Ground stone tools. An integrated approach of use-wear and residue analysis

Ground stones are artefacts manufactured and shaped, or simply used, to perform a series of activities, such as percussion, pounding, pecking, grinding, abrading, polishing, etc. (Dubreuil and Savage 2014). The vital role of ground stones in the past has often been neglected, and when explored, the focus is inevitably on prehistoric contexts: however, on a positive note, this type of study has started to attract increasing attention in recent years. This class of artefacts, which has very often been associated with the exploitation of plant materials only, can provide crucial information on the use and processing of a wide variety of both organic and inorganic materials starting from the Pleistocene (Barton et al. 2018; Clarkson et al. 2017; Mutri 2019). During late prehistory the importance of ground stones clearly increased with the appearance and development of the first farming communities, when grinding cereals became a fundamental domestic activity. Their use to process a variety of wild plants, including grasses, has been regularly documented in a number of Pleistocene sites, suggesting that a long period of intensive exploitation and processing of wild resources occurred (Barton et al. 2018; Mariotti Lippi et al. 2015; Revedin et al. 2010). These tools often bear the traces of a long and diverse life, and it is not uncommon to observe changes in their use through time (Hamon 2008). As a matter of fact, it is not uncommon that the same tool shows macro- and micro-traces that can be associated with different activities, and the exploitation of different materials. At the last stage of their life, especially once fractured, ground stones were also often recycled as anvils, hammers and construction materials (Lucarini 2014). The aim of this paper is to offer an overview of the methodologies currently applied to the study of ground stones, and to propose protocol for ground stones analysis.