Considering Women's Tech Choices: Grinding Efficiency and Performance Characteristics of Hunter-Gatherer Milling Tools

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.

Milling tools were a cornerstone of many plant-based hunter-gatherer economies. Women are often involved in food processing and would have used these tools, in some cases daily, to expand the breadth of foods available for consumption. Despite their important economic role, few studies have compared differences in the performance of various ground stone designs common to hunter-gatherers in California, or elsewhere. Here, experimental small seed and acorn/nut processing rates are compared for three mortar and two grinding slab designs. Results indicate some unexpected relationships between different interior mortar shapes and seed processing. In particular, large mortars with deep and broad interiors are highly effective tools for producing flour from both small wild seeds and large seeds/nuts like acorns. Though expensive to manufacture and transport, mortars with large bowl-shaped interiors would have been excellent for long-term use in settings where multiple types of plant resources were processed into finer particles. Conical mortar shapes are good for acorn processing but poor for processing small seeds into flour. Shallow mortars and small grinding slabs are the least productive but also the least expensive tools.

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 31983