Talk:Carved stone balls

Which 'Towie'?

Mentioned in:

• Carved stone balls #Materials / 2nd paragraph and
• Carved stone balls #Ornamentation / 4th paragraph.

In Towie (disambiguation) there are several articles mentioned.
Which one is meant?

Answer:
1st: The caption under the photo says "Towie in Aberdeenshire".
2nd: The main contribution in Talk:Carved stone balls/Archive 1 #"You don't say" / list elements "8" to "10" mention the same "Towie in Aberdeenshire".

Ping welcome, Steue (talk) 11:05, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Function, my guesses

My first guess was: a ball for throwing:

• either in a game, kind of a forerunner of the British, and later American, Football
• or as a weapon.

But since I heard (in a TV documentation) that the Towie balls ( from Aberdeenshire ) are from a very fragile kind of stone, my guesses are:

• as a symbol of power, for the leader/king, and/or
• as a kind of ID ( Seal (emblem) ), for messengers ( Couriers or Messenger of the Court ), carrying messages from one king to an other king, as they were later used in combination with a sealing wax.

Re. other suggestions:

• as a weapon they would not be decorated.
• fishers would, very likely, not decorate their weights.
• in the working of hides:
  taking a piece of leather and filling it with stones, sand or earth would be much easier/faster, even more so if such pieces of leather were available in ample quantity.
• ball bearings for transporting larger stones:
  • would, very likely, not be decorated; plus:
  • ball bearings with knobs don't roll well, :).

Ping welcome, Steue (talk) 11:57, 5 July 2023 (UTC)