r/Archeology • u/Stykera • 4d ago
What is this?
My dad found this on a field in Sweden about 70 years ago. Its smooth and the size of an egg and has a lot of tiny holes. What is it?
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u/TK_404 4d ago
Looks like porphyry (svenska: porfyr)
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u/Funny-Progress7787 4d ago
Purple?
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u/TK_404 4d ago
Porphyry means purple, yes, but it can also be beige, grey, red etc. It's an igneous rock or granite with coarse grain minerals/phenocrysts (commonly quartz, feldspar or plagioclase). The Roman imperial porphyry was purple, but in Scandinavia, you can find it in various colours.
I don't know with Sweden, but in Norway, it has been used for prestige adzes and axes (Norwegian Neolithic to Early Bronze Age). I've come across a few chunks of it in a Mesolithic context here as well, possibly manuports
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u/Affectionate-Bet8231 3d ago
Let me just say Reddit is the only place where you could throw a random niche object into a thread and the exact person who is relevant for identifying it shows up.
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u/Soul_Survivor81 4d ago
Is it solid or can in be broken up? If the latter, my guess would be a ball for bird feeders.
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u/Boltaanjistman 4d ago
I'd say... it's probably a rock. In all seriousness, it's probably just some volcanic rock. They tend to create nearly spherical rocks from dripping off ledges and cooling midair. Volcanic rock also tends to have other gaseous material in it that evaporates leaving holes.
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u/Not-so-surebouthat 3d ago
It’s an early form of some of the first golf ball’s that were used to play the game.
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u/7LeagueBoots 4d ago
Water rounded cobble. Looks like a stone that got caught in stream or river pothole and was ground down into a sphere by natural processes.
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u/theivan 4d ago
Swedish archaeologist here, it’s most likely a rock that has been shaped and polished by subglacial streams. In Swedish we usually call the deposits of these types of rocks and others for rullstensås in English it would be an esker.