On April 10th, a presentation titled “Grinding Stone Tool Technologies in Prehistoric Greece: Approaches to an Overlooked Material” was delivered at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, within the course “Archéologie du monde égéen 2: Histoires et actualités” led by Professor Hara Procopiou.
The talk explored grinding stone technologies as a long-overlooked category of material culture, highlighting their potential to illuminate aspects of daily life, technological practices, and social organization in prehistoric Greece.
Introduced through a playful visual prompt, a ‘missing poster’ featuring a pair of grinding tools asking ‘Have you seen it?’, the presentation invited the audience to reconsider what has long remained in plain sight, yet largely unnoticed.
On April 30th, a presentation titled “Tracing Cultural Traditions and Identities in Prehistoric Greece through Grinding Stone Technologies” was delivered at the third Ancient and Medieval Middle East (AMME) seminar (‘Macrolithic Technology in the Ancient Mediterranean’) . Ground stone (or macrolithic) tools, and in particular grinding stone tools (i.e. querns and handstones), form an integral part of the material culture of prehistoric societies, playing a key role in everyday practices. They were involved in a wide range of productive activities and carried considerable socio-economic and cultural significance. For decades, however, their study within Greek prehistory remained limited. It is only in recent years that a growing body of specialised, site-specific studies has led to a significant expansion in ground stone tool research, making it possible to explore emerging spatiotemporal patterns. Drawing on both published studies and the preliminary results of the ongoing MSCA GrindTrace project, this presentation aimed to investigate the role of grinding tools as indicators of coexisting technological traditions and broader sociocultural dynamics, with a particular focus on the later phases of the Neolithic.
