New Stones, New Uses: Sillimanite Ground Stone Tools from Central Iberia (5000–2500 BCE)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Ground stone tools can indicate important patterns in food production, craftwork, and farming practices in Neolithic and Chalcolithic Iberia due to their varied use. As Iberian communities adopted sedentary practices and social inequalities emerged, they began to create tools made from new raw materials, indicating a changing relationship with their environment. Fibrolitic sillimanite, an aluminum silicate mineral found in metamorphic environments, is one example of these new materials. Fibrolitic sillimanite was used to create durable ground stone tools throughout the Madrid region. Nodules of this mineral were likely locally available in the Somosierra mountain range and rivers running through the central region of Iberia. These minerals were used to create polished axes, knife sharpeners, and other tools. My preliminary research focuses on the physical and use-wear data of two collections of ground stone tools from the Museo Arqueológico Regional de la Comunidad de Madrid in Alcalá de Henares and the Museo de San Isidro in Madrid, Spain. Together the 280 artifacts from approximately 60 settlements, surface scatters, and workshops present a cross section of the variation in new raw material sources, the creation of new tool forms, and the use of ground stone tools in the region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35997.0