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Description: | Fragment of a cobble of quartz tourmaline, a late stage alteration of granite, sub-rectangular in plan and trapezoidal in profile. Part of the concave curved surface on the upper face which looks like a polishing surface, has been naturally formed, but the breaks retain evidence of its use as a hammerstone. Roger Taylor comments that this material would work well grinding greenstone, so perhaps it was also used as a polishing stone. Such pieces do turn up on domestic sites but not in any quantity compared to mullers and rubbers. On these objects the waterworn cobble surfaces are all fresh and unweathered, appropriate for selection from a beach during the Neolithic. The beach selection would ensure hard enduring pieces. It is quite possible that the wear on these objects has been caused by grinding pieces in the axe manufacture process. (Henrietta Quinnell, Clodgy Moor stonework, forthcoming).Examples of hammerstones and polishing stones have been found on Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in Cornwall, such as a quartz porphyry axe-polisher from Carn Brea, Illogan, recorded in Mercer (1981) on page 159, No.CO347, a pestle from Scarcewater, St Stephens, illustrated in Jones and Taylor (2010) on page 122, Fig.60, No.230, and a grinding stone from Callestick, Perranzabuloe, illustrated in Jones (2002) on page 29, Fig.12, No.101.
Original Image | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/r... | Go to resource |
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