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Rotary Querns on the Continent and in the Mediterranean Basin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

V. Gordon Childe
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Extract

In his two articles on querns (1) Dr Cecil Curwen has given us a really epoch-making contribution to prehistory and history. Not only has he provided the prehistorian with a new instrument for the establishment of chronology, but he has drawn the attention of excavators to a revolutionary but curiously neglected advance in technology. For the rotary mill is the first major application of rotary motion since the invention of the potter's wheel and the lathe in the remote Oriental Copper Age; it led on directly to the invention of geared machinery and the water-wheel and so to the first employment of inanimate motive power apart from the harnessing of the winds to the sail. Though this invention took place in the full light of history, the sole evidence for its origin, apart from a single reference in a writer so late as Pliny (2), is purely archaeological. Unfortunately it is still rather thin; excavators of classical and barbarian sites have generally been too preoccupied with statuary and art-objects on the one hand, with types accepted as chronologically significant on the other, to provide the historian of science with the data he craves. Truhelka for instance, generally so scrupulous in the full publication of all his finds, does not illustrate nor even describe a single quern from Dolja Dolina in Bosnia where he found plenty (3).

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 17 , Issue 65 , March 1943 , pp. 19 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1943

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References

References and Notes

* References and notes are on pp. 25–6.

1 ANTIQUITY (1937), XI, 133–51; (1941), XV, 15–32.

2 N.H., XXXVI, 29.

3 WMBH (1904), IX, 66, they included some sort of rotary quern.

4 Götze, Reallexikon der Vorgeschichte, VIII, 323, knows only one example during the Römischkaisarzeit, while east of the Elbe such appear first in Slavic settlements.

5 Hatt, Landbrug i Danmarks Oldtid, 125.

6 Dacia, III-IV, p. 345, from stratum V with La Tène m and Nauheim brooches, 50 B.C.-A.D. 50.

7 Vouga, La Tène, 77–80, pl. XXVI ; Ans. f. schweiz. Altertumsk., XIX, 165–7 (Gaz-Fabrik, Basel) ; L’Antkr., 1903, XIV, 403 (Celles, Cantal) ; cf. also Déchelette, Manuel, II, 3, 1387 ff.; West-Deutsch. Zeitschr., XIX, 139 ; Schránil, Vorgeschichte Böhmens und Mährens, 246.

8 cf. Delamare, Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie, IX.

9 Chamonard, Explorations arckaéologiques de Délos, (1922), VIII, 229; cf. Déonna, ibid. XVIII, 131.

10 e.g. in Rue du Theatre, 26, 27 b, 33, 41 b, etc. ; Chamonard, Délos, VIII, 211.

11 Attuari d’Estudis Catalans (1915–20), VI, 654, 660 ; cf. 663.

12 ibid. 647, fig. 469.

13 From Izana, Soria ; Las Cogotas, Avila; Trofia, Pontevedra—Junta superior de Excavaciones, Memorias, 86, pl. I; 110, p. 85; 115, p. 35. Saddle querns were also used in these forts and at Numantia.

14 Schulten, Numantia, 11, 244.

15 R.R. X, 4.

16 Rev. Arch., XXXV, 419; cf. XXXIV, II.

17 Bennett and Elton, History of Corn Milling, 1, 1898, 54–6.

18 Robinson, Excavations at Olynthus, VIII, ‘The Hellenic House’, 330 ff., and Déonna, Délos, XVIII, 127, give a full bibliography.

19 Mon. Antichi, XXIII,. 730–1, fig. 154; described as a window (!) but securely dated VII-VI B.C.

20 Körte, Gordion, 176, undatable.

21 O. I. C., van den Osten, ‘The Alishar Hüyük’, 1, 112 ; 11, 77; most probably older than III B.C.

22 Von Oppenheim, Tell Halaf (Eng. trans.), 206, pl. XLIX, B.

23 ‘Aρχ ’Eϕ., 1917, 151 ; the bowl is published ibid., 1914, pl. 1, and another in Rostovtseff, A Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic Age, pl. XXV, p. 176.

24 None of the references to corn-grinding in earlier Classical authors, nor in Hebrew and Oriental texts, necessarily imply rotary motion though most commentators (e.g. Blumner, Technologie und Terminologie der Gewerbe bei Griechen und Römern, 1875, pp. 23–49) through unfamiliarity with archaeological evidence have assumed they do. I am not sure that the late lexicographers of antiquity had any better grounds for their explanation of the use of ővos for the upper millstone.

25 Monumenti Antichi, xxv, 568, and fig. 159.

26 Whitaker, Motya, p. 281, fig. 63.

27 Robinson, Olynthus, 11, 55, cf. VIII, 331.

28 ‘Les Mines de Laurion’, Bibl. École franç, à Athènes, no. 77, p. 61, fig. 19.

29 ibid. 68.

30 Robinson, Olynthus, VIII, 338.

31 Drachmann, Ancient Oil Mills and Presses (Lindiaka), 8

32 N.H., XXXVI, 29 ‘molas versatilis in Volsiniis inventas’.

33 Macalister, Gezer, 11, 37.

34 Note that in a small hand-mill from Pompeii (Villa Boscoreale, Mon. Ant., VII, 491), the rider is cylindrical externally, not beehive-shaped, though internally hour-glass shaped like the catullus of contemporary donkey-mills ; the handle-socket is horizontal, the meta markedly convex though less so than in the mills.

35 ANTIQUITY, 1937, xi, 140.

36 Cyropaedia, VI, 2, 31

37 Schulten, Numantia, III, 264, and pl. 29, 3 ; IV, 139.

38 Saalburger Jahrbuch, III (1912), 89 ff.

39 de Architectura, X, cap. IV.

40 PRIA, XLV, C, 83–181.