Hi Jim,
Although it is hard to prove I think that these signs are, as you put it, a grouping of actual symbols rather than runes.
At times when craftsmen like stone masons could mostly neither read nor write they had to rely on simple symbols to mark their daily work and thus prove how far they got. After all, we know from documents that they got their daily pay based on their individual signs left on the stones in the building.
Starting from this surmise I should put forward as a thesis that these signs generally were a sort of a mixture of simple symbolized cyphers and initials primarily used by illiterate persons as I tried to point out in my former thread on my big bronze haquebut wall gun, Nuremberg, ca. 1515-20. I repost both the sign on the hook of that gun and a woodcut by Erhard Schön, Nuremberg, ca. 1530 depicting a tavern scene with such simple markings on the black board, representing the respective bills of the guests.
Michael
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