Publisher's Synopsis
Ground Stone Tools and Past Foodways brings together a selection of papers presented at the 3rd meeting of the Association of Ground Stone Tools Research, which was held at the University of Copenhagen in 2019. Ground stone artefacts are one of the most enduring classes of material culture: first used by Palaeolithic gatherer-hunters, they are still used regularly by people in many parts of the world to grind, mash and pulverize plants, meat and minerals. As such, ground stone artefacts provide a well preserved record at the nexus of interaction between humans, plants and animals. The papers in this volume focus especially on the relationship between ground stone artefacts and foodways and include archaeological and ethnographic case studies ranging from the Palaeolithic to the current era, and geographically from Africa to Europe and Asia. They reflect the current state of the art in ground stone tool research and highlight the many ways in which foodways can be studied through holistic examinations of ground stone artefacts.
