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Pro tip: stop calling every carved stone a ritual object, a trip to the British Museum changed my mind
I used to roll my eyes when museum placards said "ritual use" because it felt like a cop out for anything they could not explain. Last spring I stood in front of the Folkton Drums in London, three chalk cylinders dug up in 1889 from a child's grave in Yorkshire, and read the new research arguing they were measuring sticks for building circles. That got me thinking about how many "ritual" labels in my local museum back home in Ohio might just be lazy guesses at tools we do not understand yet. I am not saying every weird object is a ruler, but writing it off as ceremony stops the digging. Curious if anyone else has seen a "ritual object" get reclassified as a practical tool, and what tipped the case?
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