The Stone of Life: querns, mills and flour production in Europe up to c AD 500

• Published in: Antiquaries journal 2016, Vol.96, p.432
• Main Author: Ixer, Robert
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Archaeology; Flour; Geochemistry; Learning; Neolithic; Provenance; Stone
• ISSN: 0003-5815; 1758-5309
• DOI: 10.1017/S0003581516000329

Less obviously, although poor, intoxicating Sir John Barleycorn, who is cut 'skin from bone' or, in other versions of the song, 'flayed skin from bone', is given justified prominence, but (despite Peacock's interest in Mesoamerican querns and flour production) there is no mention of the Mexican god Xipe Totec ('Our Lord the Flayed One'), the god of germinating maize and hence of the rotating cycle of death/birth/rebirth; perhaps one analogy, or an elusive mystery, too far from Europe. Peacock was of the last, or possibly last-but-one, generation taught petrography in a serious and rigorous fashion, so learning to respect and know its value (and limitations) in both lithic and ceramic studies, but he also lived in tandem with the infancy and adolescence of archaeological geochemistry. In 2015 his death, compounded by that of Professor Vin Davis (singlehandedly responsible for the renaissance of the Implement Petrology [sic] Group in the last decade) and of John Watson (who performed much of the detailed geochemistry of the Stonehenge orthostats in the 1990s and twenty-five years later worked on the chemical and geophysical characterisation of Stonehenge debitage and Bronze Age bracers), has reduced our ability to discuss the 'biographies' of stone objects from their outset and from a rock-fast setting.