Oyma taş toplar

Neolitik döneme ait oyma taş top.

Glasgow'daki Kelvingrove Sanat Galerisi ve Müzesi'nde sergilenen üç örnek.

Exceptionally elaborately decorated ball from Towie in Aberdeenshire, dated from 3200–2500 BC

Oyma taş toplar veya Oyma taş küreler, Geç Neolitik dönemden (cilalı taş devri), muhtemelen Demir Çağı'na kadar uzanan bir döneme ait petrosferlerdir ve çoğunlukla İskoçya'da, ancak Britanya ve İrlanda'nın diğer bölgelerinde de bulunmuştur. Genellikle yuvarlak, nadiren ovaldirler ve yaklaşık 2+3⁄4 inç veya 7 cm çapında, yüzeylerinde 3 ila 160 arasında çıkıntılı yumru bulunan, oldukça homojen bir boyuttadırlar. Süslemeleri olmayanlardan (topuzlar hariç) kapsamlı ve oldukça çeşitli oyma desenlerine kadar çeşitlilik gösterirler. Kullanımları veya önemleri hakkında çok çeşitli teoriler ortaya atılmış, ancak bunların hiçbiri geniş kabul görmemiştir.

Bunlar, Kosta Rika'nın güneyinde bulunmuş çok daha büyük, pürüzsüz, yuvarlak Kosta Rika'nın taş küreleri ile karıştırılmamalıdır.

Yaş ve dağılım

Oyma taş topların tarihi 5200 yıl öncesine kadar uzanıyor ve Geç Neolitik dönemden Bronz Çağı'na kadar geliyor.

Neredeyse tamamı İskoçya'nın kuzeydoğusunda, çoğunluğu Grampian Dağları'nın doğusunda yer alan verimli topraklar olan Aberdeenshire'da bulunmuştur. Pikt sembollerinin dağılımına benzer bir dağılım, oyma taş topların Pikt eserleri olduğu yönündeki ilk öneriye yol açmıştır. Çekirdek dağılımı ayrıca Yatar pozisyondaki taş çemberlerinin dağılımını da yansıtmaktadır. Nesne olarak taşınmaları çok kolaydır ve birkaç tanesi Iona, Skye, Harris, Uist , Lewis, Arran, Hawick, Wigtownshire'da ve on beş tanesi Orkney'de bulunmuştur. İskoçya dışında örnekler İrlanda'da Ballymena'da, İngiltere'de Durham, Cumbria, Lowick ve Bridlington'da bulunmuştur. Tek bir örnek Norveç'te orta çağdan kalma bir taş yığınında bulunmuştur; bunun büyük olasılıkla İskoçya'ya bir sefere çıkan bir Norveçli tarafından edinilip eve götürüldüğü düşünülmektedir. Daha büyük (90 mm çapında) topların tamamı Aberdeenshire'dandır, sadece biri Fife'deki Newburgh'dandır.

1970'lerin sonlarına doğru toplam 387 top kaydedilmişti. Bunların büyük çoğunluğu (169) Aberdeenshire'da bulunuyordu. 1983'te sayı 411'e yükselmişti ve 2015'te 425'ten fazla top kaydedilmişti. İskoçya, İrlanda ve kuzey İngiltere'den 30'dan fazla oyma top koleksiyonu British Museum'da bulunmaktadır.

Arkeolojik bağlam

Topların çoğunun bulunduğu yer kaydedilmemiştir ve çoğu tarımsal faaliyet sonucu bulunmuştur. Beşi Neolitik yerleşim yeri Skara Brae'de, biri ise Dunadd tepe kalesinde bulunmuştur. Topların dağılımı, hem silah hem de törensel durumlarda kullanılan prestij nesnesi olan topuz başlarının dağılımına benzer. Bağlam eksikliği, yorumu muhtemelen bozacaktır. Rastgele buluntuların, ancak estetik açıdan çekici olmaları durumunda toplanıp bir koleksiyona dahil edilme olasılığı yüksektir. Hasarlı ve sade topların, süslü örneklere göre pazar bulma olasılığı daha düşüktür, bu nedenle daha süslü bazı örnekler sahte olabilir.

East Lothian'daki Traprain Law'da, şekillendirmeden kaynaklanan fasetleri hala açıkça görülebilen düz kumtaşından toplar bulundu. Burada daha önce de önemli sayıda top bulunmuştu ve güney İskoçya'daki diğer Demir Çağı yerleşim yerlerinden de biliniyorlar. Bunlar MÖ dördüncü ila üçüncü yüzyıllara ait olabilir. Bu toplar süslü değildir ve topuzları yoktur.

2013 yılında arkeologlar Ness of Brodgar'da oyma bir taş top keşfettiler; bu, "modern bir arkeolojik bağlamda" in situ (yerinde) bulunan böyle bir nesnenin nadir bir örneğidir. Profesör Vicki Cummings tarafından Orkney'deki Tresness'te 5.500 yıllık bir mezarın içinde de erken dönem, süslenmemiş, cilalı taş toplar bulunmuştur.

Fiziksel özellikler

Malzeme

Another example, displayed at the British Museum

Many balls are said to be made of "greenstone", a general term for all varieties of dark, greenish igneous rocks, including diorites, serpentinite, and altered basalts. Including Old Red Sandstone, 43 are sandstone, 26 greenstone, 12 quartzite, and 9 were serpentinite; these had been carved. Some were made of gabbro – a difficult material to carve. Round and oval natural shaped sandstones are sometimes found.

Examples made from hornblende gneiss and granitic gneiss were noted, both very difficult stone to work. Granitic rocks were also used; and the famous Towie example from Aberdeenshire may be serpentinised picrite. The highly ornamented examples were mainly made of sandstone or serpentine. A significant number have not as yet been fully inspected or tested to ascertain their composition.

Deneysel arkeoloji

Full replicas have been made using authentic manufacturing techniques (pecking and grinding) by A.T. Young. It was shown that they could be made using prehistoric technology with no recourse to the use of metal tools.

Boyut, şekil ve çıkıntılar

Of the 387 carved stone balls known in 1976 (now about 425), 375 are about 70 mm in diameter, but twelve are known with diameters of 90 to 114 mm. Only 7 are oval. They are therefore about the size of tennis balls or oranges. Nearly half have 6 knobs.

Oyma taş top şekli

Oyma çıkıntılar	Buluntu sayısı
3	3
4	43
5	3
6	~240
7	18
8	9
9	3
10–55	52
70–160	14

Süsleme

Carved stone ball with low-profile knobs

The decoration used falls into three categories:

• those with spirals
• those with concentric circles
• those with patterns of straight incised lines and hatchings

More than one design is used on the same ball and the standard of artwork varies from the extremely crude to the highly expert which only an exceptionally skilled craftsman could have produced. Some balls have designs on the interspaces between the knobs which must be significant in the context of the speculated use of these artefacts.

Twenty-six of the six-knobbed balls are decorated. The Orkney examples are unusual, being either all ornamented or otherwise unusual in appearance, such as the lack, bar one example, of the frequently found six-knobbed type. Metal may have been used to work some of the designs.

The Towie ball from Aberdeenshire has some design similarities with the carvings on the Folkton Drums. These were found in a tumulus in England and are made of chalk with elaborate carvings, among which are distinct oculi or eyes. Concentric carved lines on stone balls appear to be stylised oculi. This ball also has a roughly triangular arrangement of three dots in an interspace between the knobs. This appears to be identical to the arrangement of dots found on the Parkhill silver chain terminal ring, found near Aberdeen, a Pictish artefact. It is possible that the dots represent a name, as some of the Pictish symbols at least are thought to represent personal names.

Spirals or plastic ornament which is similar to Grooved Ware is found on the Aberdeenshire examples, this being a type of late Neolithic pottery not known in the north-east but common in Orkney and Fife. The Newgrange carvings in Ireland show strong similarities to those found on some balls. A continuous spiral is found on one and elements of chevrons, zig-zags and concentric triangles are also found, stimulating comparisons with petrosomatoglyph symbolism. Mostly the different knobs have different or sometimes no ornamentation. A 'golf-ball' variety of ornamentation is found on a few balls. The carving does not appear to have any practical purpose in general, however it has been suggested that one type, with very distinct knobs, was used for processing copper ores (see under 'Function'). Some of the bold triangles and criss-cross incisions seem to be more Iron Age in character than Neolithic or Bronze Age.

İşlevi

Glasgow example

Önerilen törensel kullanım

• The possible use of the balls as oracles has been suggested. The way in which the ball came to rest could be interpreted as a message from the gods or an answer to a question.

• An alternative or supplementary use could have been as the 'right to speak' where discussions are controlled by the requirement for the speaker to hold the carved stone ball or if not, then keep their peace and listen to the views of others. The balls are of a size that fits comfortably in one hand.

Önerilen pratik kullanım

• Some of the balls have grooves or interspaces between the knobs into which leather could be tied so as to make a device such as a bola. Their use as weapons was suggested by many researchers but in recent years this idea has fallen from favour.

• One suggestion saw the balls as movable poises on a primitive weighing machine, following the logic of the remarkable uniformity in size shown by a good number of these carefully made objects. However, it has been shown that their weights vary so considerably that mathematically they could not be considered part of a system of weight measurement.

• 'Sink stones' (fishing weights) found in Denmark and Ireland have some slight similarities, these artefacts being used in conjunction with fishing nets. Similarly, they might have been used as loom weights, but neither loom weights nor fishing weights have any particular need for uniform diameter.

• Another possible use for the stones would be in the working of hides. Into the 20th century leatherworkers polished leather, parchment, and hides, by tying the skins to a frame using a ball at each corner of the hide then rubbing down material being worked with stones. The corners of the hides were wrapped around the balls which allowed the bindings to hold fast without slipping off. In more modern times, the balls were often made from scraps of the material being worked and the leather was cut away from the balls when the polishing was finished. This caused the balls to grow in size until the process had to be started over by replacing the oversized balls with scraps and beginning a new ball.

• Lynne Kelly, in her 2016 book The Memory Code, posits that such stones were used as memory aids by the pre-literate peoples, citing similarities to objects in other cultures.

Megalit yapımında

Another in Glasgow

A theory on the movement of megalithic stones for monuments has been put forward as a result of an observed correlation between standing stone circles and a concentration of carved stone balls. The suggestion is that the stone balls might have been used like ball bearings for transporting big stones.

Many of the late Neolithic stone balls have diameters differing by only a millimetre, suggesting that uniform size was important for their purpose. This led to the suggestion that they might have been meant to be used together, or interchangeably. By mapping find-sites in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, it can be shown that often these small stone spheres were found in the vicinity of Neolithic megalithic circles.

To test the proposal, experimental archeologists built a model system, substituting hard wooden balls made to the same size. The balls were placed into grooves cut in parallel longitudinal wooden 'sleepers'; these supported an overlying carrying-board that the giant test stone rode on. At least in the situation tested, the model showed such heavy transport to be practical.

Platonik cisimler

The carved stone balls have been taken as evidence of knowledge of the five Platonic solids a millennium before Plato described them. Indeed, some of them exhibit the symmetries of Platonic solids, but the extent of this and how much it depends on mathematical understanding is disputed, as configurations resembling the solids can naturally arise when fitting equal-sized knobs with minimal gaps onto the surface of a sphere.There does not appear to be much special attention given to the Platonic solid arrangements over less symmetrical arrangements of knobs over the balls, and some of the five solids do not appear.

Ayrıca bakınız

• Roma dodekahedronu
• Dodekahedron
• Misket

Kaynakça

Genel

• Smith, John Alexander (1874–1876). "Notes of small ornamented stone balls found in different parts of Scotland, &c., with remarks on their supposed age and use". Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. V (11): 29-62. 

• Smith, John Alexander (1874–1876). "Additional notes of small ornamented stone balls found in different parts of Scotland, &c". Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. V (11): 313-319. 

Dış bağlantılar

• A gallery of carved stone balls (photographs & information). 25 Mart 2014 tarihinde kaynağından arşivlendi. 

• Carved stone balls (3D gallery). National Museums of Scotland. 

• Dr Hugo Anderson-Whymark (6 Haziran 2018). "Enormous petrified mulberries a new dimension on carved stone balls". National Museums of Scotland. Arşivlenmesi gereken bağlantıya sahip kaynak şablonu içeren maddeler (link)

• 'Not just a load of old balls': Late Neolithic developments and the creation of a new world order (video). The Rhind Lectures. Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. 17 Aralık 2020 – YouTube vasıtasıyla.