Four stone donuts in the Pueblo Grande Museum collection
My random poking around to try and discover the purpose of stone donuts may be paying off. In my first post, Stone Donut One, about a month ago I reported on their range. This allowed me to do a new Google search using Stone Donuts, Maya. This search turned up an article based on some stone donut finds in Guatemala titled:
Donut Stones as Thigh-supported Spindle Whorls by John J Tomasic published in Latin American Antiquity 2012. What Tomasic discovered was that stone donuts are most likely related to the women’s craft of spinning not the male task of digging and planting. His arguments seemed pretty convincing to me a novice. In the finds at Mayan sites that were suddenly abandoned the donut stones were predominantly found in the same rooms as spindle whirls. Additionally traditional Navajo spinners use a type of thigh supported spindle. This makes a lot more sense than the digging stick weight theory that is promulgated in the Desert Southwest.
It looks like the theory, of no utility, proposed in donut stones two was a dead end. In displays at the Pueblo Grande Museum and at the Casa Grande National Monument donut stones are associated with male tasks.
Casa GrandeNext post: A theory on why the utility of the donut stone was misinterpreted.
Note: The article mentioned above was behind a firewall and it took me a few weeks to find an archeology student who could help me access it. Good luck.
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