Buzz or Button?

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 […]