The Stone of Life (Hardcover)

This volume is about the archaeology of querns and mills, simple stone instruments which are vital to survival in a society which adopts bread as its staple. They become the 'stones of life', an essential ingredient in the subsistance strategy of settled agriculturalists. It might be expected that as querns and mills are commonplace in archaeology, they would be key artefacts, studied exhaustively. Alas, this is far from the case. They have been woefully neglected, although in the last decade there has been burgeoning interest throughout much of Europe and because of this it is timely to survey the subject, adopting a broad viewpoint.