[Illustration: Figs. 152, 153.—Stone Balls found in an ancient structure at Skaill, Orkney (3½ inches and 3 inches in diameter).]
Another Orkney example (Fig. 154) is allied to these two by the character of its ornamentation. One of its ends is studded with pyramidal projections, the middle portion is ornamented by a continuous spiral, and the other end is filled by a peculiar arrangement of segmental curves.
[Illustration: Fig. 154.—Ornamented Stone Ball found at Hillhead, near Kirkwall, Orkney. Obverse and Reverse (2¾ inches diameter).]
[Illustration: Fig. 155.—Stone Ball found in Dumfriesshire.]
[Illustration: Fig. 156.—Stone Ball found at Dudwick, Aberdeenshire.]
[Illustration: Fig. 157.—Stone Ball found at Mountblairy, Banffshire.]
[Illustration: Fig. 158.—Carved Stone found at Muckle Geddes, Nairn.]
Many of these balls, however, have their discs destitute of ornament. But whether decorated or undecorated, they usually present the strongly marked typical form, which varies from the approximately circular with rounded discs, like the examples shown from Dumfriesshire (Fig. 155), and Dudwick, in Aberdeenshire (Fig. 156), to those from Mountblairy, in Banffshire (Fig. 157), and Muckle Geddes, in Nairnshire (Fig. 158), which take the form of a cylindrical axis with flat-ended cylindrical projections radiating round its circumference.
In all their varieties of form, these objects present certain features which are suggestive of a possible use as weapons. Their ornate character, their specialty of form, which renders them capable of being swung by thongs or bound to the end of a handle, and the fact that one example is pierced by a hole, are indications in this direction. Although there is no conclusive evidence of the fact, it is at least conceivable that they may have been mounted as mace-heads similar to those metal mace-heads with pyramidal projections which are found occasionally among the relics of the Iron Age, and continued in use in the early Middle Ages, and similar, at least in appearance, to the mace-heads shown (Fig. 159) in the hands of unmounted men in the Bayeux Tapestry.[71]
[Illustration: Fig. 159.—Unmounted men armed with maces. From the Bayeux Tapestry.]