Turning Stone into Bread: The Millstone Quarries of Medieval and Post-medieval Ireland

Colfer, Niall

doi:10.1080/03090728.2019.1594063

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…This could possibly be due to the fact that granite was relatively unsuitable for cereal grinding as it wore done at a faster rate than sandstone conglomerate. The latter bedrock was quarried in both south-east and north-west Ireland to some commercial success, with millstones from both regions sold in the north-east (the location of the Mourne Mountains) during the 18 th and 19 th centuries (Colfer 2016).…”

Section: Post-medieval Historical and Social Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ireland's longest serving millstone quarry? Millstone Mountain in the Mourn Mountains, Co. Down, Nothern Ireland

Colfer¹

2019

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This paper comprises a detailed case study focusing on millstone production in the Mourne Mountains, Co. Down, Northern Ireland, with a specifi c focus on the quarry located on the aptly named Millstone Mountain on the eastern side of the mountain range. Both medieval and post-medieval production techniques and millstone sizes, which differed signifi cantly, are discussed. Research questions concerning quarry placement, geology, transport and chronology of exploitation are addressed. Discussion of post-medieval economic environment in the northeast corner of Ireland is provided with a distribution of known granite millstones surviving within the wider landscape.

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Section: Post-medieval Historical and Social Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ireland's longest serving millstone quarry? Millstone Mountain in the Mourn Mountains, Co. Down, Nothern Ireland

Colfer¹

2019

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Islands without Iron. Strategies for Manufacturing Prehistoric Rotary Querns without Metal Tools in the Canary Islands: Working Hypotheses and Experimentation

Hernández

Rodríguez

Mayor

et al. 2023

J Archaeol Method Theory

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The introduction of the rotary quern into the Iberian Peninsula during the Iron Age represents a great technological innovation with regard to processing cereals. These mechanisms arrived several centuries later in the Canarian archipelago with the first North African colonists. Contacts with the African continent appear to have either been cut off or minimised a short time later, obliging the colonists to subsist autonomously and adapt to the features of the new territory. Moreover, the archipelago's volcanic character does not offer minerals that could be transformed into metals obliging the new populations to resort to stone tools, an adaptation evidenced by the manufacture of rotary querns. Currently few technological studies of these querns have combined experimental work with hypotheses stemming from archaeological evidence. This article presents two experimental programs that have attempted to reconstruct the operational sequence (chaîne opératoire) of the two main types of rocks exploited for querns in the Canary Islands: volcanic tuff and vesicular basalt.

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Turning Stone into Bread: The Millstone Quarries of Medieval and Post-medieval Ireland

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Ireland's longest serving millstone quarry? Millstone Mountain in the Mourn Mountains, Co. Down, Nothern Ireland

Ireland's longest serving millstone quarry? Millstone Mountain in the Mourn Mountains, Co. Down, Nothern Ireland

Islands without Iron. Strategies for Manufacturing Prehistoric Rotary Querns without Metal Tools in the Canary Islands: Working Hypotheses and Experimentation

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