Title :

Limestone millstones: Facies, provenance and use of sandy to pure limestones in France

Author(s) :

Fronteau, Gilles [Auteur]
Groupe d'Étude sur les Géomatériaux et Environnements Naturels, Anthropiques et Archéologiques - EA 3795 [GEGENAA]
Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne [URCA]
Boyer, François [Auteur]
Jaccottey, Luc [Auteur]
Laboratoire Chrono-environnement (UMR 6249) [LCE]
Instiut national de recherches archéologiques préventives - Centre de recherches archéologiques de Besançon [Inrap, Besançon]
Le Quellec, Vincent [Auteur]
Lepareux-Couturier, Stéphanie [Auteur]
Archéologie et Philologie d'Orient et d'Occident [AOROC]
Institut national de recherches archéologiques préventives [Inrap]
Milleville, Annabelle [Auteur]
Labex TransferS
Monchablon, Cécile [Auteur]
Trajectoires - UMR 8215
Institut national de recherches archéologiques préventives [Inrap]
Robin, Boris [Auteur]
Picavet, Paul [Auteur]
Histoire, Archéologie et Littérature des Mondes Anciens - UMR 8164 [HALMA]

Journal title :

Journal of lithic studies
2nd Meeting of the Association for Ground Stone Tools Research

Publisher :

University of Edinburgh

Publication date :

2020

ISSN :

2055-0472

English keyword(s) :

limestone
petrography
geomaterial
saddle quern
rotary quern
millstone

HAL domain(s) :

Planète et Univers [physics]/Sciences de la Terre/Pétrographie
Planète et Univers [physics]/Sciences de la Terre/Géologie appliquée
Sciences de l'Homme et Société/Archéologie et Préhistoire

English abstract : [en]

Limestones are sedimentary rocks more commonly associated with building stones or sculptures than with millstones. Nevertheless, many examples of limestone saddle querns, rotary querns and millstones are spread across ...
Show more >Limestones are sedimentary rocks more commonly associated with building stones or sculptures than with millstones. Nevertheless, many examples of limestone saddle querns, rotary querns and millstones are spread across France, at times making up the bulk of the archaeological assemblages in various areas characterized by bedrocks rich of sedimentary stones. These limestone millstones are of different types, sources and geological origins: Eocene sandy or fossiliferous limestones, mainly from the various limestones layers from the Lutetian beds, Quaternary calcareous tufas, and fine Jurassic limestones. To explain the behaviour of these rocks, this study advances a classification of the rocks used for millstones, focused not only on the rock-type but mainly on the topological aspect of the stone surface. (empirical macroscopic surface roughness) This renders it possible to classify the rocks into categories by materials, rather than according to petrographic facies. The pure limestones in this study are essentially vacuolar, whereas sandy limestones or certain biodetritital limestones belong to either the granular rocks category, which also includes sandstones, or to the category of heterogeneous rocks. These limestones appear for the most part to have been used due to their availability. Moreover, they epitomise a very satisfactory compromise between their grinding properties and their ease of carving, even if the hardness of these limestones is lower than those of other rocks used as grindstone (basalts or sandstones).Show less >

Language :

Anglais

Peer reviewed article :

Oui

Audience :

Internationale

Popular science :

Non

Collections :

• Histoire Archéologie Littératures des Mondes Anciens (HALMA) - UMR 8164

Source :

Harvested from HAL