Comparing Energy Expenditures of Mortar and Pestle and Grinding Slab Technologies

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Formal Models and Experimental Archaeology of Ground Stone Milling Technology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Daily activities such as grinding plant material require energy input. It is ideal to put in the least amount of work to obtain the greatest yield of product. Energetic expenditures and returns for grinding slab and mortar and pestle use remain largely unstudied. In this study, resting and grinding heart-rate data are recorded and used with grinding efficiency data to determine the best energetic returns for several types of mortars versus a shallow basin grinding slab. These data are further considered along with return rates from two resources, black oak acorn (*Quercus kelloggii) and Indian ricegrass seed (*Achnatherum hymenoides). It is expected that technologies with the highest grinding rates will have the best energetic returns. This may be amplified by differences in caloric values for different resources.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Formal Models and Experimental Archaeology of Ground Stone Milling Technology

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 31981