Formal Models and Experimental Archaeology of Ground Stone Milling Technology

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Formal Models and Experimental Archaeology of Ground Stone Milling Technology" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Throughout much of the Holocene, humans in many parts of the world have relied on ground stone milling tools to increase the amount and breadth of edible foodstuffs. Despite the favorable preservation generally afforded these tools, and the central role they once had in processing many plant-food staples, ground stone milling tools remain an understudied and undertheorized category of technology. This poster session highlights experiments and formal modeling approaches that explore investments of time, labor, or knowledge represented by ground stone milling tools. The posters integrate experimental data on technological choices with use-wear analysis, ethnographic data, and evolutionary models.