slow flying if thrown by hand. It would be most useful if thrown into a crowd.

Yes – I was thinking about use against something like a testudio attack at the gate

Massi >  I doubt it would be worth the effort to shape them if they were meant to be bolas.

Yes – I thought that too.  Then I thought maybe some kind of rustic field sport – along the lines of throwing the hammer – which is not that far from a bola perdida.  But I am not sure Iron Age folk could fix an iron loop into stone firmly enough to actually tie off from, for that sort of thing.  Does not rule it out, but…….

Massi > Is there any evidence of siege weaponry at the site?

Not that I know of.  There was a huge stockpile of normal size sling shot stones – which also is a kind of negative.

The real problem is that there is no explanation that makes really good sense.  They look like weights, but do not adhere to any weight standard as far as we can see.  And people started making rather accurate stone metrological weights more than 4,000 years back in Persia and India.  Celtic coins can be very uniform indeed in weight.  So the archaeological idea that they are (metrological) weights does not make much sense either.

Praps they were into keep fit, and used ‘em for working out?

I do not think it was a tether for some type of grazing animal, it is either too light for something like a horse or ox and too heavy for something like a sheep or goat. 

When spooked or startled, horses and donkeys have been known to pull up some fairly large bushes and small trees. 

A goat and possibly a sheep would chew the line attached to it in half.  Not real familiar with sheep.

Is there a large body of water close by?  Could it be a weight for a net or fish trap or possibly for retting flax?

thought it was pretty obvious. Stupidly heavy bolas weren't used by anyone and bolas themselves are not evident in usage in britain.
It's the sort of idea only an historian could even contemplate

Seriously 1.5kg of stone swinging round your head on three ropes. It's a good way to commit suicide.

There's a traditional sikh weapon that looks a lot like a cart wheel with chains and weights hanging off it.

The idea is to get it spinning at high speed and then - presumably - use it to entangle an enemie, or enemies weapons weapons. But once they've got it spinning it actualy looks a lot more dangerous to the spinner than to any enemy.



A 3kg bolas would be a similiar idea.