Buzz or Button?

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A prominent archaeologist has recently suggested a function for the puzzling little buttonlike artifacts found at a number of sites in Israel, as well as elsewhere in the ancient world. According to Gus Van Beek, curator of Old World archaeology at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the curious little discs are toys similar to the ones he himself played with as a child. At the beginning of the century in the United States, this toy was called a “buzz.”^a

What do BAR readers think of Dr. Van Beek’s identification?

Van Beek, who directs a major excavation (12 field seasons since 1970) at Tell Jemmeh, a site in Israel near the Gaza strip, became interested in identifying the little discs because he discovered 17 of them in his dig. When he began searching the literature, he found that similar artifacts had been excavated at such familiar sites as Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer, Bethel and Beth-Shean. These examples dated from nearly 3000 B.C. to about 300 B.C. When Van Beek widened his literature search, he found examples from ancient Tyre in Lebanon, from Egypt and even from India. On a trip to Pakistan, he saw two examples in museums there.

The enigmatic objects are roughly rounded discs with two holes near the center. Although they vary in size, most range from 1.25 to 2 inches in diameter. Some are made of chalk or stone, but the vast majority are made of potsherds from broken clay vessels.

R. A. S. Macalister, the Irish archaeologist who excavated Gezer at the beginning of the century, identified them as actual buttons. A stone example 063from Megiddo, on the other hand, is identified as a pendant.

The great English archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie, who has been called the father of Palestinian archaeology,^b found a possible example at Tell el-Ajjul, a site very near Tell Jemmeh. Petrie suggested it might be a belt toggle (a device to keep a tightened string or strap from slipping).

J. L. Kelso and William Foxwell Albright found some at Bethel and identified them as a toy on the basis of their misapprehension that the discs might be bull-roarers. But bull-roarers have quite a different form: They most often consist of a thin, flat, oblong piece of wood with a hole at one end, through which a long cord is attached. (North American Indians made their bull-roarers from bone and rawhide.) When the bull-roarer is swung rapidly through the air, it makes a roaring or whirring sound similar to the sound of an airplane propeller. Although turned into “a toy by Europeans in recent times, [the bull-roarer] had the highest mystic significance and sanctity among ancient and primitive peoples,” as the Encyclopedia Brittanica tells us.¹

A buzz, however, matches the discs well. To make a buzz, a string is threaded through one of the holes in the disc, and then one end is passed back through the other hole and tied to the other end of the string to form a continuous loop. With the disc hanging loosely in the middle, the string is twisted from, say, 10 to 30 turns, until the string is wound quite tightly in loops. Then, with the thumbs in the string, it is pulled taut, causing the disc to twirl, often with a humming sound. (Perhaps that is why it was called a buzz. Relaxing the string will cause it to twist again, in the opposite direction, and when this happens it can be pulled taut again. Observes Van Beek, who experimented with the discs he found at Tell Jemmeh, “By maintaining a rhythm of alternate tension and relaxation … , one can keep the disk spinning for hours.”

In addition to the site mentioned above, Petrie also excavated at Van Beek’s site of Tell Jemmeh, where he too found the little discs. In Petrie’s report on Tell Jemmeh, he made an identification of them that is very close to Van Beek’s. In 1928, Petrie wrote: “Children now spin such discs as toys by means of two stretched strings passing through the holes.” As Van Beek notes, however, Petrie “nowhere explained how it worked.” Moreover, by 1938, when Petrie was digging at Tell Ajjul. He seemed less sure of his identification. He described the discs as “potsherds ground circular possibly for twirling when strung.”

Van Beek observes that even though the discs may be buzzes, they may also have other functions, such as a playing piece in a game, some kind of toggle or an amulet to ward off evil. A single-holed disc functions as a spindle-whorl; like the buzz, it may have had other uses too.

In the past, BAR readers have been unusually imaginative in suggesting a variety of functions for baffling artifacts. Long-time subscribers may remember the clay tootsie-rolls.^c Then there was the S-shaped belt buckle.^d More recently, there was the pot full of holes.^e

And now the button/buzz. Van Beek claims he has gotten all his buzzes to work. What do BAR readers think?

A prominent archaeologist has recently suggested a function for the puzzling little buttonlike artifacts found at a number of sites in Israel, as well as elsewhere in the ancient world. According to Gus Van Beek, curator of Old World archaeology at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the curious little discs are toys similar to the ones he himself played with as a child. At the beginning of the century in the United States, this toy was called a “buzz.”a What do BAR readers think of Dr. Van Beek’s identification? Van Beek, who directs a major excavation (12 field […]