Abstract

Excavations at the Neolithic site of Avgi (Middle-Late Neolithic, circa 5700-4500 cal. BCE) in the Kastoria region, northwestern Greece, brought to light one of the largest ground stone assemblages known from Neolithic Greece. More than 8000 ground stone tools and objects, raw materials and by-products comprise a valuable record for investigating various aspects of ground stone technology (production, consumption, discard), while their rich contextual information provides an ideal opportunity for addressing its significance for Neolithic societies.
 This paper examines the presence of grinding tools (stable grinding slabs and mobile grinders, their raw materials and by-products) within different spatiotemporal contexts (habitational phases, buildings, open areas, pits). Through the detailed technological and contextual analysis of the grinding artifacts we seek to explore different aspects of their biographies, related to their manufacture, use, maintenance, destruction and discard, within the context of a single Neolithic community. The goal is to shed light on the multiple ways through which the Neolithic society of Avgi consumed those technological products in various social occasions, practices and places (e.g., daily routine activities, special events of communal or symbolic character, individual houses and communal activity areas) and explore their role in the formation of social identities and the production of social meaning.

Highlights

  • Within the discipline of archaeology, ground stone technology has been strongly associated with plant exploitation and with the transformation of plants into edible substances

  • They were probably produced during the manufacture of a grinding slab or grinder, since in Neolithic Avgi granite rocks were only used for those two tool types

  • This paper investigated the contexts of production, consumption and discard of the grinding implements from Middle-Late Neolithic Avgi

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Summary

Introduction

Within the discipline of archaeology, ground stone technology has been strongly associated with plant exploitation and with the transformation of plants into edible substances. Exhaustion, intense redesigning and prolonged recycling are aspects that certainly had a great impact on those tools, in terms of weakening them and making them more vulnerable to accidental breaks (e.g., breaking from the applied pressure or friction during the abrasion process, breaking during pecking) Besides those practices the grinding tools from Neolithic Avgi often bear evidence of deliberate breakage (Adams 2008) as was indicated by the careful examination of their fractures, the presence of the impact points (Figure 8) and the recognition of specific breakage patterns (e.g., systematic and intense breakage, multidirectional breakage, conchoidal breakage, geometric breakage). The contexts of grinding tools: places of production, consumption and discard

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