Pyramidal Lead Objects: Scale Weights, Loom Weights, or Sinkers?

Abstract Ancient scale weights are a key to understanding weight systems and types of economy, but their definition is notoriously difficult, and scholars tend to classify as weights a wide variety of objects. The present paper reassesses a series of pyramidal lead objects from Phoenicia, dated mostly to the Hellenistic period. In the last twenty years these objects have been regarded as scale weights-in fact, forming the largest category of assumed Phoenician scale weights. In this paper it is suggested that these are not scale weights but sinkers (weights for fishing lines or nets).