Academic Articles will be attached here for reference.

1. Skov, Eric T. Experimentation in Sling Weaponry: Effectiveness of and Archaeological Implications for a World Wide Primitive Technology. (2013) Anthropology Department Theses And Dissertations. Paper 30. Digitalcommons.unl.edu/anthrotheses/30

2. Skov, Eric T. Sling Technology: Towards an understanding of capabilities (2013) Nebraska Anthropologist. 169. Digitalcommons.unl.edu/nebanthro/169

https://is.muni.cz/th/deecu/Kubikova_Barbora_Master_Thesis_2015.pdf

Title: Morphological Study of Sling Projectiles with Analysis of Clay Balls from the Late
Neolithic Site Tell Arbid Abyad (Syria)

Author: Bc. Barbora Kubíková
Institute/Department: Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts, Institute of Archaeology
and Museology, Centre of Prehistoric Archaeology of the Near East (PANE)
Supervisor of the master thesis: Dr. phil. Maximilian Wilding

Abstract:
The thesis aims to put the draft into the practice for further substantial research into the
sling missiles in the Near East which has been made in the prior bachelor thesis. The
presented work will try to establish a first morphological means for the identification of
sling projectiles in the archaeological record in the Near East. The main goal is to
concentrate on the metric data and the functional design of projectiles in order to establish
parameters which are characteristic only for sling projectiles. The necessary size, weight
and form parameters, however, cannot at present be deduced from archaeological
artefacts proper, because the identification of "rounded handy-sized objects of clay or
stone RHO" (Kubíková 2013, 17) as sling projectiles is disputed and very different
functions for the plain and ball-like items are proposed (cooking stones, tokens etc.). The
central idea is to get to valid parameters after studying sling projectiles in a secure context,
where their identification is unambiguous, namely in their use by recent-ethnographic
societies. Studying the attributes of slingstones from the ethnographic contexts from
Oceania and Americas, it is hoped that realistic size and shape ranges can be defined
which could serve as a supporting tool when designating and interpreting small finds of
stone or clay in the Neolithic Near East. The range margins, it is thought, in the first step,
will permit to subtract from the archaeological record all RHO items that fall out of the
size, weight and form range of ethnographically attested sling missiles. As a testing case,
the ethnographically derived parameters will be applied to various kinds of plain clay
balls that were found at the Late Neolithic site Tell Arbid Abyad (MU-ARBA Project,
NE-Syria, 2007–2010). Beyond that much of the available archaeological information
and photographs of slingstones, sling balls and sling projectiles are brought together to
spur an archaeological comparison and which could help archaeologists with a correct
identification of small artefacts.