Stone cannonball?

[adrian]

I was recently asked to identify a possible cannonball and I would like some more opinions on this.

I think that it is highly likely to be a stone cannonball, often the obvious answer is the correct one. These took some work to get sufficiently round, and catapults etc did not require such uniformity for their projectiles. Likewise, if it were part of a masonry work of art or decoration, that has broken away, there would be some evidence of that.

Below from my collection, a 6" dia (15cm) stone shot weighing 10.5lbs recovered from the Malacca Strait, it is probably Portuguese, and three smaller examples about 4" dia, from an 16th century English shipwreck.