Artifact?

[Linda]

I found this rock in copperas cove Texas, Coryell County. Is there anyone out there that can tell me what it is and what it was used for? thank you. It is not letting me upload a photo! I do have a video of it on you tube under texasgirlnmissouri Artifact? I would like someone to take a look at it and give me some feed back on what they think! Thanks

[Minimalist]

Hello, Linda.

Took a few moments but I found your video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7gSMa1_F-Q


Take a look at this web site

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_shot

Round shot (or solid shot, or a cannonball, or simply ball) is a solid projectile without explosive charge, fired from a cannon. As the name implies, round shot is spherical; its diameter is slightly less than the bore of the gun it is fired from.

Round shot was made in early times from dressed stone, but by the 17th century, from iron. It was used as the most accurate projectile that could be fired by a smoothbore cannon, used to batter the wooden hulls of opposing ships, fortifications, or fixed emplacements, and as a long-range anti-personnel weapon.

In the photo which accompanies the link you will see a selection of cannon balls including a couple of stone balls. These were recovered from the wreck of The Mary Rose sunk in 1545. Clicking on the picture will bring you an enlarged view. It is too large to fit on this board.

If you concentrate on the two stone balls on top you will see striations similar to the grooves on your stone ball. This would have been part of the smoothing process so that the ball would fit inside the bore of the cannon.

That would be my best guess. Judging from the size it looks like an artillery unit was running low on ammo and decided to make a few spares just in case.

[Linda]

You are not going to believe this, But I was already doing some research on the Mary rose ship. The ship did sail in that area where the rock was found . I have some more photos of some fossils I found next to the round stone ball is there anyway that I could send those photos to you? So you can see what kind of rocks where in that area. maybe the round stone could be older do to the fossils found around the ball? Thank You, Linda

[Minimalist]

In order to post any photo you must first load it to a host site.

Photobucket.com is a free site you can use for this purpose. Upload your pictures to photobucket and then you will get an [IMG] tag when you mouse over it.

Copy the tag and paste it into a message.


The Mary Rose was the flagship of Henry VIII and it sank in the English Channel during a battle with the French. As England was at war mainly with France during this time period I would expect that Mary Rose spent her career in that theater of operations.

However, everyone used stone round shot at this time and the Spanish were active in the Americas.