Stone Pebbles as Game Pieces?

Sally Crawford (2009) argued that any object may become a toy in the hands of a child, and it is thus absolutely challenging to identify it without an archaeological context. This is particularly true for stone pebbles and plaques, both found as single object or in multiple series in tombs and sacred sanctuary deposits in the Greek world. The frequent association with subadult burials, for example, makes it possible that at least some of these multiple pebbles and globules were game tools (marbles perhaps?), but it may not be excluded that they were deemed particularly valuable also due to the intrinsic properties and the powerful colors of the stones, being shiny and translucent. The paper aims to bring up an issue which has been suffering from lack of attention for a long time, presenting some intriguing archaeological contexts with pebbles and proposing a meaning for them.