Bola Stone

A bola stone is a small, rounded stone with a groove cut around it, interpreted as one of the weights of a bola. The Morhiss Mound specimens from the lower Guadalupe River in Texas are rounded stones with a single groove running around the body. Waco sinkers, grooved or notched quartzite pebbles from Central Texas, are sometimes placed in the same group.

The Morhiss stones were shaped by grinding, and their grooves were incised, unlike Waco sinkers, whose grooves were pecked. They are made of sandstone, quartzite or limestone (Texas Beyond History).

A bola is two or more weights tied to cords, swung overhead and thrown so the cords wrap around the legs of an animal or the body of a bird (Hodge 1907). Whether North American grooved stones served this way is debated. Texas Beyond History presents the Morhiss stones as bola weights, but Hodge (1907) knew of only one North American bola, the Eskimo bird bola with bone or ivory weights, and Fowke (1896) found no evidence that other North American peoples used bolas, preferring to read such stones as slungshots, sinkers or club heads. The key trait is a small ground stone ball or ovoid with one encircling groove.

No published size range for North American bola stones was found. The documented Eskimo bird bola used 4–10 walnut-sized bone or ivory weights on cords 610–760 mm long (Hodge 1907, converted from inches).

Reported mainly from Texas, at Morhiss Mound and other sites on the lower Guadalupe River and in southwest Texas, with grooved Waco sinkers in Central Texas (Texas Beyond History). Historic North American bolas are known only from the western Arctic (Hodge 1907); stone bolas are typical of the South American pampas and Patagonia (Hodge 1907; Holmes 1919).

Identification tips: Look for a compact, rounded stone, ground smooth, with one neat groove that runs all the way around. Battering on the surface suggests a hammer or maul instead.

Similar types: A Net Sinker is usually a flat pebble with notches or a rough pecked groove. A Plummet is teardrop-shaped with the groove or hole near one end. A Grooved Maul is much larger, with a battered striking end. A Hammerstone has no groove.

Naming: Bolas is Spanish for balls (Hodge 1907). Peabody's 1901 list of proposed uses for plummets included bolas (Moorehead 1910), and Pennypacker (1938) likened some Eskimo plummet-stones to bola stones.

Dating evidence: Gibson (1985) thought Poverty Point plummets were most likely bola weights, but in his revised edition (1996) he judged them more likely net weights, so the bola reading of plummets is itself disputed.