psmv5: The carved stone balls of Aberdeen

I first noticed the carved stone balls of Aberdeen a couple of years ago, at reference 1. And they have cropped up again in my reading around the Neanderthals and their collecting habits – of which more in due course.

Wikipedia does them at reference 2, and from there I went on to a study of these balls at reference 3, a study which has already prompted the sub-digression at reference 4.

[Oldmeldrum is on the (red) A947, heading north out of Aberdeen]

Introductory

It turns out that about 500 of these balls have been found so far, and while they have occasionally been found outside Scotland altogether, they do seem to be, in large part, confined to the lowlands to the northwest of Aberdeen and to date from around 5,000 years ago – as opposed to the 50,000 years ago when the Neanderthals were still around.

I don’t know if anyone would care to hazard a guess as to what proportion of the total have turned up – given that they do not seem be associated with anything or anywhere in particular – mostly just turning up in the course of regular farm work. Or now, perhaps construction work. Can Dr. Bayes do the business on this occasion?

These stone balls were made from various types of stone, not all local to their findspots.

These finds might be said to be centred at Oldmeldrum, a village with a history – and a stone circle. A stone circle which is sometimes alleged to be a recumbent stone circle, another feature of the Stone Age which seems to be confined to much the same part of Scotland. A short description of same is to be found at reference 5, a rather longer description at reference 6. It seems that some care was exercised in choosing and sourcing the stone for these recumbent stone circles; rather more than just dragging up whatever stone happened to be lying around, like the sarsens of Stonehenge. For which see reference 7 – the methods of which, as it happens, were recently noticed at reference 8.

The present point being that we know enough about this period and that life then was complicated enough, for there to have to been local customs and variations, some of which do not have any obvious purpose or function, traces of which survive today. With some people even claiming to detect the hands of particular craftsmen in particular stone balls and with local customs involving non-local connections.

Stewart-Moffitt’s book can be thought of as being in three parts: first some helpful introductory material on the Neolithic background to what is now north-east Scotland; second a catalogue of the balls so far; and, third some discussion. What were the balls for?

The Neolithic background includes material on previous antiquarian studies, going back several hundred years. On the geology of the region. On the geographical distribution of the balls. And, lastly, on their relationship – if any – with other buildings and monuments of the period.

Context

An account of these balls should, ideally, relate them to their context. A context which includes:

• Location in time and space. When? Where? For how long?

• Stone, particularly flint, tools. Some of which were very finely worked – but also a lot more fragile than the stone balls

• The recumbent stone circles, another curiously north-eastern Scottish phenomenon

• Domestic buildings, large and small, suggestive of a settled, agricultural, life style

• Language, but not writing. Then looking forward, the Pictish symbol stones, which some believe to be close to writing. Incised rather than carved

• Looking further afield and even further forward, the Celtic-Roman dodecahedrons, noticed just over a year ago at reference 13. The fashion for spherical geometry came back!

A wish-list I do not get very far towards meeting in what follows. Stewart-Moffitt does rather better.

Catalogue

Stewart-Moffitt offers some discussion of cataloguing and classification. Their uses and abuses, particularly in the case of these balls where archaeological provenance is mostly missing.

He goes on to refine the classification developed in the 1970s by Marshall at reference 9. A paper which was based on something under 400 balls and which is illustrated with line drawings rather than photographs.

We then get onto the catalogue proper, with the primary axis of analysis being the number of knobs, with four (vaguely tetrahedral) and six (vaguely cubical) knobbed balls accounting for more than three fifths of the total of something more than 500 balls. Another type, lots of knobs, accounts for a sixth, while a smaller type is the balls which have been decorated by engraving more or less complicated patterns on them.

Helpfully, Stewart-Moffitt provides access to his master catalogue, in the form of an Excel workbook. It would have been even more helpful had the reconciliation of the rows of his worksheet with his text been more careful.

But spherical cubes were clearly the strong favourite, with spherical tetrahedra and many knobs well down the field.

His revision of the Marshall classification runs to 32 types, reproduced in a table at the end of this post.

Purpose

There have been lots of ideas over the years about what these stones were for, but in the absence of more evidence, not have been conclusive.

• Balls were once made up into maces with wooden handles. Weapons. Perhaps something like the much later ‘morning star’ of the Middle Ages

• Sink stones for fishing – although stone weights used in amateur fishing today are usually a good deal smaller than an orange, the approximate size of these balls

• Balls for throwing at birds and other game

• Balls which are part of something like the south American bolas

• Crushing or grinding grain. Which is not going to work with the balls with big knobs

• Cooking. Heated up in fires and then used for heating cooking water in pots

• Used in some kind of game. Even though a lot of them would not roll very well

• The apprentice pieces of reference 10, with the sophistication of the ball serving to exhibit the skill, or lack of it, of the mason. Lots of worked stone, so lots of masons to be trained. With reference 11 being about a rather later sort of worked stone

• Family level objects, perhaps passed down, perhaps used in cults or rituals of some kind.

At one point Stewart-Moffitt tells us that: ‘… closely followed by numerous suggestions for their use. National Museums Scotland has a large file of letters from members of the public offering their own ideas…’.

With his own including:

• ‘… CSBs like smartphones have presence, they are stylish, aesthetically pleasing, and fashionable, providing instant user gratification from the tactile sensations they impart. They contain many of the necessary ingredients and potential to support a growing ideology or culture and their possession would have undoubtedly been socially influential…’

• An evolving fashion. I associate to the need for children in the school playground to acquire the latest fashion item, to participate in the latest fashion activity. In this case perhaps involving craftsmen who did the work for pay. Playing with new sorts of stone was part of the game

• Influenced in their shapes by the rolling hills of northeast Scotland. I find this one a bit fanciful

• Not fancy weapons!

• He uses the word ‘keeper’ as well as ‘owner’, which for me captures their probable status quite well.

My own:

• A sort of family heirloom, something to cement the family in the absence of writing

• An object of interest and value – but which is not needed or used for anything of a day-to-day sort. An extra, a luxury: not being for anything is part of the point

• The visual and tactile properties of the balls perhaps filling a cognitive hole now filled in other, sometimes literate, ways. Associating here to jewels and the fancy books of the Middle Ages

• Big enough and solid enough to stand up to the vagaries of Neolithic life. A fancy flint knife is all very well, but it is fragile and one is apt to cut oneself idly playing with it in one’s hands.

Work in progress. Work which would be helped along by access to some of these balls, or replicas of same. Better still, actual contact. I shall investigate.

Other matters

I learned in the course of producing the data slide above, that it is quite easy to get Excel pivot tables give the wrong answers if you are fiddling about with data and formulae at the same time. The Excel brain does not yet have super-human capability. More care or better training indicated!

Conclusions

These carved stone balls have fascinated people for a long time, with antiquarians getting going several hundred years ago. A fascination which has spawned all kinds of theories.

Perhaps encouraged by the absence of evidence about what these expensive artefacts were for, an absence which leaves plenty of space for both amateur and professional speculation.

For myself, I believe that these balls do bear on the Neolithic mind, can tell us something about the way that they thought about things, how they reacted to things. My speculations will continue.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/04/to-stones.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carved_stone_balls.

Reference 3: The Circular Archetype in Microcosm: The Carved Stone Balls of Late Neolithic Scotland – Chris L. Stewart-Moffitt – 2022.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/02/a-botanical-digression.html.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recumbent_stone_circle.

Reference 6: Report on the stone circles of the north-east of Scotland, Inverurie district, obtained under the Gunning Fellowship, with measured plans and drawings – Fred. R. Coles, assistant keeper of the museum – 1900.

Reference 7: Origins of the sarsen megaliths at Stonehenge - David J. Nash, T. Jake R. Ciborowski, J. Stewart Ullyott, Mike Parker Pearson, Timothy Darvill, Susan Greaney, Georgios Maniatis, and Katy A. Whitaker – 2020.

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/02/rough-and-tumble.html.

Reference 9: Carved Stone Balls – Marshall, D.N – 1976-77.

Reference 10: The Carved Stone Balls of Scotland: Who made them, and why? – Jeff Nisbet – 2014.

Reference 11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictish_stone. Aka Iron Age Pictish symbol stones, several thousand years after the stone balls.

Reference 12: Pictish symbols revealed as a written language through application of Shannon entropy – Rob Lee, Philip Jonathan, Pauline Ziman – 2010.

Reference 13: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/geometrical-balls.html.

Additional information