Grinding Slab

In archaeology, a grinding slab is a ground stone artifact generally used to grind plant materials into usable size, though some slabs were used to shape other ground stone artifacts. Some grinding stones are portable; others are not and, in fact, may be part of a stone outcropping.

Grinding slabs used for plant processing typically acted as a coarse surface against which plant materials were ground using a portable hand stone, or mano ("hand" in Spanish). Variant grinding slabs are referred to as metates or querns, and have a ground-out bowl. Like all ground stone artifacts, grinding slabs are made of large-grained materials such as granite, basalt, or similar tool stones.

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Famous quotes containing the word slab:

    Remember? We sat on a slab of rock.
    From this distance in time,
    it seems the color
    of iris, rotting and turning purpler,

    but it was only
    the usual gray rock
    Robert Lowell (1917–1977)