Balls – My experiments

A journey in experimental archaeology

My paper from the 2015 Summits Alpine Scholar Competition which I also use as a class handout.

Word Version – Balls
PDF Version – Balls As I’ve been working on research I realized that people were saying the same things over and over about balls. It’s one of the problems with research, unless you go back to the sources, folks end up working from that same sets of speculations. So, in order to test things I started making balls.

I’ve done them out of leather and fabric, both. One of the things that I had the worst problem with was making balls that were ok for my kids to throw at one another. Ok, I have 5 boys, but they *did* all make it to adulthood. I don’t think that would have happened if I used some of the period ball fillings! The rag core balls, even wrapped with wool, are *very* hard! …let’s not even go near pebble fillings…. and the one time I was sure of a concussion it was caused by a croquet ball, which is solid wood. ….So, those were right out.

…and period balls didn’t bounce the way we expect things to…..

So, I’ve used all kinds of softer things. The modern fillings in the list are all things that I’ve tried. I don’t have pictures up until this year, though. So here are some sets of pictures.

Recycled Denim and lentils – No, they didn’t use foods in period as fillings, although it’s remotely possible that inedible foods would have been. As a child I made balls filled with persimmon seeds and squash seeds, so inedible seeds are a possibility. I haven’t seen any evidence of that, though. The denim is from recycled worn-out jeans.