From what I gather, blog posts are supposed to be insightful, so I’ll apologize up front. This isn’t going to solve any of life’s riddles. Rather, it’s more an expression of interpretive frustration. You see, we started finding these little clay balls in the pueblo room we’re excavating and I haven’t the foggiest idea as to what they are.
The first one was an oddity, but now we’re up to around 50 or so. They seem to come from contexts that include roof fall, so they might have been placed amid roofing material at the time of construction or renovation. One of the students may or may not have written in the stratum form that we had “a handful of balls and a sizable amount of wood.” I have to admit that the original draft of this post was something of an homage to Clifford Geertz and his infamous treatise on Balinese cockfighting.
Our little orbs are made of fired clay, strong enough to withstand repeated and strenuous attempts to shove them through the quarter-inch screen. They range in size from that of a small pea to that of a standard marble. They were formed into spheres, but perfection was apparently of little concern. Despite their clear contempt for me, I sort of like the little fellows.
At the eastern Mimbres site of Phyllis Pueblo, Karen Schollmeyer and I found similar balls buried in the hearth ash of abandoned rooms, perhaps as part of ritual retirements. Those, however, were relatively rare and always made of stone. I’ve also seen larger balls, likely used in kicking races. During flash floods, torrents of water roll sandstone down washes, grinding it into the shape of a ball. Historic ethnographies discuss these, explaining that by kicking them, ritual racers were emulating the rainstorms of past and hastening those of the future. But kick-balls are either stone or perishable (leather, say) and quite a bit larger.
What began as interesting was quickly becoming less than fun. I’m supposed to know stuff, right? Students keep asking me what these things are, and I can’t give them a definitive answer. I thought maybe they had been used to test clay recipes. If that were the case, though, I should have run across them before. Not only have I never seen them, but no one else here has either. And they’re not showing up elsewhere on the site. Only my room, and in surprising quantities. We finally stopped bagging them separately and now keep a generic ball sack for every level.
I emailed friends and posted pictures to Facebook. Kathy Henderson suggested gaming pieces, and this may well be the case. Chris Watkins likened them to “Moqui marbles,” which he’s seen at Fremont and Kayenta (oh, really now?) sites, but agreed with Matt Peeples that those are natural concretions. Chris Whiting reported seeing similar, albeit stone, balls near an obsidian source in Arizona. George Cowgill suggested the possibility of rattle beads inside hollow pottery containers. We do see a few vessels like that in the Southwest. They are rare, but rattle-bottom mugs and rattle-handle ladles turn up now and then. No such vessels, however, have been found here. And again, why so many? George thought they could have been used in cooking, to help maintain an even boil. Matt has seen such things, but he says those were larger. According to Marc Severson, there’s an argument that pebbles have been used in pottery production to assist in the smudging process. Maybe; we do get a ton of smudged vessels here.
These are all good ideas, but I can’t get past the fact that our orb distribution is so concentrated. So many, yet in just one room. Surely the folks living in Feature 402 weren’t the only ones smudging vessels, boiling water, or playing games.
Kate Sarther Gann suggested I write a blog post, which I guess is what I’ve done. Now that I’m thinking of a way to wrap it up, I’ve come to realize that maybe there is some insight to be had after all. Years ago, I expressed my frustration at the lack of available data for an analysis, saying something whiny, like, “We’re just never going to know!” Peggy Nelson replied, “If you want to work in the Southwest, that’s something you’d better get used to.” So maybe, if nothing else, I’ll learn to embrace my ignorance…at least this once.
10 thoughts on “Welcome to the Grand Ballroom”
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I can think of only one thing has to do with the stars and in my humble opinion, there you will find the answer .. black hole .. or map the stars ..
http://intbau.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/czarna-dziura.jpg
They are ceramic charcoals.
If you wanted to clean out the inside of a jar these with some water might do the trick by swishing them around. Or if you wanted to compact a smudged surface within a jar that you could not see or reach far enough into these might also be useful.
The balls could have been used in cooking. There are examples in excavations from a Mayan excavation in 2012. The article is from Discovery News titled, “Mayans Cooked Food With Clay Balls”, 2012 issue. The article states they had found several clay balls,their finding supports the hypothesis that the balls, “were involved in kitchen activities related to food processing,” archaeologists Stephanie Simms, Francesco Berna, of Boston University, MA, and George Bey of Millsaps College, MS, wrote in the Journal of Archaeological Science.examination Simms discovered they had been used in cooking, (http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/maya-clay-balls-121129.htm
I have an image in my head of a harried mom, trying to get her work done making pottery, and in order to keep her toddler busy, gave them a pile of clay to play with. The munchkin makes a bunch of clay balls, and mom fires them because munchkin kicks up a fuss because said munchkin wants to keep them. The balls are fired along with the pottery, and eventually stuck up in the roof to get them out from underfoot, because as many parents could say, they hurt as much to step on as a lego. You ever try to keep a toddler busy?
Think of children. I’m accused of a good imagination, so here goes. Parent is making clay coils. Children are watching and “helping”. Parent pinches off bits for kids who roll them in their palms. Children want their “pots” fired along with the parent’s pots. Parent indulges the children. Ball toys get played with and forgotten. Sometime later the roof needs some repair. “Hey, these old clay balls might work to chink the trouble spots.” I think we often forget the children, the everyday tasks and problems, and the remarkable creativity of humans faced with a problem to solve–or a child to distract so that work can proceed
A) – Was pottery going on here?- Firing gauges – to check when artifact is fully fired
B) – Do they burn or cremate dead? – Ashes of relatives rendered manageable
C) – Did they have a game like solitaire (wooden board with holes/recesses + balls)
D) – Was this a counting house – primitive abacus with grooves and graded balls – like roman abacus?
E) Board game – search images [African board game stones] many have wooden board with recesses and different sized pebbles/balls
F) See also TAFL eg (hnefatafl)—old board games
G) See http://re-creational.blogspot.com.au/2011/11/lost-marbles-reward-if-found.html#more
H) …………………..sorry I need to break off here and do some work.
we found similar ball with hole drilled here of clay part of chin worn on neck
FOUND FIRST BRAHMI SCRIPT COINS OF 600BC
New Buddhist Underground City fort, maybe one on 12 tribes live in our region
Ancient Buddhist city discovered with Underground fort 300 BC.
May lead to New Dynasty history which will Change History Forever as Harappa did.
SAVE Priceless Cultural Artefacts on the brink of damage, which will be Lost To Humanity
AEROSPACE CONNECTIONS from Past Bygone Eras
Recipient of Telugu Dravidian Language Voluntary Service Award from Somanatha kala Peetam,
Father of Youngest Stamp collector,1998
Calculated velocity of Light from MahaBharata,1012AD,
http://prachinatelugu.blogspot.in/
http://indianbanknotes.blogspot.in/
http://windpowerinfra.blogspot.in/
Damodhar rao musham Epigraphist Historian 08801857954 damubn@gmail.com
17 Santoshima Colony,West Marredpally,Secunderbad-26 Indie
In Mesoamerica, these things had two main uses: as blow-gun pellets, and as rattles. Years ago a student tested the first interpretation by replicating a bunch of pellets (based on finds at an Aztec site). He made a series of blow guns out of different sizes of PVC pipe. He did pretty well hitting targets on the campus quad until the university police make him stop. But not before recording sizes and distances. Will, get in touch and I can send you the relevant portion of our site report on these things. A key question is the extent to which they are standardized in size and shape. -Mike
Thanks Mike. I’ll touch base with you and get those data. Looking forward to reading it. Sounds promising.